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“That feels so good.” Opening her eyes, she held out her hand. “But come here beside me. I want to apologize.”
He gathered her into his arms, the place he always wanted her to be. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do. When we first met, I was mean to you.”
He laughed. “You really don’t know the meaning of mean.” He’d loved her feistiness, her banter.
“I refused everything, questioned everything, like your intentions were suspect. Like you weren’t worth trusting.”
“Sweetheart,” he whispered. “What else were you going to think about some strange guy after what you’d been through with your own family?”
She shook her head. “The thing is, I did my friends a disservice too. I left them in order to punish myself. But I ended up punishing them as well. I want them back. I want to explain everything and make it right again.”
He laid his hand over hers. “They’ll understand.”
“I hope so. It’s taken me a while, but I think I finally see what your story about Whitney and your mom and Evan really means.” She looked into his eyes. “If you never believe in people, if you can’t see the good in them, then you can never truly believe in yourself. So if I want Drew to see the good in himself, I have to see it too. And if I want my friends back, I have to believe we can all forgive.” She gave him a small smile, but one that lit her eyes. “Even ourselves.”
His heart swelled, and the words came out of him in a rush.
“That’s exactly what I want my mother to hear. That she needs to forgive herself. It’s as important as forgiving other people. Maybe more so.”
“What could your mother possibly have done that needs forgiveness? She’s perfect.”
“My mother is incredible. But no one is perfect.” When Tasha’s eyebrows went up in question, he explained, “I’d been getting these weird signals from her ever since I came to the mountains. Like there was something she was hiding from me, something that made her really uncomfortable. She even hung up on me once.”
“Why?”
“It turns out that she got pregnant with me before she and my dad were married. And she ran away from him. She didn’t even tell him about me.”
Tasha looked shocked. “What was she planning to do?”
“Her mom wanted her to give me away, but she insisted on keeping me. She just wasn’t going to tell Dad.” Then he told Tasha the whole story.
Talking about it wasn’t a betrayal of his mom, it was an affirmation of everything she’d been through.
And it was an affirmation of everything Tasha had gone through as well.
“I always thought the perfect relationship meant that you never argued, you never hit any bumps in the road, you always saw eye to eye on everything, that you never kept a secret or made a mistake that hurt the one you loved.” He cupped Tasha’s cheek, stroked his finger over her bottom lip. “But now I can see that perfect simply means learning how to forgive and to accept and to do everything you can to love with your whole heart.”
She turned into his touch, kissing his palm. “I was afraid I might not be worthy of your family. That they were pillars of strength I could never live up to. But it turns out that they’re human, just like me.”
“Like me too.” He let his gaze wander over every strong, striking feature of her face. “It was your love that helped me realize I had to be brave enough to talk to my mom. To ask her what was wrong.”
“I love that we’ve given each other strength,” she said. “Your love helped me face my father and my love helped you talk with your mom. You and me together—we feel exactly right. Maybe,” she said with a grin, “even a little bit perfect.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tasha didn’t know how long they held each other. All she knew was that she’d never been so happy, never felt so good. So whole. “I want to make love with you, Daniel. I want to give you everything the way you’ve always given everything to me.”
“You’ve already done that.”
He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the dark bedroom. Her feet slid to the carpet, but she stayed on tiptoe, her head tipped back so she could see his beautiful, amazing face. Giving him everything started with confessing the last of her fears.
“When I saw your apartment today—and your plane—and Matt’s house—I was afraid. Of how rich you are. Of how hard it could be to live up to all that.”
“You know my money doesn’t mean anything.”
“But it does. It’s what all my father’s dirty deeds were about. Money is…” She searched for the right words, desperately needing him to understand. “Money is something you earn. It’s not something you deserve. And for a while today, I started to lose ground, because I was afraid I didn’t deserve you. That I hadn’t been good enough. That I’d made too many mistakes, and I hadn’t paid enough for them. And yes, I didn’t believe that I deserved your family either. But with my father tonight, I realized what I needed to deserve wasn’t your money, but your strength. Your loyalty. Your love.” She held his face in her hands just as he had held hers. “I’m making a promise to you, right here, right now, that I will never stop giving all those things to you, just the way you’ve always given them to me.”
