A Wedding To Remember

Her entreaty was faint and laced with uneasiness. Savannah had always been a “pull the Band-Aid off quick” kind of person. She didn’t like to draw things out.

Bruce had spent the last two years fighting like cats and dogs with this woman, and now all he wanted to do was protect her from the pain they had willingly caused each other. He dropped his head for a moment and shook it. The only way out was forward.

“For the last couple of years, we’ve been going through a divorce,” Bruce finally mustered the guts to tell her. The sound of her sharp intake of breath brought his eyes back to hers. The look in her eyes could only be described as stunned.

Savannah looked down at their hands, at their wedding rings. She swallowed several times, her eyes filling with unshed tears, before she asked, “You weren’t wearing your ring. When I first saw you. You weren’t wearing it. Are we even...married?”

He held on to her hand even though it seemed as if she were already trying to pull it away. How many times had he wished for a second chance with Savannah? He hadn’t wanted it this way—never this way—but he would be a fool to let her slip away from him a second time without putting up one heck of a fight.

“We’re still married,” he reassured her. It wasn’t important, right at this moment, for Savannah to know just how close they had come to ending their marriage.

“I don’t remember...” Savannah stopped midsentence, tears slipping unchecked onto her cheeks.

“It’s going to be okay, Savannah.” He felt impotent to console her. There weren’t words that could make this right for her.

Savannah stared at him hard, with a look of distrust in her eyes. “How can you say that? We’ve split up, but it’s going to be fine? Why would you want a divorce? What happened to us?”

When he didn’t answer right away, she tugged her fingers loose from his hold.

“Tell me why.”

How could he explain the last several years of their marriage in a sentence or two? There were things that they had all agreed that Savannah didn’t need to know right now.

“I didn’t file for divorce, Savannah. You did.”

Bewildered, she stared into his eyes, seeming to be searching for answers. “I did? Why? Why would I do that?”

“We had a lot of problems we just couldn’t seem to work out,” he told her honestly.

Savannah covered her face with her hands. In a muffled voice, she said, “I just want to go home.”

Bruce moved to her side; sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her hands down from her face and tugged her gently into his arms so he could comfort her in the only way he knew how. He ran his hand over the back of her hair, the way she always liked him to do, and was relieved that, instead of drawing away from him, Savannah leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Come home to me, Savannah.” Bruce hugged his wife, his eyes closed.

Savannah broke the embrace and studied his face, looking directly into his eyes again when she asked him, “Do you still love me?”

The cowboy answered firmly and without any hesitation, “Yes, Beautiful. Yes, I do.”

Chapter Two (#ud8f01039-7dcf-54c7-b406-718b5a999281)

“So, this is over.” Kerri had been sitting across from him at her small kitchen table, not saying a word, arms crossed in front of her body.

Bruce sat stiffly in the chair opposite Kerri. He’d never felt truly comfortable at Kerri’s table—the chairs were too small, the table too low. Today, he felt uncomfortable for a whole new set of reasons.

“I’m sorry.” He apologized for the second time. His apology may have sounded hollow to Kerri’s ears, but it was sincere. If he’d known that he had even a fraction of a shot of winning Savannah back, he’d never have rekindled his old high school romance with Kerri. He wasn’t in the business of breaking hearts for the fun of it.

“You’re sorry.” Kerri made a little sarcastic laugh as she looked out the kitchen window. “Well, that makes it all better then, doesn’t it?”

Bruce stared at the woman he’d cared about for most of his life. Her forgiveness could be a long time coming.

Bruce stood up and grabbed his hat off the table. “I’d better go.”

Kerri didn’t look at him. She gave a small, annoyed shake of her head, but she refused to look at him even as he opened the door to leave.

“If you ever need me, I’m just a phone call away.” Bruce paused in the entranceway, the door half-open.

Kerri hadn’t said a word, hadn’t looked his way once, and there were tears flowing freely onto her cheek.

“Take care of yourself,” Bruce said before he ducked out of the door, choked up at the sight of Kerri’s tears. He cared an awful lot about Kerri. He always had. But Savannah was his heart.

* * *

“Home!” Savannah exclaimed as she walked through the back door of the modest log cabin they had designed and built together. “I’m finally home!”

Bruce had never thought to hear those words come out of his wife’s mouth again. He followed her into the mudroom, carrying in each hand two heavy suitcases packed by her family. They were greeted by three dogs, mutts all, tails wagging, barking excitedly. Savannah immediately fell to her knees and hugged the large dogs around their necks, calling two of the dogs by name, and laughing as the rescue mutts knocked her backward while fighting for the chance to lick her on the face.

Bruce dropped the suitcases with a loud thud so he could intervene. “Whoa, sit, boys!”

“I’m okay.” Savannah reassured him, now sitting cross-legged on the wood floor, her arms still wrapped around Buckley’s furry neck. “I’ve missed you guys so much!”

Savannah had never shied away from the dogs giving her a tongue bath on her face, not since the first day she had come out to Sugar Creek. Bruce decided to join in on the reunion instead of trying to control it. He rubbed Buckley between the ears, his favorite spot, while Savannah showed some individual love and attention to Murphy.

With a happy laugh, Savannah turned her attention to the dog he had rescued off the side of the road. “And who are you?”

“That’s Hound Dog.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Hound Dog.” His wife smiled at the tan-and-black dog with long floppy ears before she turned her eyes his way. “How long have we had him?”

Bruce stood up and held out his hand to help his wife onto her feet.

“I haven’t had him for all that long. Six months, maybe. Found him on the side of I-90, dehydrated, half-starved. An infection in one of his paws so bad the vet thought we might have to amputate.”

Bruce rubbed Hound Dog’s head. “It shows you what a little love can do.”

Savannah gazed up at him with an appreciative look in her eyes. She tucked her hand under his arm and leaned into his side. “You’ve never been able to ignore an animal in need.”

Instinctively, his body tensed. Yes, he had become used to holding Savannah’s hand in the hospital, and, yes, he still loved her. But he was having a difficult time accepting all of those little intimate touches that were a part of married life. It had been years since Savannah wanted to touch him; post-accident, Savannah seemed to want to touch him all the time, like she had when they were first married. It was unnerving.

Bruce tried not to be obvious when he took a step away from her. “Let’s get you settled.”

Once in the master bedroom, he hoisted the two suitcases, one at a time, onto their queen bed. Savannah had opened the door to the cedar-lined walk-in closet and strode inside. He found her standing in the center of the closet, quietly staring at all of the empty rods and shoe racks on what had been her side of the closet.

“Everything okay?”

The color had drained from her face; her arms were crossed tightly in front of her body. Her slender shoulders were slumped forward, and she seemed to be emotionally swallowed up much in the same way her torso was swallowed up by the sweatshirt she had insisted on wearing home. “I really left.”

It was a statement, even though there was a question in her voice. She wanted to know what had happened—she wanted to know why she had left. But they had all agreed—her doctors, her family—that it would be better on Savannah to wait a couple of weeks before that subject was broached.