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Page 31 of Small Town Hero

B irdie felt as if she was floating on a dream. It was the strangest thing. Whenever she woke up in Gunnar’s arms, she was shocked and delighted. When they went downstairs together and had breakfast together, then showered together, it all seemed . . .

You’re playing house.

She didn’t like that mean little thought. But it was true. The past few weeks, they’d been playing house. And she was allowing it. She was giving significance to this stop on the winding path she knew she had to take. That scared her a little bit.

Hell, it scared her a lot.

When they sat down to coffee that morning, and he looked at her with intent, she had that thought firmly in her mind: This was playing. Which was why his words shocked her into silence.

“Birdie, I’ve been thinking. I want you to stay with me.”

“Um.”

“Great. Very definitive response.”

“Well, what do you mean?”

“I guess I ought to back up. I love you.”

No one had ever told Birdie Lennox that they loved her.

Not her mother, not her father, not any of the men she’d called her lovers.

She didn’t know how to react to those words being blurted out over a cup of coffee and some scrambled eggs.

As matter-of-fact as: Would you pass the ketchup?

Except it wasn’t like that, because it was digging into a soft, vulnerable spot inside her, and she didn’t like it.

“You don’t mean that,” she said.

“I do. I love you. You’re my ecosystem, Birdie. I don’t know how I’m going to live without you.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not . . . That can’t be real. I’m not anybody’s anything . You’re just sex addled.”

“I’m not a virgin. As stuffy and uptight as you seem to find me, do you have any complaints about my skills?”

“No,” she huffed.

“I didn’t get them from nowhere.”

That made her face feel hot. Because she didn’t like the idea that she was benefiting from things he had learned with other women. She was possessive of him, and she had no right to be.

“I can see that makes you mad,” he said.

“But it’s important that I’m clear here.

I’m not in a sex haze. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before.

When I think about you leaving, when I think about my life, my home, my heart going back to the way it was before you tried to steal Pegasus.

See, even the horse is Pegasus now, because you’ve changed everything.

You’ve changed what I thought I could have, what I thought I could be. ”

“No. That’s not possible. Because I told you. I have to fly away.”

“But what if you didn’t?”

He was looking at her with those earnest blue eyes, and then he got out of his chair and went to his knees in front of her and took her hands in his.

“What if you didn’t? What if instead, I made you a home here.

And you didn’t have to leave. What if this place could be yours.

I could be yours. You could be mine. You would belong to me, and I would take care of you.

And I belong to you, and you’d make me laugh. That’s what I want.”

“But it can’t be that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not how life is. Why did I spend all this time fighting to have a roof over my head or even a shred of human decency from someone when you were just right here, next door, waiting to love me?

” She stared at him, and a bubble of hysteria rose up in her chest. “Is that it? You here the whole time just waiting? Then why didn’t you come and get me? ”

“Because I didn’t know. But I do now. I know now that you’re mine. I need you. I think that is why I chased you off all those years ago. Because somehow I knew. You were the one for me, and I couldn’t handle it then. I had to change. You changed me. Our time together changed me.”

“What about me? I haven’t changed. I’m just . . . me. And I’m not special, I’m not good.” Panic clawed at her. “I’m not good enough for you.”

“That’s nonsense. You’re as good a woman as I’ve ever known.”

“That’s not true. I’m a thief and a liar, and you know that.”

“Yes, I do know that. I know that you’ve done those things.

I know that you did what you had to do to survive, and I respect it.

Because I’m not my dad. I know you. I’ve listened to you.

So don’t worry about whether or not you’re good enough for me.

The only thing I want to know is: do you love me? ”

Birdie wanted to run. Did she love him? The very idea terrified her.

“I have to go.”

She got up from the table, and she ran out the door. Tears were falling down her cheeks. Oh, how she despised them. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t weak.

She needed to get away from him. She didn’t want him to see.

But her tears were blinding her, and her chest ached.

She was running away from the only thing she had ever wanted.

She tripped and fell and landed in the gravel, and she sobbed, because it wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair, because this was too good to be true.

Because men like Gunnar didn’t want women like her.

Of course she loved him. She had never in all her life loved anyone. And of course she loved him.

She felt strong hands on her arms, and he picked her up from where she had fallen. She looked up into his eyes, so startling and blue. In them she saw a hope and a future she had never let herself dream of.

“Please don’t run away from me.”

“But I’m afraid. I was never afraid of being hurt. I was never afraid of bad things, because I knew how to fight them. But I don’t know how to let somebody love me. And I really don’t know how to love anyone back. What if I lose you? What if I disappoint you?”

“You couldn’t. I don’t need you to be a certain thing, I’m not looking for someone to fill a role in my life.

I want to marry you because I want to keep you with me, but if you don’t like the idea of marriage, it doesn’t have to be that.

I don’t have any set dream of what love would look like.

I never wanted it until I got to know you.

It’s not about a wife-shaped hole in my life.

It’s about you, Birdie.” With rough thumbs he wiped her tears away from her cheeks.

And she didn’t feel ashamed about them. She felt safe.

“I wouldn’t know how to be a wife, or to be a mother or . . .”

“But we could. We could try those things. Or we could just be together. Like this. We can have whatever we want. Other people don’t get to tell us who we are.

That I’m too good, or you’re too bad. We get to decide.

We’ll build our own mountain together, and maybe nobody else will understand.

Maybe nobody else would be able to live there, but isn’t that the point? We’re right for each other.”

She thought her heart might burst. They were right for each other.

He was right for her.

She was just bad enough for him, and he was just good enough for her.

“Gunnar, I do love you.”

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Do you think you might marry me?”

“Well, why not? I’ve been a lot of things, but never once respectable.”

“I don’t want you to be too respectable. I want you to be you.”

Birdie Lennox was no stranger to hard times, and now she could no longer say she was a stranger to love.

Because she had Gunnar. And they had the rest of their lives to live every day better than the one before.