Retreat (Balm in Gilead Book 3) Read online

  Ten

  Zeke had been having a miserable weekend.

  On Saturday, despite the fact that he was still technically on sabbatical, he’d worked on the lawn and garden all day. It was too late in the year for grass and weeds to be growing very quickly, but he did everything anyway, merely to distract himself and hope to get tired enough to close his eyes tonight.

  He couldn’t stop seeing Cecily’s face when he told her it was over between them.

  She’d been perfectly composed—as she always was. She hadn’t even argued very much. But he’d seen the emotion underlying her expression.

  She’d been crushed.

  Completely crushed.

  He’d crushed her.

  He kept telling himself it was for the best and she’d get over it. He’d been convinced that what he’d told her was the truth.

  But he kept coming back to the same question.

  If she hadn’t really wanted him for him, if she’d just been seeking companionship because she was lonely, then why was she so crushed that it was over?

  He hated the thought of her hurting. He’d somehow known he would end up hurting her if they began a relationship, and he’d obviously been right about that from the beginning.

  But she wouldn’t have been that hurt if she hadn’t cared about him for real.

  What if he’d been wrong about everything?

  The questions kept swirling in his mind until he could barely think, could barely breathe. He finally fell into bed in utter exhaustion, but he woke up at four with the same questions like a cyclone in his head.

  There was absolutely nothing else for him to do on the grounds this morning, but there was no way he could just sit still. And he definitely couldn’t go to church and be faced with nothing but stares and questions about him and Cecily.

  So he decided to power wash the fences and the vinyl siding of his cottage and the large outbuilding he used for equipment.

  They didn’t need it. He’d washed them less than a month ago.

  But it was something to do.

  He worked for several hours—until it was almost noon—and he’d cleaned everything he could possibly clean. He was putting the power washer away when a voice surprised him.

  “Zeke! I missed you and Cecily at church today!”

  He frowned as he turned around, immediately recognizing that the voice wasn’t one he wanted to hear, even before he saw that the speaker was Kara.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  He didn’t respond to her greeting or her big, fake smile. He just stared at her, waiting to hear what she would say.

  “Did you all decide to play hooky from church this morning?” Kara asked.

  Zeke didn’t respond to that either. It was a ridiculous question and not worth answering.

  Kara’s smile faltered slightly, but she came closer to him. “I was looking for Cecily,” she said.

  “She’s not here,” he grunted since he realized she wasn’t going to go away until he told her.

  “Well, where is she? I left her a message, but she hasn’t gotten back to me. I thought I’d see her in church, but she didn’t show. I was hoping to have lunch with her sometime.”

  “She’s not here,” Zeke said again.

  The truth was he was taken by surprise by her desire to have lunch with Cecily. It didn’t make sense. Kara had gotten everything she thought she could get from Cecily. What else was she wanting?

  For just a moment a question flickered in his mind about whether he’d been wrong about her.

  Kara was standing too close to him now. Far too close. She put a hand on his chest and smiled at him flirtatiously. “A little bird tells me that you and Cecily are dating now. Talk about a dark horse coming from behind.”

  He looked down at her hand against his shirt. Her nails were long and perfectly manicured. He hated them. They were like shiny pink claws.

  He hadn’t been wrong.

  She did want something from Cecily again.

  She wanted the scoop on their relationship so she could be one of the few people who knew the full story on Zeke and Cecily.

  Zeke scowled and took a step back so she had to drop her hand. “Cecily isn’t here,” he growled.

  “But she’s always here.”

  “You can look if you like. She’s not hiding from you.”

  “All right. I’ll come back later. But you have to tell me how you two got together. I just can’t believe it. Cecily is great, but she’s a little uptight. I can’t imagine her letting her hair down enough to go out with someone like you.” She was still giving him that flirtatious smile, and she was trying to make her words light, teasing.

  Zeke knew an insult when he heard one though. And the insult was to Cecily, not him.

  He stiffened, bristling immediately at any attack against Cecily.

  Kara didn’t know Cecily at all. Kara had no idea how warm and loving and generous and sweet she could be. Cecily wasn’t uptight at all. She held on to her composure as a way of dealing with the world, but it wasn’t who she really was.

  Zeke knew it.

  Zeke knew it for sure.

  Zeke knew it better than anyone else.

  He knew her. He loved her. She wasn’t that cool, prim picture she showed to the world. She was so much more.

  He stared at Kara blindly as all these conclusions raced through his mind, and he suddenly realized he’d been every bit as narrow as Kara was with Cecily.

  He’d come to a conclusion a long time ago about the kind of man Cecily would want, and that conclusion was based on her demeanor, not her heart.

  And he was still holding on to it, still believing that she could never really love him or want him for real.

  When he knew she was so much more, when he knew she was a full human being who could make choices of her own, who wouldn’t necessarily follow one expected path.

  She could want someone like him. She could love someone like him. And he was unforgivably wrong for ever telling her she couldn’t.

  Cecily had been right. His problem with other people had always been a problem with God—not believing that God wanted the best for him, not wanting to exert himself for fear of being hurt again.

  He hadn’t wanted to change. He hadn’t wanted to try. He’d been scared. Terrified. Being out in the world had hurt him in the past, and so he’d been hiding from it ever since.

  Maybe it was normal.

  Maybe it was natural.

  But it wasn’t who he wanted to be.

  He believed that God was good, and he wanted to live out that belief.

  He didn’t want to be like Kara, who used people when she wanted to and then acted like they should fit into her own preconceived little boxes.

  He didn’t want to be like Kara, whose agenda would always be whatever made her feel better about herself, no matter who she hurt in the process.

  Cecily deserved so much more.

  “Hello?” Kara prompted, a little sharply. “Are you still there?”

  He’d been staring at a blank space in the air for too long, and he was almost shaking now with his realizations.

  He didn’t respond to Kara. He just turned on his heel and walked away.

  Part of him wanted to tell her what he thought of her, but she wasn’t worth it. He had so much more important things to do.

  As he strode back to his cottage, he tried to think through what he should do. Cecily wasn’t here. She was in Willow Park. She wouldn’t come home until tomorrow.

  He couldn’t wait that long.

  He couldn’t go through another night with her not knowing how much he loved her, how wrong he’d been about everything.

  He stood just inside his front door for a minute, his mind racing through possibilities.

  Then he was hit with a vision out of the blue, an image of himself standing in front of Cecily, showing her exactly how he felt.

  As soon as he’d played the vision through to the end, he knew it was what he should do
.

  So he took a two-minute shower to wash off his sweat, he threw on some clothes, and he got into his truck.

  He drove for hours across the state, stopping once for gas and stopping again when he saw a big shopping center off the interstate so he could buy a suit, shirt, shoes, and tie and put them on.

  When he got into the mountains, he had to use his phone to locate a florist that was open on Sundays. While he was inside, his phone rang, but he had more important things to do so he ignored it, even when the voice mail chime sounded.

  It was evening when he finally made it to Willow Park. He knew she had an evening session at the church, so that was where he went first. The church was right in the middle of town, and the parking lot was full.

  He got out of his truck, feeling sick and excited and terrified and like his head and heart were about to explode.

  Cecily was here. He could see her car. The session was probably still going on.

  It didn’t matter.

  He couldn’t wait anymore.

  He had to let her know.

  If she could just see him, she would know how he felt. Then she could finish the session, and they could talk afterward.

  She might not want to forgive him.

  She might have decided he was too selfish and lazy to be bothered with since he’d been unwilling to budge even a little bit to be with her.

  He pushed open the front door of the church and walked through the narthex and then into the sanctuary from behind. There was a middle aisle, and he was standing at the end of it. Cecily was at the front, talking in her lovely, polished voice.

  He couldn’t believe he’d done this crazy thing. It wasn’t like him at all.

  But he loved her so much, and he would do so much more than this for her. He would do anything.

  She faltered when she saw him. She stopped talking entirely.

  And Zeke saw as her composure completely fell apart.

  That was when he knew.

  She would forgive him. She did love him. And she still wanted to be with him, no matter how he’d behaved this weekend.

  Miracles did happen sometimes in the world. Even miracles like this.

  ***

  Zeke wasn’t surprised that Cecily was able to finish her talk.

  There was about a ten-minute interruption while he’d hugged and kissed her and apologized. Then she’d pulled herself together and gone back up to the lectern to finish what she’d started.

  Cecily would always be Cecily.

  An hour or so later, they were holding hands as they walked across the parking lot to his truck. When they climbed into the seats, Cecily turned to look at him. She was smiling with her lips, her eyes, her whole self.

  “I thought you didn’t own a suit,” she said with a giggle as he immediately loosened his tie.

  “I didn’t. I bought this on the way.”

  “Well, you can take it off if you want. You don’t look very comfortable in it.”

  He checked her expression and saw that it was soft and fond. “I hate it,” he admitted. “But it was worth it.”

  “You never have to wear it again.” She reached over to pull off his tie, and he sighed with relief as he shrugged out of the jacket.

  He felt like he was grinning like a fool as he looked at her again, but he couldn’t seem to help it.

  “We don’t have to stay very long at Mark and Sophie’s tonight if you don’t want to,” she said.

  “It’s fine.”

  She was peering at him, checking his expression. “I was serious when I said you don’t have to change for me.”

  “I’m not. Not completely anyway. But I do need to change a little… for me.”

  She nodded as if she understood, and her eyes looked a little teary, although the tears didn’t fall.

  “Mark and Sophie are really nice, and John and Betsy will be there, so at least there’s someone you kind of know.”

  “I’ll be fine, Cecily. I can manage. I promise.”

  She nodded again and reached over to stroke his beard. “I love you, you know.”

  His heart might as well have just exploded into pieces. “I love you too.”

  They sat and gazed at each other for a minute. Then Cecily seemed to shake herself off and murmured, “What time is it anyway?”

  She picked up his phone to check the time, which was still lying in a slot in the console where he’d left it earlier.

  She blinked as she looked at the screen. “You haven’t checked your messages,” she said in a slightly wobbly voice.

  “No. Why would I?”

  “No reason.”

  She sounded so strange that he took the phone from her hand. He pulled up his voice mail and saw the message he’d gotten earlier was from her.

  Frowning, he brought it up and then listened to what it said.

  He was almost frozen as he realized that she’d called him to tell him she loved him, and he hadn’t even known about it.

  He sat for a moment in stunned silence after the message was over.

  “So…,” Cecily began.

  He turned his head to meet her gaze.

  “So you didn’t know when you came to the church? You didn’t know how I’d react?”

  He shook his head.

  “And you did it anyway?”

  “Well, yeah.” His voice was thick and raspy. “I’d do a lot more than that for you.”

  She gave a little sob and threw herself against him. He wrapped his arms around her while she shook for a minute, and then he kissed her when she raised her head.

  He let himself go as he sank into the kiss. The embrace was long and passionate and urgent, and she was just as eager as he was.

  It was just as well the console and the steering wheel kept getting in the way because he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to pull away otherwise.

  He wanted her so much. More now than ever before.

  They were in a car in a church parking lot though, so they eventually broke apart. Cecily was flushed and tousled and utterly irresistible. “Mark and Sophie’s place is just a couple of blocks away,” she said. “Are you ready for this?”

  He told her the truth. “I’m ready for anything.”

  ***

  A week later, Zeke was sitting in a chair in Cecily’s office, waiting for her to finish up whatever she was working on at the computer.

  It felt like he’d been waiting a long time.

  “I thought you said you were almost done,” he said.

  She shot him a quick look. “I am. I’m just about done. And all your scowls and mutters aren’t going to hurry me up.”

  He gave a huff of amusement. “I thought you liked my scowls and mutters.”

  “I do,” she said, smiling fondly at the computer screen. “But there are limits, you know.”

  “I know.”

  She was typing away, but she slanted him a little look and was briefly distracted by whatever she saw in his face.

  Then she turned back and finished her work while Zeke waited.

  “Okay,” she said, pressing a few last keys. “Done.”

  When the printer started to hum, he groaned, “You’re printing something?”

  “Stop whining.”

  “I’m not whining. I’m scowling and muttering.”

  She laughed and stood up to get the sheets that had come out of the printer. “Oh. Right. My mistake.” She sat back in her chair to read them over.

  He waited for a moment, but when she moved to the second page, he couldn’t hold back a groan.

  “I thought you wouldn’t be in a hurry to get to a party,” she said.

  As soon as she was done with whatever she was working on, they were going to be heading to a birthday party for a friend of hers at church.

  Zeke wasn’t looking forward to it. But the sooner they left, the sooner they could get it over with.

  When he didn’t answer, she glanced up at him. “You’re really okay about going?”

  “I’m fi
ne.”

  “You don’t feel like I’m pressuring you, do you? I just asked you if you wanted to go. It would have been fine if you’d said no.”

  “I know. I said yes because I want to try. I promise I’ll do better than I did at the concert. I can’t promise to be the life of the party though.”

  She chuckled. “I’d never expect you to be the life of the party. I wouldn’t want you that way. We don’t have to stay very long. It just might be good to make an appearance so people can get used to us being together.”

  “I agree. That’s why I said yes.”

  She seemed to believe him since she went back to reading over her papers.

  He had no idea why whatever those papers were had to be done on a Saturday evening.

  He groaned again when her phone buzzed with a text and she stopped reading to pick it up and read it.

  She gave him a little eye-roll when she saw who it was. “Kara. We’re having coffee sometime next week.”

  He grunted in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been feeling… kind of resentful about her, and I don’t like to feel that way. Sometimes acting nice makes you start feeling nice. I want to at least try.”

  “Okay. But if you feel bad after you get together with her, I hope you won’t do it again. You don’t have to punish yourself just because she’s the way she is.”

  “I know. If it makes things worse, I won’t do it again. But I’d rather not always have her there to conjure up bad feelings. I know she’ll never be a friend, but maybe she can turn into a causal acquaintance. I smile at and chat with casual acquaintances all the times, even those I know I’ll never be close with. I’ll feel better if that’s what she can be.”

  “Just don’t trust her.”

  “I won’t.”

  She seemed to mean it, so he relaxed. He would never have good thoughts about Kara. He’d never have good thoughts about anyone who tried to use Cecily or who hurt her.

  That was just the way it was.

  Evidently, she finished reading over the papers because she stacked them neatly on her desk and turned toward him. “Okay.”

  He stood up. “Okay. Ready then?”

  “Almost.”