don’t need are promises from the living. Because their concerns aren’t here. I’m not saying I know what Clint would’ve wanted or not wanted from me or Ellie. I just know that we’re the ones that are here having to live. That she’s the love of my life. And I’m the love of hers, as hard as it was for her to admit that. I get it. She and I railed against more than one ghost. But we found love with each other. And that’s a beautiful thing. And it’s worth the fight. It’s about the only thing I can think of that is.”
“So what should I do? Go to her door and beat it down?”
“No. But you seem to think that she’s the strongest, smartest, best woman around. And if that’s true...she’s going to come to these conclusions on her own. Even though they’re hard.
“What can I do for her?” West asked.
“Well. I suppose you could always submit a personal statement to the city manager. To the mayor. About all she’s done to help Emmett.”
“Yes,” West said. “I can do that.”
“And then I suppose Gabe and I could do the same. Talk about what she did for the kids here.”
“All right,” he said.
“And you still might not get her back, you know. Even if she does get the job.”
“I know that,” West said, his chest feeling tight. “But she deserves the job whether she chooses me in the end or not.
“You really do love her.”
“I know,” West said. “What a way to find out that I can love like this. It’s kind of a bitch.”
“Yeah, this part of it kind of is. But when you get it back, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”
“But I might not get it back.”
“That’s the risk. It’s always the risk. That’s why you don’t do it till you find the person worth all that risk.”
And West knew that no matter what happened, that person for him was Pansy.
Whether in the end she broke his heart or not, he wanted her to have her dreams.
For the first time ever, the dreams of another person felt more important than his own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PANSY PRACTICALLY SNUCK into Iris’s room, creeping up the stairs and dashing into her older sister’s room.
Eventually, she supposed she would have to talk to everybody. About the job.
She would have to admit that she had messed up. And somehow not talk about West.
Sammy and Rose would want to know.
But Iris... Iris was the one that Pansy felt most closely understood her.
“What’s going on?” Iris asked when they were safely ensconced in the private space.
“I ruined everything.”
The whole story came pouring out of her. Down to West saying that he loved her.
He loved her.
The very idea made her heart pinch.
“You sent him away?” Iris asked.
“I can’t accept it. I can’t. Look at how I messed up the interview because of all this distraction.”
“If you’re not going to get the job why not at least take the man?” Iris was looking at her genuinely incredulously.
“Because I can’t. Because I don’t... I don’t deserve him,” she said, the words slipping out, surprising her.
“You don’t deserve him? How can you think that?”
“You remember what I was like when I was a kid,” Pansy said. “How I misbehaved all the time. How I... You probably don’t remember this, but Dad got so angry at me before they left. And I hid from him. And it’s the last memory that I have. It was the last he ever knew of me. And I just wanted it to be different. I wanted to be different.”
“Pansy,” Iris said. “You were a little girl.”
“I built my whole life around this. Around needing to be good.”
“Why?” Iris asked. “Do you really think that he would’ve been mad at you for the rest of your life for doing something naughty when you were a child? Do you really think he died thinking what a bad girl you were?”
“I don’t know,” Pansy said.
“I think you do,” Iris said. “I think you do. Is that all you remember about Dad? Him being disappointed in you? Because I remember him being really proud of you, Pansy. I remember him laughing at your jokes. And thinking you were so silly and so clever. I remember one time you drew a picture of him in his uniform and he had it on the fridge for months. Ryder didn’t take it down until...way after they died. I remember one time we went on a walk around the property,