Kate’s mouth dropped open. That voice. That achingly familiar voice. It was a voice she had longed to hear on those sleepless nights in the dead of winter when she’d loosened the iron grip she had on her heart and allowed herself to dream, even if just for a moment, a voice that she had thought was lost to her forever. It couldn’t be. A tingle started in her fingertips. She slowly lowered her shotgun.
Her question came out in a strangled whisper. “Jacob?”
She had replayed their last meeting countless times. It had been a brief flash of vibrant light between the hammer strokes of reality, where all her dreams had materialized in some sort of otherworldly vision. That kiss. He had said he loved her. Wanted to marry her.
Then he had left her.
The ache of it hurt even still.
But here he was. The tingle spread up her arms and across her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“In the flesh.”
Jacob’s hesitant half smile sent a jolt of something inexplicable through her heart. He was real and alive and standing right in front of her. She studied him with wide eyes. He did look a sight. His beard had grown long and wild. He wore buckskin pants, boots that were nearly falling apart, and a ridiculous floppy hat overtop hair that curled darklyagainst his neck. It all made him look like a wild mountain man, not the well-kept cowboy who had inhabited her dreams. And while his blue shirt was faded and stained and fraying at the cuffs and collar, it only served to highlight the depth of his piercing cobalt eyes.
He stared at her with those bewitching eyes, boring into her with an intensity that was almost palpable. Her mind flashed back to the first time she’d seen those eyes on his handsome face. He’d been a carefree, self-assured young man laughing around her family’s fire while she stood entranced on the edges of the firelight. Kate was frozen now, just as she’d been nearly a year ago, her body tingling all over under the spell of those midnight eyes. It was as if not a moment had passed, and at the same time, a thousand lifetimes.
Kate slowly holstered her shotgun and dismounted, clutching Sadie’s reins in a white-knuckled grip. She walked up to him. She couldn’t seem to feel her feet. Jacob didn’t come to meet her, and she stopped, unsure. He stood rigid and still, as if he was trying to hold himself together with every bit of his strength, as if caught between wanting to stay and wanting to hightail it out of there and never see Kate again. Even standing still he seemed to draw away from her.
A knot formed in her middle, and Kate mourned again the friendship she had lost when she had rejected him. How could she begin to tell Jacob how sorry she was for hurting him? She was ashamed of her poor decisions. She had been so confused, unnecessarily shouldering the burden of her family’s expectations, cutting away at her soul to fit into someone else’s mold of who she should be, and had unwittingly hurt all the people she cared about, including him.
And all for naught.
Here they were on the other side of a long, cold winter, back to where they started but with wounds and scars that clouded the air between them. Her mind scrambled for something to say, some way to dispelthe fog, a way to reach across the chasm and reignite the warmth of friendship she’d been craving every moment they had been apart.
“What happened?” she asked, unable to form anything more coherent than those two simple words.
Jacob opened his mouth to say something and paused, his gaze unreadable. Then he too chose two simple words. “So much.”
He was so guarded. It stung. They used to talk with such ease; he had shared his heart with her, and she in turn with him, and now this stilted conversation was agonizing.
So much,Jacob had said.That didn’t really say anything, yet it spoke a library’s worth of stories. The haze of her shock fell away, and she saw him clearly. He was thin, his usually sturdy frame and wide chest swimming vacantly in his shirt. He had a slight limp, favoring his left leg, though he tried valiantly to hide it, and there were deep grooves between his brows and around his eyes. He looked worn. So terribly tired. Kate’s mind stilled and her heart clenched in concern, her own turmoil fading into the background of her thoughts. What had happened to him to cause such a weight of sorrow to settle on his broad shoulders? She looked into his sad eyes. “What happened, Jacob?” she asked again softly.
Jacob’s brows pinched together and his eyes tightened. “I got lost. I rode into those mountains to get away from everythin’, to get away from—” He looked down. He didn’t have to say it. The look on his face as she had broken his heart had played in her mind again and again over the past months. Her eyes stung but she said nothing.
Jacob continued, his whole body tense. “And I kept ridin’ ’til I had nothin’ left. There was this storm. I nearly died. An old trapper found me and brought me back from the brink and took care of me when I was broken.” His voice caught and he took that ridiculous hat off his head, crushing it in his hands. The fresh spring breeze gently tousled his dark hair. “He’s gone to be with the Lord now. But I’d like to think I carry of bit of him with me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. Kate’s heart hurt for him. Yet another loss that he had to bear. But something in what he said sent a thrill shooting through her. She studied his face, not caring if it was too bold. It was different. And not just for the new layers of weariness and pain. Underneath it all was a contentment she didn’t recognize. A stillness, a peace that hadn’t been there before. The undercurrent of restrained anger, that rebelliousness that had tinged his demeanor, was gone. What had changed? Jacob stared right back at her, searching her own face for something, his gaze almost hungry. Kate’s breath quickened.
He abruptly looked away, letting out a sharp breath. “Listen, Kate, I won’t take up more of your time. I know you got … responsibilities. And I ain’t gonna assume that I mean anythin’ to you no more. But I couldn’t just walk on by and not tell you.”
Kate’s brows knit together as she listened to his halting, strained voice. How could he not know that he would always mean something to her, no matter the chasm that now stood between them?
“Tell me what?” she asked.
He ran a hand through his uncharacteristically long hair, the curls even more wild than she remembered. “Tell you that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for how I acted last time, in the barn, when I”—he swallowed, the cords in his neck and shoulders pulling taut—“I was so angry. I’ve been angry for so long. My whole life. And it wasn’t fair to you. To treat you that way. You’re a grown woman and you made your choice and I don’t got a right to question that, and I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, regret tightening her voice. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
Jacob nodded. “I know that now. Obadiah, he helped me see the right of it. He helped me see the right of a lot of things.” He finally met her eyes and gazed at her for a long moment. His mouth turned up in a small smile and his face relaxed, the ease of his manner coming back in a way that warmed Kate all over. That was the Jacob who had made his wayinto her heart. She hung on his words. “I found the Lord, Kate. Or He found me, really. I was at the end of my rope. I had nothin’ left. And He was there.”
Kate let out a soft gasp. A surge of joy burst from her heart and crashed through her like a lightning strike, heating her from her hair down to her toes. All the happiness in the world was encased inside her body, and if she didn’t do something, she’d explode. Without a thought to what anyone would think was proper, she dropped Sadie’s reins, took two long strides, and threw her arms around him.
“Oh Jacob!” she said into his shoulder, happy tears welling in her eyes. “I prayed and prayed for you! Every day since you left, I’ve prayed for you, not knowing if you were even alive! And here you’ve come to the Lord! I’m so happy!”
A soft chuckle reverberated through his chest, the low vibrations of it pulsing through her. “Well, as Obadiah would say, ‘the fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’ Or woman, in this case.”
She reveled in the feel of his arms around her. “He sounds like a very wise man.”
