She was strong enough for herself.
She was strong enough for her children.
And she thanked God for that.
By the time she arrived back at John Parker’s house in Dare River, it was close to eleven o’clock. She was exhausted and yet completely sure of what needed doing.
John Parker was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, which meant he was likely serving as an eight-course dinner for the mosquitoes. Charleston, Bullet, and Banjo were sleeping at his feet. After telling them to stay, he hurried down the porch to her side.
She dropped her bags on the driveway and simply ran into his arms. He’d helped her find this place in herself as much as she had, and as their lips met, it was so easy to fall into that space of love and happiness they created every time they came together.
“I missed you,” he said between kisses.
“I missed you too,” she told him, threading her fingers through his dark hair.
“I want to kiss the kids goodnight, and then I want to go to the tree house and make love with you,” she said as his hands stroked her waist.
“Okay, but you’re going to tell me about today too, right?” he said like he sensed her hesitancy.
Telling him would be harder than telling Rye in many ways, and she’d known it would take more strength to share the truth of what Sterling had done. When he saw the wound on her collarbone, he was going to be upset—and likely hurt. She wasn’t sure he’d be able to understand the emotions that had driven her to face her ex-husband.
“Yes,” she whispered, running kisses over his neck now. “I’ll tell you. You just need to promise to be patient with me and to remember I love you.”
He sighed, but he didn’t resist when she took his hand and led him inside to see her children.
Rory and Annabelle were curled around each other as if their bodies had been forged together. Bandit and Barbie were snuffling against their individual backs. She took a moment to just stare at her children as Annabelle’s princess light cast its radiance on her two most precious beings. Finally she dropped John Parker’s hand and approached the pushed-together beds, caressing their hair and kissing their cheeks.
Annabelle stirred and smiled when she saw her mama. “Did the chocolate fairies bring my chocolate yet, Mama?”
“No, darlin’,” she whispered, “It’s not morning yet.”
“Okay,” she said softly, and then closed her eyes and fell back into a deep sleep.
“I love you two,” she whispered. She had to put a hand over her heart where it seemed to be growing and expanding, like a balloon filled for a birthday party.
She made a promise to never stop growing, to show them what was possible, and the only way she knew how was to do it by example
She would be a lighthouse, shining brightly, and she would encourage them to nourish their every gift and dream. She would never impose her views of what they should do. She would nurture them and let them have their voices, becoming who God had meant them to be.
The quiet tears she shed were as much for their journey together as they were for her own. She had come to Dare River broken and bruised, all of the parts of herself throbbing with hurt, aching for attention, calling out for love.
She had found it within herself.
She had found it with her children.
She had found it with John Parker.
Turning to him, she took his hand and drew him outside, the moon hiding its light tonight through a thick haze of clouds. His flashlight was the only bright spot on their path. Like a young girl, she wanted to skip through her gardens all the way to the tree house. She almost believed the chocolate fairies had sprinkled their magical chocolate dust over the land, and were even now making the most mouth-watering chocolate.
John Parker raced with her as she finally gave into her desire to start skipping. Any remaining pressure and stress from the day gave way to happiness, and she was able to laugh.
She was free.
To be herself. To love herself. To love this man.
When they opened the magical door painted with the gumdrop path, he made a move to light the darkness and pull out the cot, but she didn’t want to wait, and part of her wanted to hide her wound from him for just a little while longer.
“No,” she whispered, pressing herself against him, letting the raw passion rising in her have its freedom. “Just now. Just us.”
And she showed him what she meant, what she wanted.
She devoured his lips like she was starving for him, and it was like after all of the years of starvation, she was planning on having her fill tonight.
He met her passion with equal fervor, murmuring against her lips, stepping back as she ripped his shirt off and then made quick work of his shorts and boxers. She tore her own clothes away, wanting to be free of them, free in this moment, and when she was naked, she put her hands on his shoulders and leaped up, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“I like your enthusiasm, sugar,” he drawled.
She’d come so far in this space with him, far from the scared, wounded woman she’d once been. And as her mouth found his again, she closed her eyes and let herself reclaim even more passion, more joy from the well she’d mistakenly thought empty for so long.
They made love with urgent cries and drawn-out groans in the darkness that night, the cicadas and crickets and frogs their magical accompaniment. They were all accolades to the greatest force on earth. Their love. When she came, singing out her passion for him, her release swept him away, and as he finally lowered her to rest against the wall, his strength drained from him, she held him tight.
Her own legs shaky, she finally managed to stand on her own.
It was time.
She turned on the lights, not bothering with the candles, as he pulled out the cot. All the while, she covered the wound with her hand, the shame she’d always felt from past injuries hovering around her like a dark cloud. No one had ever seen the marks Sterling had left on her skin, and showing John Parker now felt like a whole new nakedness.
Taking a fortifying breath, ready to face down this fear too, she turned and lowered her hand.
“I won’t tell you not to be angry or hurt,” she told him, knowing the light in the tree house was bright enough for his eyes to see the mark on her skin. His eyes had only to find it.
When they did, his whole face seemed to crumple, and his jaw visibly tightened. His eyes were burning coals now. “You went to see him.” It was an accusation.
Her heart tore at the bitter sound of his voice, usually so loving, so patient. “Yes. Will you let me tell you why?”
The snap of his neck nodding could have broken it, and she sank onto the cot, her legs trembling from something other than passion.
He remained silent as she told her story. When she came to the part about Sterling threatening to remind her of what she’d forgotten, her voice broke, but she continued after a few cleansing breaths. He sat beside her and reached for her hand, holding it as she finished her account of the rest of the day.
Her last words finally stood between them, and since he hadn’t moved, hadn’t looked at her, she stroked his back. His muscles tensed, as if in agony from her touch, and it was then her heart broke.
“I’m sorry this hurt you,” she finally said, “but I’m not sorry I did what I did. I won’t apologize for needing to face down my past or Sterling.”
She’d decided on the flight that she wasn’t going to apologize for any of her actions—she’d done exactly what she’d needed to do.
“When I think about how he hurt you,” he finally said, “what he would have done to you if your mama hadn’t shown up…Jesus.”
For a man she’d never heard swear, it was telling. “I beat myself up about that for a while today, and I won’t lie and say it wasn’t scary as hell. It just never occurred to me he would do something like that in his own law office with his secretary outside. I thought I’d be safe.”
“Dammit, Tammy,” he cried, shooting off the cot, “how in the world could you ever be safe around that monster?”
“But I am safe from him now, don’t you see?” she said gently. “Finally, completely, and totally. I faced him down, and I told him what I needed to say. What I’d been afraid to say for all those years.”
“And what did that prove, huh?” he almost yelled. “Was sharing your feelings with him worth dying for? You could have been killed!”
The slap of his voice penetrated the inner sanctum of her heart, and it hurt. “How can you understand? You’ve never allowed yourself to be beaten down. You’ve never experienced the shame of putting your own children in a home with a man like that. I had to prove to myself I could stand up to him. For me! Just like I had to do with Mama. I don’t expect you to get it, but I did hope you would listen to me and then hold me…because…well, dammit…it was the hardest thing I have ever done.”
Her raw words rippled through the air, and he took a deep breath. And another. Finally he sat beside her and lifted a hesitant hand to her collarbone.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me to see you hurt like this? To know I wasn’t there to protect you from him?”
Her lips trembled before she spoke. “I don’t want you to protect me, John Parker. I want to take care of myself.”
How many times would they go through this same conflict about him wanting to protect her when all she wanted was to stand on her own?
“You make it hard for there to be any space for me to love you sometimes.”
It was the most devastating thing he’d ever said to her in all of the quiet nights after they’d made love in the tree house.
“Protection isn’t love, John Parker,” she whispered. “Not to me.”
“Well, it is to me! A man is supposed to take care of the woman he loves, look out for her, and in your case, her children too.”
“I appreciate you wanting to do that,” she made herself say, “but you don’t need to protect us.” It was time to tell him what she’d decided on her way home. “We need to be on equal footing if we’re going to be together in the long run. And I need to show the kids how to stand on their own, too, so they won’t grow up being afraid. I’m going to start looking for houses for us to rent. Given the way my business is growing, I can afford something modest.”
His head jerked back. “You’re what?”
The beat of her heart was so loud she could barely hear the cicadas now. “We’ve loved being here with you, and I am so grateful to you for opening your home to us, but it would be best for us to find our own place now.”
He dropped his head. “So just because you have some overblown need for independence you’re going to take the kids away from here, from the chocolate garden, when you darn well know it’s helped them finally feel safe again?”
She rose then, standing with him. “Feeling safe cannot come from a physical place. It has to be in here.” Her fist pounded her chest over her heart.
His jaw was ticking. “So you’re going to make those little kids figure out now something it took you nearly thirty years to realize?”
Her voice almost failed her. “What do you want me to do? Stay here forever? Put chocolate under their pillows
forever?”
“Yes!” he said, “I was hoping you loved me enough to do just that. Rory told me while you were gone that he and Annabelle pray every night that I’ll become their daddy. Every night. And that’s what I want. For us to be a family. For you to stay here forever with me.”
As the shock of his words rolled over her, Tammy realized they’d lost the magic they had always found in the tree house.
Chapter 41
Tammy’s face didn’t contain any of the joy he’d hoped would be evident when he finally told her about his vision for them.
Instead, she said nothing.
Nothing.
The crushing pressure in his chest made it hard to breathe in the muggy night.
“John Parker,” she finally choked out. “I don’t know what to say.”
Now he had to close the distance between them, even if it was only physical. Right now, their hearts were so far apart, he wasn’t sure they could reach each other.
“I won’t pretend I wasn’t hoping you’d be on board with the idea,” he said, joining her where she stood.
The image of them living at his house as a happy family was dying in the back of his mind like the garden would wither come fall.
She cleared her throat like it was clogged with something. “Today…tonight has been difficult,” she said softly. “You caught me off guard.”
Off guard? How could she be this surprised after all of the nights they’d spent loving each other here in the quiet light, after all of the days they’d spent learning each other’s rhythms?
“That surprises me some to hear. Didn’t you think that was where we were heading?” he asked, searching her face.
Her fingers touched the swollen red bruise on her collarbone. “John Parker, I just got divorced.”
Reaching deep for patience, he took her hand in his. It was cold now. “It’s been a year, Tammy. There’s no time limit on love, is there?”
Like Eve finally realizing she was naked in the garden, Tammy pulled the sheet off the cot and covered herself, something she’d never done before, not even after they’d first made love on that long ago night.
“I was rather enjoying the way things were,” she said. “I don’t know why you want to change them.”
Okay, so her talk of moving out had put him into a panic and his timing might be the absolute worst, but he had to be honest with her. “We don’t have to right away, and heaven knows when the time is right, I want to give you a more romantic proposal, but I need to know we’re on the same page, Tammy. I love you and the kids. I want to live with you all the time, be with you day in and day out. And yes, I want to take care of you. That’s what happens when people get married. They take care of each other.”
Untangling her hand from his, she clutched the sheet to her, pulling at it so hard he had to step aside to give her the rest of its length.
“I love you, John Parker, I truly do, but I don’t want
anyone
to take care of me. I had a belly full of that. I like making my own decisions, being my own woman. I finally like myself, and I don’t want to get married again and lose that.”