Chapter Twelve
Ellie
I don’t have the heart to tell Jude that my idea of tasty treats does not include sugar that isn’t sugar and taste like the sweet, decayed flesh of a corpse.
Instead, I help her bake batch after batch of cookies that her sons won’t eat and just let the monotonous task soothe me. My nerves are on edge and have been the last few days, thanks to Wyatt’s urgency—a desperation I don’t understand but feel every time he looks at me, touches me, or makes love to me.
It’s as if he’s afraid to let me out of his sight for even a minute. As a result, I’m tempted to cling to him in case something bad happens to ruin this peaceful place we’ve found together.
Another reason I’m so uneasy is the fact that I think I went and did it. I went and let myself fall for the man who has done nothing but love and worship me since taking me.
I’m dependant on him for everything, something I swore to myself I wouldn’t do because I hate feeling this needy for another. I’m needy and so in love with him and his family that most days it’s all I can do not to jump him and demand an engagement ring and the wedding he’s put off because I acted like I didn’t want it yet.
Talk about a major error in judgement.
“Ellie, honey, are you alright?”
Jude’s staring at me askance and I realize I’ve been standing in front of the oven holding a tray of raw cookies, just staring into space. I have a tendency to zone out lately, a character trait that’s returned now that I’m not so stiff and hard on myself.
Letting down my barriers is great, but I’ve found myself saying and doing some things only the old naïve Ellie would have done and I don’t like it one bit.
“Uh, I’m fine, Jude, just fine. Sorry, I sort of spaced out for a minute.”
I get the cookies into the oven and sit down at the table with a cup of tea and my thoughts as Jude joins me, her eyes soft and understanding.
“Love isn’t easy to accept when the one you love happens to be a Lane and so overwhelmingly present in your heart and mind,” she says ruefully, giving me the eye. “Don’t deny it, Ellie dear, I’d only be offended because I’d know your denials are lies. You love my son.” She claps her hands gleefully.
“Shh! I don’t….what am I supposed to do with all of this so soon, Jude? I mean, it’s one thing to go with his flow and change everything I’ve done or felt for years, but now…”
“Now you’re afraid that it’s all happening too soon and seems too perfect and good to be true?”
“Something like that,” I mumble, taking a sip of tea to steady my beating heart.
I’ve never been in love with a man before and it terrifies me. I knew it this morning when I rolled over and saw him sleeping beside me.
The rightness I felt, the utter joy that this was the first face I was seeing tipped me off, and he only made it worse when his eyes opened and he smiled so wide, my heart near burst.
He’s depending on me to love him, but hasn’t so much as made a move or said anything to force the issue, and I find myself afraid of the responsibility and trust he’s put in me.
As well as the fear that we’ve moved too fast and any day now he’s going to realize that and break my heart. I’m all in now, completely in love with them all, and it would kill me to lose the new family I’ve only just found.
“Honey, I won’t sit here and say that it’s easy, because it’s not. Wyatt is a chip off the old block and not an easy man to love because he’s so intense. There was a time that I ran from George like the hounds of hell were chasing me because I knew if he caught me, I was done for.”
“George? Sweet George who seems so mild mannered?” I ask, shocked that the original, laid-back, easygoing George would have been anything like Wyatt.
She snorts and sips her own coffee, grimacing for a second before her mouth breaks into a smile ad she laughs humorlessly.
“George is worse than Wyatt, though you’d never think it just looking at him. He took one look at me in college and came after me. I, of course, was not pleased. I’d just started college and had no plans to settle down anytime soon. I wanted freedom and to live a life all my own with a career and friends and everything.”
“I understand that.”
I do and I don’t. There was a time when I had dreamed only of having a family of my own one day. Of course, I was in college to prepare for a career, but it was only a secondary goal.
“He chased me, though, and man oh man was he relentless. When he finally caught me I had two choices—lose him and choose a life that suddenly seemed empty or leave college and try for something more.”