Page 31 of A Mustang River Christmas

“Yes. She... She doesn’t want you to feel guilty anymore, Pike. She admires you so much.”

“That’s really beautiful. And kind of scary. To know that another human being esteems your life when you’re not sure there’s a whole lot to be proud of.”

“But there is.”

“I’m trying to look at it that way. I’m realizing that I have to forgive myself. That I can’t live in the past. It’s tempting to do, when you’re scared of yourself.”

“Are you scared of yourself, Pike?”

“Of course I am. When you know how badly you can fuck up, you ought to be a little bit.”

“But we all can. Seriously, any one of us. Maybe not all in the same ways, but we all can. The stakes in my life have never been as high as yours. I haven’t had people depending on me. But I wouldn’t say that I’ve been the best partner, the best friend, the best daughter. I mean, my parents were difficult, but...”

“But what? Parents are supposed to take care of their kids, and if they don’t, and they don’t end up having a relationship with them, that’s kind of on them. If Chloe had never wanted to have a relationship with me, she would have been well within her rights.”

“Well, there’s a pretty big difference between you and my parents,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, they’ve never admitted that they did anything wrong. They’ve always been themselves. There was no big incident that sent them spiraling or anything like that. They’re just self-involved people, and having a child was sort of just what they did. I don’t think they were actually happy about it. I don’t think they took joy in it. It was just that they got married, and it was a natural next step. They had me, and no more, because I think they decided that it was deeply overrated.”

“I don’t understand that. I had Chloe, and I knew that I had to do everything that I could to take care of her. To be somebody that she could be proud of. And I think some of that got twisted up along the way, tangled around my own ambition⁠—”

“She admires your ambition. She doesn’t remember those years the same way that you do. She remembers watching you work and being inspired by you.”

He looked a little bit like she had hit him upside the head.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. I think she looks up to you a whole lot more than you realize.” She swallowed. “She looks up to her mom too. She’s proud of both of you. She’s just a really wonderful, well-adjusted human being, and I know that the two of you did some things really right with her.”

“Thank you for acknowledging her mom. We might not be together anymore, and we’re not in love, but I will always love her. And appreciate her for everything she did. I’ll always care about her because she’s Chloe’s mom.”

She realized then that she wasn’t jealous. Not anymore. It actually just made her feel even more strongly about Pike. He was such a deep, caring human being. There was plenty to admire in that.

“She did mention that you hate her boyfriend.”

Pike threw his head back and laughed. “I really do. That little punk. He doesn’t support her. Not in the way that I want to see.”

“Then I don’t like him either,” Laney said.

Pike looked at her and smiled. Then he leaned in and kissed her. Slow and sweet.

Her heart began to flutter. “We should probably finish up here, because I’m probably not allowed to use this space for what I actually want to use it for now,” he said.

“Since when do you follow rules?”

“Regrettably, that’s kind of part of the radical honesty thing.”

“Pike, I really admire your commitment to that, but you have never told anybody the truth about yourself here.”

“Nobody asks. It’s fine as long as nobody asks. But they know that I’m using this to have a picnic with you and if they ask how it is and I have to tell them that I claimed you underneath the Christmas tree then we may have a problem.”

“I gotcha. Plausible deniability?”

“I like to have at least a little.”

She sighed, and sat back on the blanket, picking up another piece of cheese. “This is... can I call it romantic?”