The Proviso (112 page)

He shook his head as if in a daze. “I don’t have
to,” he said. “You’re the most honorable person I know. I know the
baby’s mine because I know you.”

That surprised her, but it didn’t let him off the
hook. “Ten days,” she muttered. “You let me go ten days without a
word.”

“Giselle,” he said. She could hear the pleading, the
uncertainty, in his voice. “I needed time to get used to the idea
and I didn’t know how to tell you that I’m
really
not happy
about this.”

“Oh, believe me, you made your opinion perfectly
clear. How can I live with you knowing that? How can I bring a baby
into the house knowing you resent it?”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. All I know is
I love you and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make you happy.
Resent
isn’t the right word.
Fear
is the right word.
You don’t know what it’s like to watch your daughter burn to death
right in front of you. You don’t know what it’s like to carry three
of your children through fire, being on fire, knowing they’re on
fire. You don’t know what it’s like to be told those three children
died anyway and
nowhere
in that mess did the Lord show up to
help you. You don’t know what it’s like to lie in a bed for a year
where everyone around you is dedicated to saving your life, except
for you, and you’re wishing—no,
hoping
—to die, too.”

Giselle’s anger vanished. There just wasn’t much she
could say to that. She looked out the window as they drove for
quite a long while, through her old neighborhood, into
Independence, a route she knew so well she could close her eyes and
name every cross street in the three-and-a-half-mile stretch from
I-70 to I-435. They were a mile from their destination before she
understood his intention. She gasped.

He looked at her sharply. “I’m sorry I’ve never
shared this with you, Giselle. I— I didn’t want to mix my old life
with my new one.”

“I wanted to ask you at Christmas,” she said softly,
“because you were so . . . in pain, but I didn’t know how.”

“I wouldn’t have brought you here then,” he
returned, just as softly. “That’s the hardest time of the year for
me, although not nearly as hard now with you and the pack, the
tribe.”

He didn’t speak again until they stood at the
massive headstone that bore the names and birth dates of his four
children—and one death date, July 14, 2001.Almost a dozen bouquets
of daisies in varying stages of decay lay strewn on the ground in
front of the stone.

“I loved my children,” he said. “I adored them
utterly and completely and they
died
,” he said, clearing his
throat and attempting to be matter-of-fact, “in the most horrifying
way imaginable. I didn’t even get to bury them and say goodbye
because I was in my coma and I had no one to take care of business
for me. The irony is that I know Knox would’ve taken care of me if
I hadn’t been such an asshole to
him
, too.” He paused. “They
aren’t here. I put this stone here because I needed some way to
hold onto them.”

Giselle bowed her head then, her soul absorbing his
pain and grief like a sponge, internalizing it, making it hers. She
reached for and found his hand, lacing her fingers through his, and
squeezed just a bit. He squeezed back.

“I come here often. I’ve been here every day since
you told me you were pregnant, wondering what to do, how I’m going
to relive the joy and pain that children bring. I know that as soon
as our baby’s born, I’ll fall in love again, but—”

“You think the Lord’s going to punish you and take
him away from you.”

He said nothing for a moment, then whispered,
“Yes.”

She looked up at him then to find him watching her.
His cheeks glistened with moisture. “Please stick with me,
Giselle,” he whispered. “I love you and I’m a selfish bastard, I
know, but I need you. I needed you from the first moment I saw
you.”

Giselle nodded. How could she do otherwise? She
loved him and she’d promised.

“Why did you think you had to shoulder this alone?”
she whispered. “At the beginning of us, you asked me what I wanted
from you and I asked you to let me help you carry it. You
promised
.”

“Giselle, you assume the pain of everyone you love,
everyone you protect. I watch you do it every day. You did it with
Eilis and it devastated you. You did it with Justice and you
worried for weeks—hell, years. You do it with the tribe. You do it
with the burn victims we tend to, with random people who just need
a helping hand. I see what happens to you when we come home at
night. You—” He wiped his hand down his face. “You feel it in your
soul and then you ache. Did you think I’d lay mine on you, too? I
promised you that before I saw what you do and there was no way I
was going to add to that.”

She swallowed. “Bryce, of all the people in the
world who might need my help, you are the only one who
deserves
it. You’re the only one I’ve promised it to, the
only one who’s entitled to it. I’d ignore the whole world if you’d
let me help you with your pain.” She paused, tears streaming down
her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

He started. “For what?”

“For—” She huffed, sniffled. “I don’t know. I’m
sorry I made you think everyone else’s pain meant more to me than
yours. I’m sorry I made you think you were less deserving.”

His jaw dropped. “
Giselle!
You didn’t. I
swear, you didn’t. I just— I’ve been carrying it alone so long I
didn’t know how to offload some of it.”

“But I want to do something to help you and you
won’t let me.”

“You don’t have to
do
anything. Your
presence, your love, has helped more than anything I could’ve ever
imagined. Your family— Giselle, I don’t know how I survived all
these years alone without you, without the pack. Hell, without the
whole tribe. I have a real family now. I belong somewhere that I’m
not a black sheep. You’ve given me that.” He pulled his hand out of
hers then to pull something out of his suit coat pocket: A long,
narrow red velvet box. She bit her lip. “I had this made for you.
This was why it took me so long to come to you.”

Giselle took it slowly, carefully. She opened it and
her brow wrinkled in confusion that quickly blossomed into awe when
she picked it up and studied it.

A platinum charm bracelet embellished with an
emerald at the clasp, it had only two charms: The keys from
Rape
of a Virgin
, one an exact replica of the phallus and one an
exact replica of the baby pacifier. An oversized platinum heart
hung from the clasp.

I want to fuck you, Giselle

Her hand flew to her mouth as she read the
engraving. She swallowed, her soul overflowing again with the love
she’d always had for him, even before she knew his name.

“I hated Michelle so much I was glad she died, that
I didn’t have to have her hounding me every second of every day for
the rest of my life. I feel like I met you years ago, lost you
somewhere along the way, then found you again. You’re the only
woman I have ever loved. In my mind and heart and soul, you’re my
first wife, my only wife. The love of my life. Please forgive me.
Please come back to me.”

Giselle looked up at him and bit her lip, unwilling
to say it but knowing she must. “I’ll come home with you for now,
but you have to get help if you want me to stay. If you don’t want
to go to the foundation’s therapists, we’ll find someone else. I’ll
even go with you if you want, but we—
I
—can’t live like this
anymore, not with a baby coming. Something has to change.”

He stared at her, aghast.

“Don’t ask me to sacrifice our child on the altar of
your guilt and fear. If you want to be with me, those are the
terms.”

He said nothing for a long time as he looked off
into the distance, his expression by turns angry, wary, and hurt.
“I need to think about that for a while.”

She nodded. “That’s fair.” She leaned against him
and wrapped her arms around him until he was ready to leave.

* * * * *

Bryce still slept when she got out of the shower and
began to dress carefully in her navy-and-white polka dot linen
dress. For jewelry, she wore only her wedding ring and the charm
bracelet Bryce had given her. If anyone asked to look at it, they
got what they deserved for being nosy.

“Where are you going?” he murmured from the bed.

She turned and looked at his naked body, the one she
loved so much for what it had done to rescue three children, for
the big, kind heart it held, for the brilliant mind that it
sheltered, for that deep, dark, tortured soul that she adored which
lived and breathed inside that broad chest.

She studied the man who had made tender love to her
all weekend, giving her everything, taking nothing.

“It’s Sunday.” His eyebrow rose and she shrugged.
“You know how much I miss going to church. Our baby needs to know
his heritage. He needs to be around sweet, gentle people who aren’t
savages. He needs to understand that the church is full of
honorable people and that honor comes in a lot of flavors, that
there’s honor in being a regular, everyday nice guy. He needs to
know that the vast majority of the people at church are not us, not
the pack, not the tribe; haven’t done what we’ve done, seen what
we’ve seen, think how we think. ‘Justice at all costs’ is not most
families’ motto.” She stopped. “You’re more than welcome to come
with me.”

He stared at her for a long time, his face
inscrutable. Then he sighed. “You go. I’m not ready yet.”

“Okay,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead,
but when she turned to leave, he caught her wrist and tugged her
gently down onto the bed so that she lay snuggled up against his
chest, her head cradled in the crook of his arm.

“I love you, Giselle,” he murmured, and, his big
hand cupping and caressing her cheek, he kissed her deeply,
carefully. She found herself growing aroused all over again. He
pulled away from her enough to speak. “I’m
so
sorry. I know
you have no reason to trust me now, but that’s the truth. Please
don’t leave me.”

She swallowed. “I can’t promise you that right now.
I won’t be able to trust you until you go to therapy and work at
it. I don’t want your guilt and shame—the Rule Book—to stand
between us anymore.”

He stared down at her for a long time and she nearly
lost herself in those beautiful green eyes. Then he spoke low:

“You were wearing faded black canvas pants and a
white jacket that had patches all over it. Your tee shirt said,
‘Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.’ You had a brown belt
hanging off your neck.” Giselle’s eyes widened and she felt the
color drain from her face. “You had a man on his knees in front of
you, learning from you. I took one look at you and all I could
think about was backing you up against the wall and fucking you.
Hard.” He paused to take a deep breath.

“You were
so
young, but you intimidated the
hell out of me. I wanted some of that—whatever it was you had—for
myself, to do what I needed to do to be the kind of man that
that
girl would want.”

She gulped. “You?” she breathed, her chest beginning
to heave, her tears beginning to fall. “That was
you
? I—
You— I knew what you wanted from me and I— I never had a chance to
know you. You were so—
Gorgeous
, and I was so . . .
not
.”

“Stop it. I wanted
you
, Giselle.
Not
my wife.”

She was a model. Blonde. Tall and thin, fragile.

Giselle thought she would never be able to breathe
again.

“Okay, so it took you a few years to grow into your
beauty. It only took me an hour to become a beast.” She opened her
mouth in protest, but he forged on. “When I went to Knox’s house to
study that night, I’d been married for two months and I already
knew I’d made a huge mistake. What I wanted, that I wanted it with
you—a woman who wasn’t my wife— It terrified me. I wanted you so
badly I couldn’t think of anything but you for weeks, months.
Years. I thought maybe, if we— I don’t know. Somewhere in the back
of my mind, I thought if I could make love with that girl, just
once, she would give me some of whatever she had that I
needed.”

He released a breath with a long whoosh. “I held
onto that girl all the way through my divorce, wondering what had
happened to her, trying to figure out how to find out who she was,
where she went. You don’t know how many times I wanted to pick up
the phone to call Knox to find out if he remembered that, if he
could tell me her name—and I planned to the second my divorce was
final.” He paused. “Giselle, I fell in love with you when I was
twenty-four years old and I’ve carried you in my heart for the last
eighteen years. You gave me strength. You gave me hope.”

She choked and put a trembling hand to her
mouth.

“I remembered last night after you went to sleep,”
he murmured, his thumb caressing her bottom lip lightly. “Even if
I’d had the courage to divorce Michelle then, I couldn’t have had
you. In that area of my life, between sex, marriage, church, my
parents, I was weak, unsure, easily led. You would’ve chewed me up
and spit me out—and I
knew
that.”

Tears spilled over and ran down her face, dropping
into the pillow, disappearing as if they had never existed. She
began to hiccup. “Knox said— After I left you in the park— He said
you had been in love with me for a long time. I thought he just
meant— He knew?”

Bryce nodded. “He saw my reaction, knew what it
meant, knew me well enough to let it lie. I don’t think Knox knows
you saw me. I know I didn’t—it would’ve been worse if I’d known, if
I’d known you felt the same way I did.”

“I waited for you,” she whispered, weeping, her
voice broken.