because I’ve prayed every night for the last eleven months for a chance to make things right with you. You’ve haunted me, Katie, in a way no woman ever has before.”
“Make things right?”
I nodded and brushed a stray hair from her face. “The morning after I sent you away, I looked you up on the computer. Flynn had rented the rooms, so I had no way of knowing your real name. I went to your room, but you were gone. I was far too embarrassed to ask Flynn or Freddie, so I decided I had to let you go. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t do it. It was simply impossible to let you go. Every time a woman walked by me, I searched her face, hoping it was you. Every time you crossed my mind I saw all the women I didn’t send away from my hut.”
“Were there a lot of them?” she asked, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Enough for me to realize what I was getting from them was never going to be what I needed. I never took the time to look any of them up afterwards, and I had slept with them. The heaviness of that realization weighed heavily on my chest. However, the disappointment that every woman I saw wasn’t you was bone crushing. Each time a woman tried to catch my eye I forced myself to evaluate my life as it stood. Each time I walked away from them, because their face wasn’t yours, their scent wasn’t yours, and their body wasn’t yours. You made that change in me in less than an hour of time we spent together. I knew the time had come to decide what kind of man I wanted to be.”
“And what was your verdict?” she asked, her wide blue eyes shining in the low light of the brass lamp.
“That I wasn’t the kind of man worthy to be with someone like you.”
“Gideon, really,” she started to fuss, but I held my finger to her lips.
“It was true, then. I wasn’t the man I should have been at thirty-six, not by a long shot. Yes, I was a great businessman, but I had a lot to learn.”
“About?”
“Life, Katie. I had a lot to learn about the reality of life. Shortly after our encounter, my mom got sick. We both decided to make Hawaii our home for however much time she had left. It wasn’t long, but we spent her last days on the beach together. Every morning and every night I was the one to carry her down to the sand so she could rest in the warmth it held. Sometimes she told me stories about when I was a little boy, and sometimes she told me stories about when she was a little girl. I listened with my heart, so when she slept I could write it all down while I prayed.”
She reached up, slowly pulling my glasses from my face so she could caress the lines at the corner of my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I shook my head and captured her hand, kissing her palm. “Don’t be sorry. I learned so much about myself, and my family, in those few months I took care of her. Believe me when I say I wish I hadn’t had to hurt you in order to learn how to pray again. I wish my mother didn’t have to suffer the way she did for me to find faith again, but it was important to her that I did.”
“Rosie told me you weren’t a devout Mormon,” she mumbled, breaking eye contact.
I took her face in my hand pulling it back to mine, so she had no choice but to look at me. “I’m not, but my mother didn’t so much care what my religious affiliation was, as much as she cared that I found God again. Cancer is an evil disease, and an eye-opening one. It teaches you the difference between being something versus believing in something. I don’t consider myself Mormon, or any other religion for that matter. The lessons cancer taught me were how to find the importance of faith without the insistence that it can only be accomplished one way.”
I nodded. “I understand that idea in ways you may never understand.”
I caressed her face while I smiled down at her, the sweetness of her lips begging me to suck the nectar from them again.
“That’s the point I’m trying to make, Katie. I want to