I put down the sewing, mostly because I was about to stab myself in the finger if I tried to keep going after Lance laid all that on me. “Okay, so I’m going to be totally lame and quote a line from A Walk to Remember,” I said, trying to keep the tears out of my voice because everything he’d just said was beautiful.
“Even though that movie is not at all lame and actually totally beautiful.” I raised my brow at Lance in challenge for him to tease. Of course, Lance didn’t tease. “Without suffering, there is no compassion,” I whispered, never taking my eyes from his. “It would be very easy to believe in a godless world after everything I’ve been through,” I said, after a very long moment. “It would be so much more comforting to me to believe in nothing rather than believe in a higher power that let everything happen to me. To let innocent people suffer every single day. I don’t want to believe in nothing. I’m not sure if I believe in the god they preach about in our church every Sunday. I don’t think there are specific ways you should be in order for that god to love you. But I believe in what church teaches people.”
I paused. “Well, some of it, at least,” I corrected. “It promotes kindness, patience, generosity. I want to instill all of that into Nathan. I want him to have somewhere to go once a week where he is reminded of all the things that are important in life. I want that for myself too. When he’s old enough to decide, I will give Nathan the choice whether he wants to continue going or not. To explore his faith. But I never want my son to lose faith. Because that’s what’s got me through. Knowing that somehow, I’m not alone. That there’s a reason, a plan. That there’s something tying everyone in the world together. That there’s something after this.”
I stopped speaking, feeling strangely vulnerable, naked. I didn’t mean to share that much. Lance had a way about him, to make me naked, and not just by ripping my clothes off—though he was really frickin’ good at that—but stripping me down to the bare nerve.
I shouldn’t have felt so comfortable baring my soul to someone who was yet to do the same with me. But I did. I felt safe with Lance. In every way a person could. Despite my past, which should have given me pause in doing things like blindly trusting a man, I was doing it.
“Don’t you?” I asked, my voice little more than a whisper. “Believe in something more than just suffering and ugliness? Don’t you want to know that there is something in this world that is more powerful than us?”
He didn’t answer.
So stupid, stupid me decided to keep on going. Because I wasn’t done letting this silent, dangerous man into my life, into my heart.
“If anything, what’s happened to me in my life has only made my belief stronger. Things have been bad. I don’t think I deserved anything that happened to me either. But everything that happened to me in my life, what my parents did to me, made it possible for me to be vulnerable enough to a man like Robert.”
I fiddled with the fabric beside me.
“I would like to think if I had a better, healthier upbringing and a family that gave a crap about me, I’d have seen right through Robert. But that’s a far too dangerous of a game to play. I’m just going to say that I was given parents like I was in order to stay with a man like Robert long enough for him to give me a son. A child that I would go through insurmountable suffering for. I’d go through my life, the nightmare it was, over and over again in order to see my son smile. To smell his hair. To have him curl up against me at night when he’s too stubborn to say he’s tired. For the kid that loves Brussel sprouts but hates fries. He is the entire reason I believe in something bigger than myself.”
Now, Lance was no longer leaning. There was no pile of sewing beside me. I wasn’t even sitting on the sofa anymore. I was sitting on Lance. Straddling him, his hands on my hips, eyes on my soul.
“Who taught you how to love like that?” he asked, voice thick.
I jerked, not just because he spoke but because of the words. The gentle way they hit the air. I wasn’t even sure that his mouth had been able to form anything but a rough growl.
“No one taught me how to love,” I said, moving my hand to trace his jaw. It was smooth. As always. “No one needs to teach anyone how to love.”