Page 52 of Love Me Again

She looked back up, squinted at him in the falling light. “What do you mean?”

“I caught Molly this morning a little worse for the wear, and she said you’d joined her.”

Josie nodded. “And Em. She’s nice.”

“She is.”

“You have a lot of nice people in your life.” Which wasn’t meant to be a compliment. It was meant to be a reminder. Look at all you kept from me.

“I do.”

And I don’t have anyone. How patently unfair.

“They all like you too.” He didn’t make a move to push his way in out of the cold. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, cheeks getting a little red from the temperature as the cold wind whipped the dark ends of hair that barely showed from under his hat.

She didn’t demand to know why he was here. She didn’t let him in. She just stood there and made him make all the decisions.

It was strangely freeing.

“Shane got the tree up, and we’re going to decorate it tonight. And it reminded me how hard you tried to make Christmas special for your dad. Maybe I’m off the mark and it’d make you more sad than happy, but I thought you’d have a lot more fun decorating the tree and eating cookies with all of us than sitting out here alone.”

The yearning she felt at the invitation was just another unfair thing in a long list of them. She wanted to do that so badly it was a physical ache inside her chest.

She couldn’t accept. They weren’t her family and this wasn’t her place. But she couldn’t seem to make herself say that.

“I thought about sending Molly or Mom or hell, even Micah to invite you. I thought about doing it a lot of underhanded ways, and then I decided… That’s not how I want you to come.”

He was looking her right in the eye, being earnest and honest. God, she’d always had an impossible time resisting him when he actually did that.

She cleared her throat. “Thank you for the invitation,” she said stiffly, because he was trying to be…something. Kind, maybe. And even if she was furious with him for a wide variety of reasons, she knew his intent wasn’t to hurt her. So she didn’t need to be nasty to him. “I think I’m going to have to pass. It’s a bad idea.”

He inhaled, then slowly let it out. He took a step closer then. “Why be alone when you can be with people you like, Jo? I know that if you come, it’s not some promise to forgive me. I’m going to hope for that whether you come or not, so you don’t have to worry about encouraging or discouraging me. That’s my responsibility. Not yours.”

For a moment, those simple words seemed to upend her equilibrium. Because she knew that, but the Tylers kept saying things like that to her.

But that doesn’t mean it’s your job to redeem him.

That’s my responsibility. Not yours.

Like…she didn’t have to handle everything, when she always had.

“You can sit on the other side of the room and not speak to me,” Boone urged. “You can sit on my lap like old times. I don’t care. So long as you’re there. Why be miserable when you don’t have to be?”

Since she had an all-too vivid memory of sitting on his lap the last Christmas they’d all been together, cuddled together watching the Christmas lights twinkle, she had to harden her heart to the memory. It was easy when he said things like why be miserable when you don’t have to be. “That is rich coming from you.”

He smiled. Soft. Self-deprecating. “I know. Maybe I’ve learned a lesson or two.”

Which was far too tempting to believe. There was something different about him. Something more settled. She felt less like she needed to take care of him. Maybe because he was too busy trying to take care of her.

Had their dynamic before been unhealthy—her taking all the care of things, him just accepting that? It hadn’t felt that way. She’d felt loved. Cherished. He’d never shirked his responsibilities or made her feel like she carried any load alone.

But she couldn’t believe she was looking back on that time with clear eyes, because if that was true, how could he have walked away like he did?

“Boone—”

“Just walk with me,” Boone urged. “An hour and some cookies aren’t going to hurt anybody.”

He was wrong about that. It all hurt. But so did sitting in this cabin alone, sifting through the time they’d been together, wondering what to do with the positive memories and horrible ending that warred for purchase, neither ever quite winning.