Danica Favorite - The Cowboy's Faith

The apartment wasn’t what you would call luxury lodgings, but Fernando had said he didn’t mind and had even promised to help fix it up. Which made Nicole feel like even more of a jerk for not welcoming him with open arms. He’d done everything he could to be nice, and she kept shoving him away.

But how did one welcome the reminder of your biggest mistakes with joy? He didn’t answer her knock on the door, and she remembered hearing that he’d wanted to take a walk later. When she let herself in, she saw him sound asleep, sprawled out on the bare mattress. She looked down at the bundle of sheets and blankets she’d brought. Moving as quietly as possible, she carried them to the dresser. But as she set them on top, Fernando yelled, “I didn’t do it! Leave me be.”

She turned, but Fernando was still fast asleep, tossing and turning on the bed.

“I didn’t tell. It wasn’t me! I promise, I didn’t help.”

He was having a bad dream. And from the way he thrashed about, it was a terrible one.

“Please. I beg you. Don’t do this. It wasn’t me.”

Should she wake him? She took a step toward him, and the board creaked.

Fernando sat bolt upright. “What?”

He seemed wide awake now.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just brought you some linens.”

He nodded slowly as he looked around the room.

“It’s all right,” she told him, wanting to comfort him like she did her nephews when they had nightmares, but not feeling so generous as to want to give him a cuddle the way she did with the boys.

Then he looked at her more closely. “You look like you just saw something terrifying. Was I talking in my sleep again?”

Nicole nodded slowly. “I wasn’t afraid of you, though. I was afraid for you. It seemed like you were having the most awful dream.”

He ran his fingers through his hair as he nodded. “ Sí. I mean, yes. What did I say?”

He looked so out of sorts, it seemed almost impossible to withhold compassion.

She walked over and sat on the edge of the bad, near him, but not next to him. “You can use Spanish around me if you want. Adriana did sometimes, and she was trying to teach me a few words.”

Then she shook her head. “I don’t know why I just said that. That was dumb of me.”

Especially the part about Adriana. She’d done her best to forget about her former best friend, and it was weird the way the memory came back up so quickly. Part of why she hadn’t wanted Fernando around in the first place. She didn’t need the reminders. But he was here now, and she had to deal with it.

He shook his head slowly. “Thanks. I don’t...”

Fernando seemed unsure of himself, hesitant. And she didn’t blame him. After all, she’d done everything she could to make him feel unwelcome, and now that he was clearly in the middle of something disturbing, he wouldn’t find her very comforting. And honestly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be that person for him.

“I’m sorry.” She stood, then gestured at the blankets. “I was going to try to soothe you or something, but I can’t imagine that you would feel comforted by me. I haven’t been very nice to you, and I don’t exactly have warm feelings toward you.”

Even as the admission came out, she knew there was one more thing she had to do. Not that she liked it much.

“My sisters say I owe you an apology,” she said.

“But you disagree.” There was no judgment in his voice, no anger. Just acceptance.

She shrugged. “Obviously.”

He nodded slowly as he yawned, then ran his hands over his face.

“Sorry. I guess I was more tired than I thought.” He stood, then came next to her. “Listen. You don’t owe me anything. But we do have to get to a place where we can stop rehashing the fact that you’re angry with me for not telling you about Adriana and Brandon and move forward to a place of understanding. I know forgiveness is hard, and I’m not asking you to do it right away. But it has to happen at some point, even if only for your own peace of mind. You know the quote about unforgiveness being like drinking poison while waiting for the other person to die?”

Factually, she knew all of this to be true. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that she was only hurting herself by not forgiving him. That God wanted her to forgive him. But there was so much injustice in the situation, and it didn’t seem right that no one had been held accountable to her for their actions.

“I get that. I do, I promise.” He’d been nothing but nice to her. Even Leah, who had always been angry on her behalf, was warming to him because of how nice he was.

“You just have to understand,” Nicole said. “I didn’t find out until I was on my way to the church to be married. The perfect man, the perfect friend, all at once, they were lost to me. And they died before I could even ask them why. Before I could confront them and tell them what a terrible thing it was that they did to me.”

“So you took it out on me instead.”

“It’s all I had.”

Her confession was more cathartic than she’d thought it would be. But she still needed answers.

“Even though we sort of agreed not to rehash this, in all the apologies you’ve given me, you’ve never told me why. Why didn’t you tell me about Adriana and Brandon?”

He looked down at the ground, then back up at her. “I didn’t think it was my place. I talked to Adriana, and I tried convincing her to do the right thing. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think she meant to hurt you. I think that’s why she wouldn’t tell you.”

He let out a long sigh, and for the first time, she recognized the torment on his face.

“Your niece had recently died, and so shortly after your brother-in-law’s death. Adriana told me that she didn’t think you would be able to handle it. She asked me to trust her. That she would take care of things, but I needed to be patient. I didn’t know what that meant. But where I come from, you stay out of other people’s business. Trust me when I say that butting in has cost me a lot in my life.”

She looked down at the ground, then back up at him.

Because she’d always refused to meet him, or even talk to him about this, she’d never seen this look of regret on his face. Never heard the pain in his voice.

All the times she’d hung up on him, refused to take his calls, raged against him, she’d missed seeing his level of brokenness. She’d never realized that as much as she had been hurting, he had been hurting, too.

Suddenly, Fernando’s decision to keep Adriana’s secret didn’t seem so awful. Just really unfair that she had to be the victim.

“I get it,” Nicole said. “You were caught in the middle. Between someone you loved and doing the right thing.”

He nodded slowly. “Keeping secrets is a terrible burden, but so is knowing who and what to tell. My only hope is that in time, you can forgive me, forgive them, and move on with your life.”

It should be easy for her to just say, “I forgive you,” but it wasn’t that simple. She could say the words, but she was a long way from feeling that peace in her heart.

“I’m not there yet,” she said, hoping that honesty was the best policy here. Of all the things she’d wished since she’d found out about Brandon and Adriana, her greatest desire had been for people to just be honest with her. It seemed like everyone danced around the truth, afraid of hurting people. And maybe the truth did hurt sometimes, but it always came out, and it seemed to hurt far more having it hidden so long.

“They make it sound easy in church, don’t they?” Fernando looked at her sympathetically, like it didn’t bother him to hear forgiveness wasn’t going to come easily. But considering she’d told him she’d hate him forever several times, he probably wasn’t expecting even this.