He kissed her again. “God, you look so beautiful and you smell so good. I’m such a mess, Randy,” he again repeated.
“I don’t care! I never knew a man could look and smell so good when he needed a bath and a shave.”
“How are you? How are you really?”
“I’m all right, now that you’re here and I know Evie and Little Jake are alive. But I have more scars, Jake.”
“Do you think I give a damn about that?” He kissed her again. “When I’m better, I’ll kiss the scars away.” They kissed again.
“Little Jake. Did they hurt him?”
“He’s fine now. Please don’t ask me to talk about it yet. I can’t, Randy. I can’t think about it. Just know that they are all fine. And I don’t want to let go of you, but we have to go inside. I just want to lie down beside you in that bed that smells like roses.”
Randy forced herself to let go, just enough to step back and take another look at him. “Oh, Jake, it had to be such hell for you. I’m so sorry for what you’ve surely been through. And you’ve lost so much weight.”
Jake moved an arm around her, and they helped each other up the steps to go inside. “You can fatten me up with that bread you make,” he told her, his voice sounding weaker and weaker. Randy thought about Dixie’s concern that Jake would ride himself to death to get to his Evie. Apparently he’d nearly done just that.
As they stepped across the threshold, Jake began apologizing for the house, the broken lamp, her trampled roses.
“They can all be replaced, Jake. Right now it’s enough that I have you and Evie and Little Jake and our son back home.”
She helped him remove his coat, hat, boots, cartridge belts, and guns, shaking her head at all the armor he wore. His vest came off, his shirt. She grimaced at the bloodstained gauze on his upper left arm…the still-red scar on his cheek where his beard didn’t grow.
“I can do this,” he told her. “You shouldn’t help. You’re still healing.”
“It feels good to touch you, to know you’re alive.”
He sat down on the bed. “I should have been with you for all you went through,” he lamented. “Are you in pain?”
“No. I just got my stitches out yesterday. I’m fine, Jake, just still sore. And I still get tired easily, but right now having you sitting here in front of me gives me new energy.” She knelt in front of him and started to unbuckle his belt.
“You were going through some pretty terrible things yourself,” she told him.
“Randy, let me do this, please. I don’t want you overdoing things.” He stood up and finished unbuckling, removing his denim pants.
“What if you had been with me?” Randy continued, studying the magnificent man he still was, even though so much thinner. “It would have taken you three times longer to find Evie. God had his reasons for making you stay behind, Jake. He has worked so many miracles for us.”
Jake sat back down in a way that told her he couldn’t have stayed on his feet even if he wanted to. He literally collapsed onto the bed, and Randy remembered that morning—oh, so many years ago—when she came home to find the outlaw Jake Harkner passed out on her bed back in Kansas. She’d stripped him and washed him and shaved him then, and she’d nervously removed the bullet from his side that she’d put there herself. Jake mumbled something about Evie, then rolled to his side.
“My sweet, beautiful angel,” he groaned.
Randy moved around the other side of the bed and crawled in beside him, still dressed. She realized he was quietly crying. “Jake, come here.”
He moved his arms around her. “I wanted to…kill all of the ones left alive, Randy, but she wouldn’t let me. She forgave them, Randy. She forgave them. Preacher Zilke said evil couldn’t touch her, and he was right. He was right.”
Randy wiped tears from his cheeks. “When on earth did you talk to the preacher?” Randy asked.
“Before I left.” He pulled her tightly against him. “There is so much to talk about, Randy. I picked up a little boy along the way. I want to raise him, Randy. His name is Ben, but he’s me. He’s me.”
Randy kissed his hair. “Jake, I told you I already know about Ben. Dixie brought him to town to explain, just in case you didn’t make it back.”
“Don’t be upset about Dixie. I stayed with her one night after we left. I held her and held her and I wanted it to be you. I cried like a goddamn kid. I was sure I was losing you.”
“Jake, I’m not upset. Dixie told me about that. She’s a good woman, and she was there when I couldn’t be. I’m only concerned about what seeing that boy get beat with a belt did to you.”