Shelter Mountain (Virgin River #2)(41)

He stood in front of her, looked into her eyes, her terrified eyes, and managed a soft smile. He put an arm around her waist and drew her close enough to put a kiss on her forehead. His life was unraveling, but what he noticed was that she smelled so good—like he remembered. “Lizzie,” he whispered. She let her head drop against his shoulder and he could feel the trembling, feel her shoulders quaking. He pulled her against him and held her. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Come on, Lizzie. Don’t cry.”

He looked over his shoulder at Jack and Jack solemnly inclined his head toward the door. He turned back to Liz. “Come on. We have to go somewhere and talk. Come on,” he said, his arm around her waist, leading her out of the bar as she leaned against him in tears.

He led her out behind the bar where there were no people, where they were alone, and stood with her under a tree. “Here now,” he said. “How we gonna talk if you cry?”

“Rick,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rick.”

He lifted her chin with a finger and took in her red eyes, her chapped cheeks. He tried to keep his voice soft. Tender. “What happened, Lizzie? You said it was all right.”

She shrugged. “I thought it was. It seemed like that’s what you wanted me to say.”

“Only if it was true,” he said.

“I didn’t know, that’s all. I just didn’t know.”

“I thought you got your period. Didn’t you tell me that?” he asked her.

She shrugged again. “I never got ’em very much. I only had, like, four last year, all year. You asked me every day, so I said it was okay, so you’d stop asking me. And you broke up with me. Right then. That minute. On the phone. Pretty soon, that was all I thought about…not anything else. Just that you broke it off. That you didn’t want me. Like I did something wrong, something bad. I felt like such a—”

“Stop. You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, ashamed of how he’d made her feel.

“That’s how it felt,” she said in a whimper.

It took him less than half a minute to remember those details, and to feel like total crap at the accuracy. Just a couple of days after the little mishap that caused this pregnancy, Liz went home to her mom in Eureka. He called her all the time, kept asking her if she was okay, if she’d gotten her period so they could relax that they hadn’t been caught. Finally she said yes, they were okay. And in that very same conversation he told her they should cool it, not see each other anymore. He told her he cared about her, but holy God—they obviously couldn’t control themselves. And they were both too young to get caught with a baby.

Except, no, they weren’t.

He pulled her into his arms. “Oh, Liz, baby,” he said. “I broke it off to keep you safe!” To keep me safe! “I didn’t want to lose control again and get you in trouble.” Get me in trouble! “You’re so young! Too young!” I’m too young! “Oh, God, Lizzie. You should have told me the truth.”

“I didn’t know,” she said again, crumbling into sobs against him.

“Okay, baby, don’t cry. It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. Come on, don’t cry.”

But she was going to cry for a long time, it seemed. First, because she’d been so scared of what he would say, and second, because she was so relieved. He held her for what seemed like forever, but it at least gave him time to think of what he might say next. When finally the tears abated, he said, “Can we go for a ride? Is that okay?”

She nodded.

He wiped the tears from her cheeks with the backs of his fingers. “Should you tell your aunt Connie?”

“It’s okay,” she said. “She knows I came to talk to you. To tell you.”

“Okay, then. We’ll go for a ride, settle down a little bit, and then we’ll face the music with Connie. Hmm?”

“Should you ask Jack?”

He put an arm around her shoulders and led her to his little truck. Jack had seen her belly, had seen Rick take her out of the bar. “Jack knows exactly what I’m doing right now.” The only thing I can do, he thought. What I should have done before this happened. Try to act like the grown-up. A little too late…

“Where are we going?”

“Let’s go out to the river. We’ll sit on a rock and talk about what’s coming. How about that?”

“You’re sticking by me?” she asked.

“Sure I am, Liz.”

“Do you love me, Rick?” she asked him.

He looked down at her round belly; he’d put that there. Holy shit, he thought. Love? That was a stretch. He wanted no part of this. So he forced himself to think about Preach and Jack, how they were around women. And he put a soft kiss on her temple. “Of course I do. I want you to stop being afraid now. Everything is going to be okay. Maybe not so easy, but okay.”

Ordinarily Jack would have left the bar as soon as possible after the dinner hour had passed. Preacher was occupied with little Christopher and Paige, and he had a sense that Rick might come back. Rick would feel that he had to explain things. There wasn’t too much to explain—it had been pretty obvious by Lizzie’s presence. But still, Rick looked to Jack as if he were a father, and Jack had never been unhappy about that. Not even now.