My Man Pendleton(74)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

For one long moment, Faith only gazed at Kit as if she’d lost her mind. Then her expression softened just the tiniest bit, and she dropped her gaze to the hands she folded stiffly on her desk. “Miss McClellan—”

“Kit.”

“Kit,” Faith conceded. She glanced back up and said, more evenly this time, “I appreciate your motives, but whatever happened between your brother and me is really none of your business.”

Kit eyed her thoughtfully for a moment in return before requesting, “Just tell me one thing.”

Faith dipped her head forward in consideration. “All right. If I can.”

“Do you like my brother?”

Faith hesitated before responding. At first, Kit thought she was going to try to lie about it, but surprisingly, the other woman nodded once, almost imperceptibly and said, “Yes. I like him very much.”

“Then why do you refuse to see him?”

This time Faith hesitated not at all. “You couldn’t begin to understand the reasons I can’t see your brother again.”

“Try me.”

Faith shook her head adamantly. “Unless you’ve lived with an alcoholic yourself you can’t possibly imagine—”

“I have lived with an alcoholic,” Kit interrupted again. “Holt started drinking when he was in high school, and it went on until just a couple of years ago. I saw the way he acted, heard the things he said. I understand completely what living with an alcoholic is like. It’s hell.”

Faith shook her head. “You didn’t fall in love with one. You weren’t married to one. You didn’t go one-on-one with him. You weren’t in a situation where you had no one but yourself to rely on, no one but yourself to find comfort in. You had your family there to help you cope.”

This time Kit was the one to answer crisply. “You obviously don’t know my family.” When Faith arched her eyebrows in surprise, Kit chuckled humorlessly. “I told you you’re not the only one who can play the wounded martyr.”

“You don’t know what went on in my marriage,” Faith pointed out, her voice softer now. “You can’t know what it was like. Stephen was…” She inhaled a shaky breath, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, she said, “There was a time in my life when I was a strong woman. I thought I could handle Stephen. I thought I could help him. I thought I could change him.” She met Kit’s gaze levelly. “I was wrong. And I paid for that. With my soul. He took it away from me, piece by piece, a little more every day, until there was just nothing of me left.”

Kit didn’t flinch. “I wouldn’t say there’s nothing left. You seem pretty hardy to me.”

Faith smiled sadly. “That’s because you don’t know me. You don’t know what I was like before.”

“I know enough to see you’re a woman who’s trying to come to terms with what happened to her. Who’s trying to put her life back together. You haven’t just given up on everything.”

“Haven’t I?”

Kit shook her head. “No. You haven’t. If you’d given up, you wouldn’t be working here now, trying to change something you see as wrong. You’re fighting, Faith. Can’t you see that? That’s what this organization does. It fights. And you’re a part of that.”

The look in Faith’s eyes became positively bleak, so dark, so cold, that Kit found herself wanting to physically reach out to her. “But there was a time in my life when I was so much more,” she said. “When I was—”

“That time is gone,” Kit interjected. “Whatever went on in your marriage, it affected you. It changed you. Accept that and know it’s over. Now it’s time to put that behind you and start new. To do that, you have to take chances. You have to have trust.” She smiled. “You have to have faith, Faith.”

When Faith said nothing to counter her assertion, Kit continued hopefully, “Look, Holt doesn’t make excuses for what he was when he was drinking. He knows what he did to his family, to his wife, to everyone he came into contact with. But he’s done his best to make amends. He got help, stopped drinking. He takes chances, has trust, has faith, every single day of his life. That’s how he’s getting through life. And sober, he’s a good man. He deserves a chance to prove that to someone he cares very much about.”

“I don’t dispute the fact that he’s a good man,” Faith said. But before Kit could pounce on her concession, she added quickly, adamantly, “When he’s sober. That’s the point. I don’t know what he’s like when he’s drunk. And I don’t want to find out.”

“You won’t ever see that side of him,” Kit vowed. “He’s not that man anymore, and he never will be again.”

“Can you guarantee he’ll never take another drink again, for the rest of his life?”

“Yes,” Kit assured her. “I can.”

Faith didn’t look convinced. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“No, I won’t forgive you.”

The other woman gaped at her. “Pardon me?”

“I said I won’t forgive you,” Kit repeated. “You could have someone in your life right now who genuinely cares for you, who could potentially love you, if you’d allow him to. Don’t you understand how important, how rare, that is? To be loved? Genuinely, truly loved?”

Faith shook her head. “No. I don’t know how important that is. It’s never happened to me.”

Kit nodded, fully understanding. “But it could happen to you, don’t you see? The possibility is there for you, if you’ll just open yourself up to it and let it happen. Not everyone has that opportunity, to be loved for the simple fact of who they are. But you do. And right now you’re just throwing it away without even giving it a chance. How dare you?”

Faith studied Kit for a long time in silence before she finally looked away. “Giving it a chance,” she said quietly, “could cost me everything I’ve gained since Stephen’s death. It’s not much, but it’s all I have to hold on to right now.”

“Not giving it a chance could cost you even more,” Kit said softly, sincerely. “You could have so much more to hold onto, and you wouldn’t be holding it by yourself. You don’t have to do it alone anymore. I don’t know what to say to make you understand how very precious that is—to have someone there to help you. Someone there to cling to. To love. To love you back. Forever.”