Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Lowyn squeezes Clover’s hands. “That would be amazing. Thank you so much. I owe you.”
Clover laughs that off. “You owe me nothing.” Then she twiddles her fingers goodbye while shootin’ me a smirk, and leaves back the way we came.
When the door closes and we’re alone, Lowyn lets out a sigh as she looks around. And I watch her as she takes it all in. It’s vintage in her sense of the word, but it’s old stuff. Antique shit. She walks over to the desk, pulls the chair out, and looks at it. There is a painting on the front of the chair back. Sleighs and horses or something. A kind of folk art painting from long-ago times.
“Somethin’ interesting about that chair, Low?”
She looks over at me while pointin’ to the chair. “What are the chances that we’d go a hundred miles away from the last Hitchcock chair I saw and find a match to the set in our long-term cottage rental at the Dixie Yonder? This is the very chair I was lookin’ for in your church.” She beams a smile at it, then looks back at me. “If I were an outlaw, I would steal this chair.”
The only possible reaction from me is a shake of my head and a laugh. Because, while she didn’t mean to, that sentence right there perfectly sums her up. If she were the kind of person who steals things, she would take a chair. Not someone’s money. Not anything to get power. Just an old chair that makes up a matching set.
She is good.
And I’m really not sure I deserve her.
This discrepancy in our morals bothers me. So I walk over to her, take her face in my hands—careful not to press hard against her red cheek—and look her in the eyes. “Lowyn McBride. When the trying times come, we will hold hands. And when the heavy times come, we will walk them together. And when the depressing times come, and you feel the burden of life to be so vast and wide that you feel forsaken, I will be there to carry you. No matter how long it takes or how far we must travel, I will carry you, Lowyn McBride. I will carry you.”
Her smile grows even wider and her eyes dance with happiness. “I know you will, Collin Creed. I know you will.”
Which is exactly how the Revival wedding vow goes.
I promise to carry her, and she promises to trust me.
My heart nearly stops when he makes his vow to me. And I almost can’t remember what my promise back is, even though it’s so short compared to his. But I manage it. I believe in him. That’s my part in all this wedding vow stuff. I will believe in him.
The people of Disciple have been making this wedding vow for over a hundred years now and every once in a while, someone will wander into my little tent and ask me about it. There is nothing about loving, or honoring, or respecting in there. There is no promise to be loyal.
Not those words, anyway.
And sometimes strangers have a hard time with that.
But the people where I come from understand that marriage isn’t really about love, or honor, or respect, or loyalty.
It’s about trust.
Collin Creed could promise me anything. To come home every night for dinner. To wash my hair on the weekends. To clean the dishes after I cook. It doesn’t matter what the promise is. The only thing that matters is that I believe him.
Marriage is about having one person in this world whose promise to you is law and your belief in them is absolute.
That’s the definition of love around here.
“I broke my promise to you, Low.”
“You hadn’t made one back then, Collin.”
“It’s not true and you know it. I might not have said those words, but I did make that promise. And then I forgot. I forgot what it meant to be me and I left.” He stares at me for a moment. “Jim Bob was making you pay those hill people, wasn’t he? He was taking your profit share and giving it to Blackberry Hill, wasn’t he?”
I nod. Because it’s true. “It was the only way Ike would let me go.”
Collin looks sad. Then he looks angry. And I know he’s thinking about today and not the past. About my red cheek, and the fact that he had to reveal himself to me. How he had to show me the best and worst of him in a single moment. And now he’s thinking about how they made me pay for a stupid mistake that I made when I was young, and sad, and feelin’ overwhelmed.
It’s not fair. None of it’s fair. It’s just life.
“I’m gonna get that money back, Low. Every fuckin’ penny of it.”