Until You (The Redemption, #1)(81)

“And?”

“And I’m so much more than that. I thought the shootout, this delay in getting back, the goddamn shit in my head, was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I was wrong. I think it just might be the best.”

“Okay. Um . . .”

“It made me sit back and look at life through a different lens. A different perspective. It also made me make a change of scenery. I thought I was doing it for my girls, for their mental health, but it ended up being exactly what I needed too.”

Silence hangs on the line for a few moments. “I don’t quite know what to say, Crew, other than I’m so pleased for you. You sound truly . . . happy.”

“I am.” I run a hand through my hair and look out the upstairs window with perfect timing to see Tenny with her arms around each one of my girls’ shoulders. Talking to them. Laughing with them. I smile as she gets behind the wheel of her car to head to the store.

I’m fine with non-answer answers.

I’m perfectly content with her being my non-girlfriend girlfriend.

The plan someday is to make her my non-wife, wife.

But baby steps.

That much I know.

“So you can cancel my appointments that are already booked. I don’t need clearance to come back to the force because I’m not coming back. This is the time for new beginnings, Doc, and I’m about to start mine.”

I give a mental fist pump, my mind more than scattered as we finish our conversation. And when we do, I take a few minutes to let the adrenaline and panic that rushes through me subside.

I just did that.

I really just did.

I pick up my cell again and dial.

“I was wondering how long it was going to take you.”

My grin is automatic.

The sound of his voice alone tells me I’m doing the right thing.

The only thing.

The thing that’s best for me.





CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE


Tennyson




We haven’t addressed the elephant in the room.

What happens when Crew heads back to Chicago? To his real life. To everything that’s not me.

When we fell into whatever this is between us, I was certain he understood that anything more than fun was off-limits for me. That I can’t feel how he feels. But the “We’ll figure it out,” he said after we made love on Founder’s Day still hangs in the smothered air around us.

And it does nothing to abate everything rioting around inside of me nor the discord over knowing there is nothing that can really be figured out.

The complex game of betrayal my own heart is playing on me is strong. To feel the love you have but deny yourself of it all at the same time.

I don’t want him to go back to Chicago. God, I don’t think my heart can take that.

But in the same breath, if he goes back, then this life of mine, this past of mine, can’t put him and the girls in danger.

On the flip and more than ironic side, isn’t being with Crew the reason I feel that having a real life, a life full of love and laughter with someone else, is possible?

I hate to dream but live to dream for it.

For waking up with the girls giggling downstairs, squabbling over what’s for breakfast while Crew hands me a cup of coffee and grants me that quiet smile of his.

Normalcy.

Simplicity.

Stolen kisses in pantries.

Slow dances on living room floors.

Sunsets in comfortable silence.

Tangled sheets and soft sighs.

Unconditional love.

A life everyone deserves but that I never thought I’d get to have again.

Is it too much that I want to be selfish for once? That I deserve the chance to be?

I love him.

Plain.

Simple.

I love him, and I need him to know.

Quite the revelation when I’m standing in the snack aisle at Target. But I don’t care. I throw my head back and laugh. I’m in love. He loves me.

We’ll figure this out.

Isn’t that how love works?

Forget the chips. I need to get home.

I leave my basket in the chip and cracker aisle and start heading through the store, distracted in thought and filled with a hope I haven’t felt in the longest time.

Crew.

Addy.

Paige.

They’re my hope.

I dig in my purse for my phone as I pass the electronics section, and when I look up, I stop dead in my tracks.

Rangi.

Agent Halston.

His face is mirrored on every single television for sale that lines the walls.

I stand there dumbfounded as I read the subtitles on the screen. Words like brutal murder, hunted down, revenge killing, scream at me from their two-dimensional world. No. No, this can’t be happening. Fuck. He found Rangi . . . Tom.

To other shoppers, I must look like a deer caught in the headlights. Scared. Transfixed. Waiting for the worst to come.

And then the time that felt like it was in slow motion suddenly feels like it’s slamming into me in fast forward.

I run out of the store, my phone unsteady in my trembling hands as I search for more. A horn blasts, making me jump. I’m so preoccupied I almost walked in front of a car. I don’t stop, though. I keep going until I slide behind the wheel of my Jeep and lock the doors.