Promise Canyon (Virgin River #13)(89)

"But I heard you tell her you'd always love her!"

"Yes, I said that. If you'd just listened a second longer you would have heard the rest. I was telling her I'd always love her, care about her, but we had to move on, move away from the relationship we had, that I couldn't be there for her anymore. I had already told her there was a woman in my life. But she's always had a terrible fear of having love withdrawn from her. I was going to tell her I loved her enough to wish her well." He ground his teeth. "All that has changed now."

"Changed how?"

"I don't feel sorry for her anymore. I didn't realize how petty and selfish she could be. And why didn't I? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Her father is a horrible parent. Whether we like it or not, the people who raise us leave an indelible mark." He pulled Streak to a stop. He lifted Lilly's chin and turned her to face him. "Isabel is a sad and damaged woman, and I did my best to honor my commitment, Lilly. But that is far in my past. I love you."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry for the way she treated you. I can't say how she knew you were the woman in my life--"

Lilly laughed. "Somehow, women can just sense who their competition is."

"I can hear the horses think, but I never figured out women," he said. "I had no idea she was coming and I was telling her to go away in the nicest possible way. Once you ran from me I lost all my patience and told her to just get out of here."

"Why should I believe this, Clay?"

"There's a more urgent question," he said. "What happened to you to make you unwilling to believe me? To be tempted to throw away things that made you so happy, like our love, like Blue, like working with Annie? What the hell happened to you?"

"I just have so much pride--"

"Bullshit," he said. "Take a risk. See what happens when you let me in, tell me the truth. So, you had a rotten romance. You mentioned it once. Is that it?"

"Bad relationship," she said with a shrug. "Painful breakup..."

"So who hasn't? I told you about mine--one when I was a kid, one more recent than that," he said. "Maybe we're both due a break."

"You might find I'm at least as screwed up as Isabel, and where would that leave you?"

"Try me," he begged.

"It was very bad," she said by way of explanation. "I was young."

He laughed lightly. "Younger than sixteen?" he asked.

She turned and looked up at him. "Thirteen," she said.

After a moment of shock, he tightened his arm around her. "Honey. I'm sorry. That's just too young for a girl to go through something like that. At least you weren't made a mother."

"But...but yes, I was. At only thirteen, a virgin who had given it up to a bad boy of eighteen, pregnant, and he ran like a fox."

He was so still that Streak stopped walking. Clay leaned down and nuzzled his cheek against hers. "Your child?" he asked in a whisper.

She looked into her lap. "I lost the baby. Probably a blessing--I wasn't ready to be a mother, obviously."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart."

"And when you came along, I wasn't ready to risk a relationship again. I feel as if I'll never be ready."

"But you were just a girl then. You're a woman now," he reassured her.

"That's what Dane said. But talk about damaged!" she said.

"You'd be surprised how many people survive things like this and go on to make better lives. People have survived so much worse--consider our ancestors."

"God, I felt like a princess, that he'd chosen me, though I had no idea how many he'd chosen before and after me. When I told him I was pregnant, he said it couldn't be his." She laughed hollowly. "As if I'd had lovers! He was the first and only! My grandfather loaded his rifle and my boyfriend ran for his life--but he'd already left me for at least a couple of girls. At only thirteen, my reputation was toast. That's when my grandpa decided we had to move, to start over. There were so many times growing up I felt that I'd lost everything--when I realized my mother left me when I was weeks old, when my grandmother died and was never coming back, when my grandfather took me away from home to try to save me from myself. And the boyfriend, denying he had any feelings for me and running from my grandfather's rifle..." She turned her head and looked up at him. "I just didn't think I could go through all that again. That's why it was so hard for me to trust."

"I'm going to find a way to show you that I'm the exception."

Tears began to roll down her cheeks. "I meant to be strong--I hate weakness. I didn't want to cry in front of you."

He wiped away the tears with the pad of his thumb. "I want you to cry only in front of me."

"I have been so afraid to love anyone..."

"Of course you have, but that part of your life is in the past. And we have more important business. We have to move forward together now."

"What if love just isn't enough? What if we can't make it work?"

"Bull. We've made lots of things work," he said. "You know, one of the many reasons I couldn't be a successful husband to Isabel--she nurtured her pain. Silently. She never threw it out there and told me everything that happened to her and how she wanted to get past it--I was always fighting an invisible demon.