Page 60 of Running Home to You
“After law school,” he finished. “That’s three years from now!”
Kate pulled away. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what I want.”
Her parents appeared behind him in the kitchen’s entryway. Her mother covered her face, tears brimming in her eyes. Kate charged out the back door, into the snow, and Blake ran after her.
“What about what I want?” he asked. “Please, Katie. I want to marry you, but three years is too long to wait.”
Kate turned and met him under a fluorescent floodlight, sneakers sinking into the snow. Delicate flakes of frost floated onto her lashes and melted on her sweater.
“Why? Why does it matter if we’re together?” she asked. When he raised his eyebrows, her sympathy retreated. “I’m not getting married just so we can have sex.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not why I’m proposing.”
“Then what’s the rush?”
“I mean, don’t you want it? Don’t you want me too? Don’t you want to be my wife?” Blake stepped closer, his throat bobbing. “Come to Florida. You can go to law school there.”
“And what if you get called up or traded? Then we’re back to where we started.”
“Well, then you can transfer, or we do long distance, but at leastwe’ll be married!” Blake threw his head back. “It’s like you continually find reasons to avoid it!”
“Because I can’t!” Kate sucked in a ragged breath. The cold air cut her lungs, nipped her cheeks, but she soldiered on. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Blake’s big brown eyes, ever obliging, guileless, overflowing with goodness, reached out from a rising flood. “No. No, we can make this work.”
Kate’s bottom lip wobbled. His tears threatened to reinforce the last thread between them. Kate didn’t know if she had the strength to sever it, but it made her more aware of its flimsiness. Blake was a thread. Even if she stayed, it’d never patch the trench.
“I don’t love you like I should. Not enough to get married,” Kate whimpered. “Can’t you see that? I should be ecstatic. Every other woman would be ecstatic. But I’m not. Because I don’t want this. I’m so sorry, Blake.”
“No. Please.” His voice cracked. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait, okay?”
“You don’t need to wait for me. You can’t.” Kate rubbed his shoulders, hated the sobs wrenching from his chest, hated the shame stalking her no matter what she did. “We’d be unhappy. You deserve more than that.”
She hugged him, shut her eyes, and for the first time since the camping trip, willed herself to finish a full prayer. A prayer for Blake. A prayer for forgiveness. A prayer for it to be over.
Blake’s proposal at her family home in the middle of nowhere uncomfortably backfired. They trudged inside, wet and tearful, passing through the living room of family members who gaped. Her brothers cleared out of their room to give Blake space and Kate wondered if she should comfort him, not that she was allowed to be alone with him under house rules. Instead, she plopped onto her twin bed in the room she shared with her younger sister, ignoring Leah’s questions, nearly lashing out at the most pointed: “Why would you say no to him?”
She cried herself to sleep. While their relationship wasn’t enough to sustain her, while she didn’t want to marry Blake, it didn’t mean that the years didn’t matter or that she hadn’t loved him. Breakinghim split her in two, but the alarm bells ceased. She’d saved him. Now she faced the daunting task of how best to save herself.
The next morning, with her face swollen from crying, she got up for her chores as if nothing happened. But rather than make it to the chicken coop, she was stopped by her parents in the kitchen.
“Take a seat,” Ray said.
Kate swallowed. “Where’s Blake?”
“Matt just drove him to the airport.”
The family Bible awaited ominously in the center of the table. Kate’s spine stiffened. The setup, the seat between her parents, transformed her from a twenty-one-year-old woman to a ten-year-old girl. She instinctually scanned her mother’s lap, searching for the infamous wooden spoon. She’d only met it a few times, and that’s all it took. A spanking, a slap for disobeying, seared the lesson in skin:Honor thy father and thy mother.
The Hutchins believed spare the rod, spoil the child. Ray never touched the girls, leaving such liberties to Beth, who, while small and mild in appearance, swung a backhand with abandon. He did of course, oversee the aftermath, which included sitting at that same kitchen table, reading every line of Romans aloud while he held the offender’s neck above the Bible like one might shove a puppy’s nose in its mess.
“You shouldn’t have done that to him, Katherine,” Ray said.
“I had to be honest.” She didn’t meet his eyes. “I can’t marry him.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to,” she whispered. When she said no to Blake, she knew her parents might not understand, but hadn’t planned for this.
