All of You (20 page)

I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m not,” I
whispered. “I can’t stand thinking about the look on your face if
you knew how revolting my scars are. You would have eventually left
me anyway, I was just trying to spare some heartache.”

“Jillian, there’s no sparing my heartache. If
you leave me now, I promise you my heart will be broken. I don’t
want to be apart from you. And someday you’ll believe me when I
tell you how beautiful you are. Because you are, Princess.”

He pulled me into a hug, and we stood like
that for a while. His words didn’t make me feel any better now that
I had shared my deepest secret. I was still uneasy about our
future. I knew eventually he would be disgusted by me and he would
leave me. “Will you come home with me? Please?” I didn’t answer and
Lincoln rushed to reassure me. “It won’t be like last night. I’ll
keep my hands to myself. I just don’t want to leave you here like
this tonight and not see you until Monday.”

I sniffed and pulled away from him. My
emotions were all over the place. I wanted to be happy with
Lincoln, but I was afraid of rejection and being humiliated.

Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to collect
my thoughts. He knew I was scarred now. He just didn’t know the
extent of how scarred I was—both physically and emotionally.

“Lincoln, you’re not listening. I am not good
enough for you. I will never be good enough.” I walked away from
him again. He didn’t understand. “It’s not just my scars, Lincoln.
I try to be a good, happy person, but it never seems like it’s
enough. I’m not good with relationships. I don’t have any friends.
People don’t want to be around me. I do not understand why you are
pushing this so hard. You will eventually get sick of me and leave
me like everyone else has. It’s not worth it.”

“Stop it. Stop it, Jillian. You’ve been
through so much, but that doesn’t mean you are allowed to speak
about yourself that way. If I could take all your pain away, baby,
I would. But then you wouldn’t be this strong, amazing, beautiful
woman standing in front of me.”

“I’m so afraid of the moment when you figure
out how disgusting I am,” I finally admitted to him.

Lincoln walked up behind me and spun me
around to face him. He gently pushed me against the wall and softly
pinned me there with his body. He cupped my cheek with his hand.
“If you don’t stop talking about my girlfriend that way, I’m going
to get extremely upset.” A small smile played on his lips.
“Jillian, I will never hurt you. I can’t tell you what the future
will bring but I know you will always be beautiful to me. I will
never hurt you or humiliate you and the only thing about you that I
will get sick of is this attitude you have about yourself. You are
amazing, Princess.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against
the wall behind me. His words were so hard to hear.

Lincoln continued, “I wish I could show you
how much you mean to me, how precious you are. You don’t seem to
realize how rare it is to find someone like you. You see the good
in everyone but yourself. You’re smart, and funny, and kind. You’re
like a priceless jewel, Jillian. You make me want to be a better
person so I might almost have a chance at being good enough for
you. I’m so lucky to have found you.”

I absorbed his words and let them soak in. I
knew how difficult it was to find someone who was truly good and
kind in this world. I wrapped my arms around Lincoln’s waist and
laid my head against his hard chest. “I feel the same way about
you,” I admitted as I held him tight.

Lincoln breathed a sigh of relief and
enveloped me in his arms. He held me tight and kissed the top of my
head. “I’m so relieved to hear you say that.”

We stood like that for a long moment. “Will
you come home with me? I promise to bring you back here at any
time,” he asked.

I thought for a moment and then nodded
against his chest. “Thank God,” Lincoln said quietly and rubbed my
back, comforting me.

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s so beautiful.” I stood in front of
Lincoln’s glass wall, looking out, admiring Mother Nature’s beauty.
The setting sun reflected off the icy lake, and the cloudless blue
sky was a blaze of orange and yellow.

“With you standing here, it is.” Lincoln
wrapped his arms around me from behind. I shook my head, rolled my
eyes, and leaned back against him, but I didn’t argue with him.
“Will you do something with me?” he asked quietly into my ear.

I turned around to look at him. “What do you
want to do?” I asked, curiously.

“Come on,” he said and took my hand, pulling
me to the attached garage. This part of his house hadn’t been
included in the tour he gave me the first time I was here. The
garage was neat and orderly. It wasn’t the type of garage where men
fixed broken-down cars; this was a garage for storing Lincoln’s
toys. Two snowmobile machines sat close to one of the garage doors.
A fancy silver sports car sat parked near the other one. I didn’t
know what type of car it was, except expensive. There was also a
four-wheeler, a small fishing boat, and two personal wave runners
resting on a trailer in the back.

“Wow. Nice… stuff.” I didn’t know what else
to call this collection.

Lincoln smirked and hit a button that opened
the overhead door where the snowmobiles were parked. “Wanna go for
a ride?” he asked with a look of excitement on his face.

“The snowmobiles? I’ve never been on a
snowmobile,” I admitted. I thought my brother, Elliott, owned one,
but he had never taken me out.

“It’s okay. I’ll go slow.” He looked so
hopeful. I nodded and Lincoln’s face erupted with a smile.

~~~~~~~~

“Okay, put your feet here,” he said, pointing
to a ledge on the side of the snowmobile. The machine seemed so
much larger now that I was on it. “I’m going to pull the cord to
start it, and once I climb on, hold on to me, okay?” From under my
helmet, I nodded up at him. “And don’t fall off the back, baby,” he
joked.

Lincoln had lent me some proper winter
clothes, including boots, snow pants, and a heavy coat. I was
drowning in his clothing, but at least I would be warm.

“I don’t even have words for how great you
look sitting there wearing my clothes,” he had told me after I
climbed on, causing me to blush.

Lincoln pushed some buttons, flipped a lever,
and yanked the cord with a mighty pull. The machine underneath me
roared to life, and Lincoln crawled on in front of me. I grabbed
his shoulders and clenched his coat tight. Lincoln shifted and
reached back for one of my hands. He moved it so my arm wrapped
around his chest. I smiled and moved my other arm and squeezed him
tight.

“Ready?” Lincoln hollered back to me. I
nodded, and Lincoln flipped his helmet visor down and turned back
to the front. He revved the engine a few times and eventually eased
slowly out of the garage.

We took off down his property toward the
lake. I bounced on the back of the sled and squeezed my arms and
legs tighter around him. Lincoln drove next to the lake for a
while, and I looked out over the water. By this point in the
evening, the moon had risen and stars were coming out and were
reflecting off the icy lake. It was eerily beautiful.

I felt the snowmobile speed up underneath us,
and the distance between us and the lake decreased. Lincoln was
steering the sled closer to the ice. I gripped him tighter and
squeezed my thighs against his hips as we crossed onto the frozen
surface. He drove out on the ice for a short while until Lincoln
abruptly wrenched the handlebars to the right causing the back end
to skid around and slide on the ice. I squealed and clutched
Lincoln tighter as we did a 360-degree spin.

A laugh erupted from Lincoln as the sled
stopped. “Again?” he shouted over the noise from the engine. I
squeezed my arms against his chest in reply, and he revved the
engine and the machine took off over the ice once again.

This time Lincoln cranked the handlebars to
the left, and we spun in a circle in the opposite direction. He
didn’t let up on the gas at the end of the spin like before, and he
alternated between spinning and driving straight to gain speed. It
was fun and invigorating, and being this close to Lincoln,
listening to his deep laugh, made my blood pump fast.

When I had lost count of how many circles we
made on the ice, Lincoln steered us back toward the shore. But
instead of turning to go to his house like I thought, Lincoln
directed the snowmobile toward a small trail that was cut through
the thick woods.

The earlier snowmobiling was a cakewalk
compared to this. This trail was full of bumps and twists and
drifts of snow on the trail that caused us to be pulled in every
direction. Eventually we made it into a clearing overlooking the
lake.

Lincoln killed the engine and pulled himself
out of my grasp by standing and getting off the sled. He removed
his helmet and offered a hand to help me off the machine.

The clearing was elevated slightly over the
lake, and I looked out over the massive body of water in front of
us as I pulled my helmet off, hoping my hair wasn’t a hideous mess.
I could see a few lights from other houses between the tall pine
tress dotting the shore of the lake. The stars and moon reflected
off the ice, and I felt as if we were standing in a pool of deep
blue sky with twinkling lights above and below us.

“This is amazing, Lincoln,” I said, turning
to look at him and finding him already staring at me.

He stepped closer to me and removed his
gloves. He moved my hair back behind my ear and ran a finger down
my jaw line.

“I wish you could see yourself how I see you,
Princess. You would not call this amazing when compared to you.”
His eyes burned into mine, and I had to look away.

“When you say things like that, it makes me
feel totally unworthy of you,” I admitted to him.

“No, baby. Please don’t feel that way. I just
want you to know how precious you are to me,” he said and cupped my
cheek with his hand.

“Lincoln, I’m going to take a lot of work. I
want to be with you, but I’m incredibly terrified. I can’t promise
I won’t freak out again.”

“If you want to be with me, then nothing else
matters, Princess. We’ll make it work. We’ll figure it out. I know
how strong you are. I know you are strong enough overcome all the
pain in your past. I will help you fight whatever you’re afraid of.
And I will do whatever it takes to make you happy, baby, because
you deserve it. You just have to be honest with me, okay? No more
hiding. No more running. Okay?”

“I will never be able to tell you what an
incredible man you are, Lincoln.” I lifted up on my toes and tilted
my chin up. He wrapped his arms around my waist and brought his
lips down to mine. We kissed briefly before Lincoln suggested we
head back.

I climbed back on the snowmobile and wrapped
my arms around his chest once more. As Lincoln drove us back to his
house, I thought about how terrified I had been last night at the
thought of him discovering my scars. Now he knew about them. I
wondered how he would react when… if… he finally saw them. Knowing
him, he would act like they didn’t matter. He would still tell me
he thought I was beautiful. I was smart enough to know that
wouldn’t be the truth. I sighed to myself and clutched him tighter.
I was going to have faith in him and trust him. He deserved as
much.

~~~~~~~~

“What time is your flight tomorrow?” I asked
Lincoln as I walked into his man cave after changing clothes. We
had returned from our outing, and he hadn’t made any indication
that it was time for me to leave.

He had given me some old sweatpants and a
T-shirt to wear so I would be comfortable after I changed out of
his snowmobile clothes. I had to pull the drawstring on the pants
as tight as possible and cuff the hem at least four times. The
T-shirt sleeves came to my elbows and the neckline hung off one
shoulder but it worked. I liked wearing his clothes. It made me
feel close to him even if we weren’t there yet physically.

“Baby, are there any clothes you don’t look
beautiful in?” he asked as he saw me for the first time wearing his
sweats. He had changed into flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt, and
I wondered what we were doing for the rest of the night.

I blushed and tugged on the bottom of the
shirt. “They’re a little big,” I said stating the obvious.

“I’ll get you some that fit better,” Lincoln
said.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I
objected.

“Jillian, don’t argue.”

I relented, rolling my eyes. He grabbed my
hand as he walked to the couch. He collapsed into it and pulled me
down to sit sideways on his lap, draping one arm over my legs and
winding the other one around my lower back.

“So what time is your flight?” I repeated and
snuggled into his chest.

He tightened his grip on me. “Early,” he said
sounding uncomfortable.

“How early?”

He sighed. “Seven.”

“Your flight leaves at seven a.m.??” I asked,
pulling back to look into his eyes. He nodded. “What happened to
you not being a morning person?”

“Oh, I’m still not a morning person, but I
didn’t want to leave tonight.”

“Was that an option?” I asked, confused.

He nodded. “Most of the team left tonight,
but I didn’t want to leave you.” I looked at him with confusion.
“Jillian, you weren’t answering your phone. I had a moment of
panic. I wasn’t going to leave you if you were thinking about
kicking me to the curb.”

“You’re getting up at the butt crack of dawn
tomorrow so you could spend the evening with me?” I was
astounded.

“Don’t leave. Stay with me tonight. I’ll
behave myself. I just don’t want to be apart from you yet.” His
eyes pleaded with me.