“Onion ring?” I ask.
She smiles a little. “I don’t think an onion ring is an immediate fix.”
“Have you tried onion rings as immediate fixes?”
“Once, after a bad breakup in college. I ate them with ranch that had gone bad, and I puked for two days.”
And now I want to fight ranch dressing.
Ranch dressing and randos in bars and her parents and her chickens if they cluck at her wrong.
Breathe and embrace that good will come of this, I tell myself as I unclench my fist.
“Heath?”
“Hmm?”
“No one—no one has ever stood up for me like that before. Thank you.”
I lean across the armrests to press a kiss to her temple. “I don’t like to be that guy, but I will when I need to be. And I needed to be. You deserve to live your life free of harassment. We all do. What you did—it might’ve been your fault, but it wasn’t on purpose. You deserve support and forgiveness. Not to be what—what they want you to be.”
She leans her head on my shoulder. “I need to do it again.”
“Do—what now?”
“Leave the winery more. Go into town. Be brave.”
“Cricket.”
“No, I do. There’s so much that goes on here, but there’s life in town too. Life in the rest of the state. The country. The world. I want to make a home here, but I still want to go other places too. I want—I want it all.”
“Then we’ll find it all for you.”
She sniffles softly. “Thank you for letting me not be my best right now. I know I will be again, but right now, I just—I’m not.”
I squeeze her hand and kiss her head again. “I love you. At your best and at your lowest and everything in between.”
She sniffles harder. “You take my breath away,” she whispers. “I don’t know howwehappened, but I—I’d relive the worst moments of my life a million times over if it’s what it took to bring me here to you.”
“You—” My breath catches. “You’d do that for me?”
“For everything you’ve done for me? For the man you are and the man you keep striving to be? To have you in my life? Oh, Heath. Oh, yes.”
My throat clogs, and my eyes get misty.
She means it.
She loves me that much.
Whole heart. Whole mind. Whole soul.
She’schoosingme.
Sharing the best of herself with me.
And her best—her best is bravery and passion and beauty.
Sunshine after a storm.
