Page 17 of Making a Mountain Man (Summer in the Pines #16)

Wesley

No matter how much I had been through in my life, I was still nervous when I raised my hand to ring the doorbell at my dad’s house.

After Jill’s article had hit the paper and the world hadn’t exploded, I’d finally felt truly settled.

With that in mind, I wanted to close some old wounds.

My dad, step mom and step brother all lived in Springwood, so I decided to start there.

It was Christmas Eve, and that should be about family.

“Wesley, what’s wrong?” My dad’s eyebrows, now more gray than dirty blond like mine, dipped low over his eyes.

“Nothing. I just wanted to see you guys.”

If he was surprised, he didn’t show it, although showing any emotion had never really been his thing. “Just me home at the moment. Come on through to the garage. I’m just doing a tune up on the truck.”

I followed him into the garage and we worked side by side in silence for twenty minutes or so before I finally broke the silence. “Dad, do you ever think about back before you got remarried, when you and Mom were starting to fight and eventually got divorced?”

“What about it?”

“It was a rough time for me, being a kid and all. I don’t know if you guys realized it, but I got a little lost in the shuffle.” I swallowed, and my dad finally turned to face me.

He sighed. “We did our best, Wes. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I’m not trying to give you shit or anything,” I said quickly.

“I just think, maybe, we aren’t as close as we could be, or would be if that whole thing had gone a different way.

That maybe I am a little more closed off than I would have been if you two hadn’t focused so much on one upping each other and more on being my parents. ”

I hadn’t planned on guilt tripping the guy, but it was hard to say what needed to be said without doing just that.

He turned and studied me, probably for the longest he had in a long time. “My focus shifted from fighting to divorce to getting remarried, to a newborn baby all one after the other. I guess you did get lost in all of that. I’m not sure what I can do about that now.”

It was less than I wanted, but more than I expected. “That’s okay. The past is the past.”

He rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of grease behind. “You want to help me change out these spark plugs? Maybe stay for dinner after?”

I nodded. “I could do that.”

After dinner I drove back up Strawberry Hill.

It was snowing hard, and I was glad for four wheel drive and winter tires.

A silver sedan ahead of me lost traction a few times but continued on after I turned into my driveway.

Someone had bought the vacant cabin up the way from mine, but I hadn’t met them yet.

My focus since the summer had been on Jill.

“I’m home,” I said, coming through the door with a load of firewood in my arms. I put a few pieces in the fireplace and moved them around, before taking off my jacket and settling into the couch next to Jill.

The holidays could be a lot of fun, but after having been to a Christmas party at the newspaper, the seniors center and Nick and Charlotte’s place, we were both done with big celebrations.

I was no longer in self isolation but that didn’t mean I didn’t want some alone time with the person who brought me back.

Her article had done what she’d said, casting a new light on the whole situation that took me out of the hot seat.

Although the article hadn’t rocketed her to the top of her field, she had made her peace with being a great journalist but also being happy with her life.

Jill snuggled into my side and I put my arm around her shoulders.

I’d intended to take things slow with her after the first date I invited her on, but we’d been through enough crises together to bond us for life.

She’d moved into my cabin when her apartment lease had ended in September and I’d woken up to her face every day since.

“Are you okay that we didn’t do a big Christmas this year?”

Jill snuggled closer into my side. “After everything you went through and what it took for us to be together, I think we deserve to celebrate just the two of us.”

“Me, too.”

We kissed and cuddled as the light outside grew dim before heading off to bed.

“Love you,” Jill said, as she did every night and snuggled against my chest.

“Love you,” I said, although the words didn’t feel big enough.

I was a man who could build anything, take it apart and put it together.

One thing I hadn’t learned to do was work on what was on the inside.

Face the feelings that I pushed down, talk rather than bottle things up.

Jill had been the one to save me from that as a kid, and despite the shit circumstances, she’d saved me from it again twenty-five years later.

I’d learn to deal with things on my own one day.

Talking to my dad had been a good start.

Knowing that someone had my back while I figured it out was more special than any gift that could be put under a Christmas tree.

I’d moved around a lot in my life, but one person had been my home. Now, finally, she was really mine.