If Not for My Baby

by Kate Golden

Sometimes the only sane answer to an insane world is insanity.

“Clem?” “Hm?” He’s turned around, halfway down the hall. “Best of luck with your fella. Does anyone call you Clem?” I shake my head. “No, actually.” His brows raise slightly and he nods to himself. “Good.”

It’s my own fault—at some point I decided it was easier to be a dreamless person than a disappointed one. Except somewhere along the way, I became both.

“So what does ‘dating’ Tom Halloran look like, then?” He smirks down at his hands, wrapped softly around the epic poem. It’s like it was shrunk in the wash, so dwarfed by his grasp. “I could show you.”

“I do, though.” Halloran’s face bears such an expression of torment my chest starts to hurt. “Worry about you.” Now I’m confused. “Because of Grayson?” “Because I think of you nonstop. You’re legging it through my mind daily, Clem. You were long before I kissed you.” “What?” I think I physically stumble backward. “You’re not interested in me.” “I’m not?” A slight smile twists at the corner of his mouth. “You should tell my dreams that.”

“I have feelings for you, too.”

“A lot of them, actually,” I breathe. “So many it might be fracturing my brain. It’s definitely driving me to drink.” Tom’s lips quirk up at that, and I release a tiny portion of the air I’m holding in my lungs. “I’m not great at this, if you couldn’t tell. So you’ll have to be patient with me.” “You’re in luck. I’m a very patient man.” My blood thrums in my veins. “Good.” Tom’s lip curls up in a half smile. “Grand.”

He’s merely offering to be my hair tie.

Tom’s gaze is fierce with affection as he sips his water. He hasn’t stopped looking at me like that all night. Looking at me like he’s falling in love.

“Don’t worry,” I manage. “I’m not going to fall in love with you.” “Clem”—he sighs like I’ve pained him—“that’s just what I’m afraid of.” Before I can respond his lips have found mine.

“I think it means a lot to them, too.” “Thank you,” he murmurs after a beat. When I peer up, his eyes are as wintry green as ever. “What for?” He brushes his lips over the crown of my head as he says, “For bringing me back.”

Mike shakes his head. “You, Clementine, have a bad habit of beating the pain before it can beat you. I don’t reckon even you know why you do that, but I’d suggest looking into it. One day avoiding everything that could hurt you might just leave you with nothing at all.”

“Clementine? Have I done somethin’ to upset you?” Yes, I want to say. You made me fall in love with you.

In twenty-four hours, I’ll be back in Cherry Grove. It’s possible—likely, even—that I’ll never see any of these people again. Not Indy, not Molly, not even Lionel. That I might never see Tom again. Tom, whom I have fallen stupidly, gut-wrenchingly, head over heels in love with. Worst-case scenario has arrived, and she’s a doozy.

“But, Clementine…I fell in love with you that night in Raleigh. Right there beside that vending machine.” He shakes his head. “It never felt wrong.”

To be loved is to be known—the worst of you, the best of you.

And when he speaks again, I’m reminded how we got here. How his voice alone drew me to him like a siren’s call that terrifying day on a Greyhound bus heading for Memphis. His lyrical baritone. My home in a sound. “I’m yours.”

“Sweet as honey from the bee, is my fruit from the evergreen tree. Voice of a swallow, just as free, I only hear music when she’s with me.”