From the Start (40 page)

“You’re not incapable, Katie. Your crying in the hospital proved that.”

Great, she’d been hoping they could just forget her little sob fest the night of the accident. “I’m completely lost in this conversation.”

He waited until she met his eyes, that Case Walker brand of gentleness and firmness mingling together in his expression. “You know the rules of romance, Katharine. You know the facts of what makes a romantic story work. But you haven’t let yourself experience it.” He moved to a kneeling position beside her. “And look, I don’t particularly like seeing you hurt, but a life completely free from heartbreak? I can’t want that for you. It’d mean your heart was hard. Steeled. Unmovable.”

He set one hand on her knee. “But when you started crying that night in the hospital, I knew my girl was back.”

“Because I broke down about a guy?” Her hair fanned against her cheeks and forehead, and she dug her uncasted hand into her pocket, fingers numbing in the cold.

“Because you’d fallen in love. Not in a wishy-washy, Hallmark card sort of way. But in a way that had you more worried about Colton’s mental state than your physical state. You fell for him. Hard.”

She could argue, but what was the point? Dad knew her—
oh,
he knew her. “Maybe I did, but look where it got me.”

He grinned and stood, his shadow swallowing hers. “It got you right here. Softened. Flexible. Willing to consider maybe God knows better than you what your life should look like. And like this little bridge that weathered a slew of storms, ready to be used.”

He should’ve called. Or emailed. A carrier pigeon with a handwritten note probably would’ve been better than just showing up on Norah Parker’s doorstep.

But impulse had landed Colton here, standing outside a brick townhouse on a bustling LA street on a suffocating November day. Ninety degrees in autumn? It didn’t feel right.

But then, there was little about the past month that had felt right.

A car with a grumbling muffler passed behind him, the smell of motor oil trailing behind it. He pulled his T-shirt away from his chest, wishing for a burst of cool air, then rang the doorbell.

Movement thumped from inside the house, and the front door swung open.

The sound of the noisy car faded down the street as the woman who answered the door stared, blinked . . . grinned. “Colton Greene.”

“Hi, Norah.”

“Colton Greene. Oh my word.”

He stared at her while she stared at him. How was it possible she could’ve changed so little in over ten years? Same ebony skin and high cheekbones, the kind of beauty that even as a kid he’d known belonged in a magazine or something.

Not in a tiny office in a rundown building, dealing with angry kids like him.

But there was one difference. An obvious one.

“Oh come in and hug me already. I’ve still got a few weeks ’til the due date. I won’t pop.”

She stepped aside so he could enter the house, closed the screen door behind him, then pulled him into a hug. He leaned in for the embrace, a hundred memories skipping through his mind as he did. The first time she’d hugged him, when she’d dropped him off at the transitional home not a week after Mom and Dad died. That hug on the day his first foster parents sent him back, after they’d broken every last figurine from the box in her trunk.

The hug he’d stiffened through the last time he saw her.

Except—except that wasn’t technically the last time he’d seen her. He’d finally figured it out—the voice he’d heard when he first woke up in the hospital back in January. He’d thought for so long it was Lilah. But it was Norah. He’d sent her tickets to that game—she’d seen him get injured.

And she’d come to the hospital.

She leaned back now, looking him up and down, letting out a slow whistle. “I knew when you were a teen you’d turn out good, Colt. Although you could use a haircut.” The sound of laughter drifted from farther back in the house. “Come on back to the kitchen.”

He followed her down a hallway, walls sprinkled with framed photos and prints from what appeared to be European countries. “You finally got to backpack through Europe?”

They passed an arched opening leading into a dining room, its floor scattered with toys.

“Two summers ago. Right before we adopted the boys, who you’re just about to meet.”

“And who’s we?”

She led him into the kitchen. “My husband, of course. Waltzed into my life right on my thirty-eighth birthday. I was out celebrating with some girlfriends at this new restaurant, and of course they had to tell our waiter it was my birthday. Next thing I know, the chef is coming out from the kitchen with a dessert, singing some whackadoo version of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song. It was love at first sight.”

Sunlight streamed into the kitchen through the window over the sink, white cupboards and pale yellow walls adding to the bright feel of the room. At the table in the corner, two identical toddlers giggled from their high chairs.

“Korean,” Norah answered his questioning glance. “Henry and Lee.”

“They’re cute.”

“Since I was almost forty when we got married, we just assumed adoption might be our best route. Lo and behold, three weeks after we get the boys home, I find out I’m pregnant . . . at forty-three. Funny how life works out.”

“Yeah. Funny.”

She beckoned for him to sit, and he lowered into a wooden chair with curved spindles at the back, while she dished cookies onto a plate and poured two glasses of milk. She set it all in front of him, then dropped into the chair beside her kids.

Norah pinned him with one of her leveling expressions then. “So tell me what you’re doing here.”

And it spilled from him, just like that—everything. The weeks in Iowa, the flashback on the gravel road. The accident. Kate.

At some point during his rambling Henry started crying, and Norah released him from his high chair, pulling him onto her lap.

“Now I’m back in LA, just tooling around doing nothing.” Trying to forget Kate—and how he’d ruined everything for her.

And it wasn’t just her he’d left behind. There was also Webster. And the town, finally recovered from one natural disaster only to face another. Case and Seth and Raegan—friends who’d started to feel like family.

“Well, that’s stupid.”

He about spit out the drink of milk he’d just taken. “Excuse me?”

Norah’s flintlike expression pierced him. “Let me get this straight: You remembered your parents’ accident. Then a deer jumped out in front of your car. And those two things together resulted in you walking away from the love of your life.”

“I didn’t say Kate was—”

“Didn’t have to. I know you, Colton Greene. Shoot, at one time, I wanted to adopt you.”

“What?”

She rubbed Henry’s back as his eyes drooped. “When I picked you up from your third foster home and the look on your face . . . Every maternal instinct in me cried to do something about it. I walked into my supervisor’s office and declared I was done yanking you around. I was going to adopt you myself. ’Course, she had to go and point out you were a preteen and I was only a few years out of college and it wasn’t going to happen. Kind of hilarious to think about now since we’re both adults.”

He swallowed. “Well, thanks for the thought anyway.”

Her expression firmed again. “Why’d you come here?”

“Had a hankering to be called stupid, I guess.” He helped Lee take a drink from a sippy cup.

“I didn’t call
you
stupid. Just what you’re doing.”

“Stupid is as stupid does.”

“Colton.”

He set down Lee’s cup. “Okay. I thought . . . I thought you might have advice for me. I remembered when I was seventeen and had no clue what came next and you helped me fill out all those college and scholarship applications.”

“That? We were just working with what you had, Colt. You had a talent for football.” Henry fussed in her lap again, and she shifted him to the other shoulder. “So what do you have now?”

An achy heart that wouldn’t allow him to forget the girl he’d left behind—in a hospital room of all places.

An inexplicable tug to return to a town that wasn’t even his home.

“I guess I’ve got this foundation. It never got going, and the director resigned. I was thinking of closing it down at the end of the year, but I don’t know, maybe I could do something good with it.” He leaned his elbows on the table, first faint glimpses of what might be a future sliding in.

“There you go. You do realize you’re in a much better place than a lot of guys who find themselves stuck, right? You’ve got financial security. You’ve got some options. Now it’s a matter of figuring out where what you’ve got meets, well, what the world might need.”

The hum of the refrigerator kicked in. “Case Walker—that’s Kate’s dad, the guy I worked with in Iowa—he told me this story about Raymond Berry, the football player slash coach. He said . . . I have eleven more inches.”

“I have no idea what that means.” When Henry started wiggling in her arms, Norah stood and paced beside the table. “But here’s something else you have that you didn’t before. You’ve got faith.”

“Not a very strong one.”

“Not sure it’s so much about strong or weak. It’s not like a
sport—you don’t get injured and just stop playing. Not unless you choose to.” She stopped walking. “You’ve had a lot stripped out of your life, Colton. But I think a lot of times, it’s when the stuff we think we want is stripped away, we finally see what we need. And spoiler: It’s not a career or a tidied-up past. It’s not a place or a person.”

In other words, not even Kate. Or Maple Valley. Or a normal life. Whatever that looked like. “Then what is it?”

“It’s knowing you were created by a God who loves you. Finding your purpose in that and that alone. Maybe it sounds simplistic, but I think when you get to that place of security and confidence, your playing field’s going to expand like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Eleven more inches.” Just like Case said.

“I still don’t know what that means.”

“Not sure I do either. Not yet. But . . .” But maybe that was okay. Relief unfolded in him, rife with possibility. And promise—that there was more, even if he wasn’t sure just yet what it looked like.

Yeah, maybe it was more than okay.

“Okay, everything’s in from the car. My stuff’s in the guest bedroom.” Raegan stood in the center of Kate’s living room, hands on her hips, gaze scanning the space. “Your poor plants. You didn’t have anybody come water them while you were away?”

“I watered them that week I came back when Breydan was in the hospital.” Kate shuffled on her crutches to the couch. Man, what a relief it’d be to get the plaster off her leg. This hobbling thing was getting old.

“And that was nearly two months ago. Your whole place
needs a sprucing up.” Raegan ran one finger through the dust covering the fireplace mantel.

“Good thing I brought a little sister home with me, then, huh.” Her old couch whined as she settled in, and what was that crinkling underneath her?

“So between leaving Maple Valley and now, we’ve determined that in the next two weeks I will be your housekeeper, cook, chauffeur—”

“Don’t forget laundress. Isn’t
laundress
a great word?” She pulled a wrinkled paper out from underneath her.

“—and errand girl. Anything else I should be doing in all the gobs of free time I’m obviously going to have?” Sarcasm laced Raegan’s tone.

“Well, you could finally talk to me about Bear.” She unfolded the paper.

“Off-limits, Kate. Besides, it’s not like you’ve been chatty about Colton.”

To Gil.
The words on the paper stared back at her. The dedication page from her book. The one Colton had torn out and wadded up. A familiar ache swiveled through her.

That and his voice from the night they’d sat in the big green house in Maple Valley, when he’d told her he knew she could write another book.

And Dad, calling her a romantic and assuring her a wounded heart just might be a good sign.

“Hey, where’d my laptop end up, Rae?”

“Kitchen table, I think. Need it?”

Kate set the creased page on the couch beside her and nodded. “I feel like doing a little writing.”