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“Did he tell you that he loved you?”
She shook her head. “No. It took him a long time to say the words. Even when he almost lost me, he had a hard time actually saying the words.”
“Well, Lachlan has told me that he loves me.”
“That’s good,” she said. “But I do still wonder if he’s maybe protecting something inside of himself, and he doesn’t even realize it.”
“Definitely possible.”
“I just think this is all complicated for them. Because of what they went through growing up. I don’t think that love is a simple, happy thing that they can simply look forward to. I think it cuts them really deep. And I think the fear of losing it is only equal to the fear of having it.”
“ThatI think is true.”
“How do I reach him?”
“Sex,” Alaina and Elizabeth said at the same time.
“We have that. All the time.” Her cheeks went pink.
“I mean, good for you. But I just wonder...”
She didn’t have a whole lot of inhibition when it came to him. But she had an idea. Suddenly. She knew what she wanted.
“Thank you,” she said.
She stroked the baby’s velvety head, and she felt a deep longing well up inside her. She needed to fix this. To the best of her ability, she needed to fix this.
Because she wanted what Alaina and Elizabeth had. And she could see easily that she and Lachlan weren’t there yet.
Gus didn’t have secrets from Alaina. Brody knew Elizabeth.
They needed to know each other.
It was more than asking about birthday parties, though that was a start. She wasn’t wrong totally about the way that she needed to know him.
But it was also more. More complicated. “I think I have an idea.”
It would require breaking through the thought, even though he didn’t deserve it. It would require changing things between them even though he hadn’t asked her to.
She just had to. Because it was the right thing to do. She couldn’t wait.
Because it wasn’t about keeping score. That resonated with her. That meant something. She was going to cling to that. Remember it.
“I never saw a marriage,” she said. “I just have no idea at all what I’m doing.”
“I saw a few,” Elizabeth said. “I grew up in foster care. I saw good marriages, okay marriages, bad ones, great ones. I had the opportunity to see the way that a lot of people were with each other, but I didn’t necessarily learn from it. Not consciously. But it’s something that I think about now.”
“Wow,” Charity said. “I would never have guessed that you grew up in foster care.”
“It looks a lot of different ways,” Elizabeth said. “I was very lucky. I was with some really good families. They treated me well. It helped me feel like I had a concept of family. I felt that I got a lot of concepts of family. That gave me something kind of special and unique.”
“I saw a marriage that imploded,” Alaina said. “But it was happy for a long time before. It gave me a lot of anxiety when it came to love and relationships. And you know, I chose badly with the first guy I hopped into bed with. But Gus has shown me every day what love looks like. He always loved me. That’s the thing. He was good at doing the things toshowme that. But he wasn’t good at opening himself up in ways that would let me feel thecloseness. In ways that would let me feel that love. I think that’s maybe what’s going on with Lachlan. It’s clear that he loves you. I would’ve said that years ago. Just as a casual observer of your relationship. I don’t think that’s the problem. But love is action. And there are a lot of ways to act it out. There are a lot of ways to feel close to someone. And when one is missing...it doesn’t feel right.”
She nodded slowly. Lachlan had always been there for her; it wasn’t that she felt insecure, not anything like that. It was just that she wanted more from their relationship than feeling like she was living with a stranger.
She had lived a quiet life.
And she had loved her dad. But she realized, suddenly, just sitting there, that she had always felt a little bit timid. To be louder than he was. To be something different than he was.
