He threw his head back against his pillow and groaned. There was so much he could say. That Olivia was his daughter too, and Jess really had no grounds, legal or otherwise, to stop him from paying for the surgery. That Jess had nothing to be scared of. That they were husband and wife and there shouldn’t be some type of tally system that caused one of them to feel beholden to the other. There should just be love. A whole unconditional heap of it. A heap big enough to cover all the wrongs they’d done to each other over the years.
Trouble was, his wife didn’t seem to want even a smidgeon of love from him, let alone a heap of it.
He shoved the covers away and reached for his shirt.How do I win her back, God? Why does it seem like each time we should be growing closer, we only get more distant?
“It’s wrong, isn’t it?” Her voice emerged small and weak, though the room was so tiny it could barely hold a double bed and dresser. “You’re my husband. I shouldn’t feel so strongly about letting you back into our lives, letting you pay for Olivia’s surgery.”
There were a lot of things they shouldn’t feel toward each other, a lot of old resentment that kept coming back to chokeboth of them. “What do you think I’ll do? Settle into a life with you and our daughters, and then up and run off again one day? Because I won’t.”
She fiddled with the edging on the quilt. “How can I believe that?”
Because I changed the day I got the scars on my shoulder.But that was another issue entirely. Something he hoped to tell her one day, if she was willing to listen… and care.
“Is there anything I can say that will convince you?” He shoved his arms through his shirtsleeves, then started buttoning his shirt, never mind that his thick, bumbling fingers struggled to slip the small buttons through their tiny holes. “Anything I can do to change your mind? To prove that I never intend to leave you again? You’ve discounted everything I’ve said and done thus far—everything besides rescuing you last night, that is.”
“And why not?” She crossed her arms over the thin fabric of her nightgown. “You say you never intend to leave us again, but you still want to take us to Deadwood in the spring. This time around you’ve replaced leaving us with dragging us somewhere against our will. Being determined to take me to Deadwood doesn’t make me want to trust you any more than confessing you gambled away our savings before you left.”
And he was right back to the beginning. It was almost as though the argument was a circle with no end. He tilted his head back toward the ceiling and drew a breath. What was he doing wrong? Once she saw he was serious about staying in Eagle Harbor for the winter, she was supposed to soften toward him and agree to leave for Deadwood on her own. But if anything, she’d turned harder.
Jessalyn climbed off the bed and headed to the purple dress hanging on the peg by the window. It would be too long for her, and possibly a little tight in the chest. But if he knew his wife,she’d have it altered and fitting her to perfection before lunch. Her hair would be pulled up in that elegant twist she pinned at the back of her head every day too.
But she didn’t look perfect now, standing by the window barefoot and rumpled, her long hair hanging down to touch the small of her back. No glimpse of the pristine, professional town seamstress. She might even be a miner’s wife with nothing more than a fourth-grade education for how simple she looked.
Would she be more content then? More at peace? Maybe the problem wasn’t that they’d never had enough, but that they’d had too much and never been thankful for it.
But how could they work on being thankful, restoring their relationship, or anything else when all they did was argue over what would happen once the harbor opened?
“I want a truce,” he said roughly.
“A truce?” She turned from her place by the window, her eyes blinking in question. “Yes, all right. Let’s call a truce. No more fighting this morning.”
He shook his head as he got off the bed and snatched his trousers off the peg beside her dress. “That’s not the kind of truce I’m proposing.”
“What then?”
“I want to leave Deadwood out of things for a while. Chicago too. No more talk about spring and what will happen or where we’ll move.”
“We?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you planning on coming to Chicago with us now?”
No. But he wasn’t planning on spending another five years separated from his wife and daughters either. “I just think we’d do well not to talk about spring for a while. We can try living like a normal married couple until the harbor opens, with you letting me provide for you. While something tells me you might have enough money saved up to live in Eagle Harbor until spring,I’ve got income from my hotel coming into my bank account every week. You won’t need to watch your savings dwindle, and we’ll leave what happens four or five months from now out of everything.”
She shook her head. “That won’t work. April will get here eventually, and we’ll need to decide what to do. Why not prepare now?”
“Because you’re getting—or rather, we’re both getting—so caught up in what might happen one day that we’re cutting off any chance to enjoy what we have right now. Today I woke up next to my wife for the first time in five years. And do you know what? I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, I wish your seamstress shop never would have burned, but I can’t go back and change that. I can, however, change today. How I act toward you, how I smile at you, how I show my love for you.”
“Your love for me?” She searched his face. “You still…? After all these years…?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. Hadn’t he just told himself not to bring this up last night? They had enough other issues to deal with besides him declaring feelings for his wife that she might well reject.
And yet, she didn’t seem ready to reject them, at least not entirely given the way her throat was working, the way she couldn’t quite meet his gaze. If she wanted nothing to do with his feelings, then her chin would be up, her eyes would be flashing, and she’d be barreling through a whole list of reasons why he had no business loving her anymore.
“Of course I still love you,” he whispered into the room. But did she still love him? That was the bigger question. He tried to swallow, but couldn’t quite manage it, given the sudden lump in his throat. After the last five years, he hardly deserved her love.
“Look, Jess. I’m not God, and I can’t predict the future, but I can see the clues sitting in front of me, the little steps we can taketo get back what we once had.” He paused, waiting for her to say something about not wanting their old relationship back, but the words never came. Instead, she watched him intently, as though her ability to draw breath hinged on the next words he spoke.
So he’d better make them good. He drew a breath of his own, shaky with nerves, and pressed forward. “I woke up next to you today, and I want to wake up next to you tomorrow. We’ve been through more than most married couples. Your cousin-in-law took my job the day we got married, then made it hard for me to find more work in Chicago. As if that wasn’t enough, he stole several thousand dollars from me, kept my whereabouts from you, tried getting you to give our girls up for adoption, and forced you to live without income. While both of us are wrong for separating in the first place, we’re not at fault for the rest of it.”
“Yes, I’ll agree with you on that.” She dropped her gaze and stared down at where her bare toes peeked out from beneath her hem. “I never should have told you to go west without me.”
