If it did, it couldn’t be much worse than his blood pouring out all over the supermarket floor, but she conceded the point. “Sure, and thanks.”
So when Wulfric opened his eyes a long time later as sunshine streamed through the open curtains, Tamara wore a bright blue blouse trimmed in lace and clean jeans. His dark eyes searched her face and she bent down to kiss him, her lips soft across his mouth. “Hi,” she said, bashful now.
“Hey,” he breathed. “Where are we?”
“You’re in the hospital, Wulfric.”
His brow wrinkled with confusion. “Why?”
“You were shot and lost a lot of blood. You scared me, really scared me.”
Wulfric’s expression changed and she thought he must remember everything. “Yeah? Well, seeing the guy holding a gun on you didn’t do a lot for me.”
“You saved me.” She didn’t know what else to say. All the pretty words she’d put together while waiting vanished now.
“’Cause I love you,” Wulfric told her. Maybe he shouldn’t be talking so much, maybe she shouldn’t say what she was about to in front of his mother and his sisters, but Tamara did.
“I know, and I love you, too, Wulfric,” she whispered. Tamara’s fingers stroked his cheek. “I always did, even when I tried to make you go away.”
His lips opened into a grin and he nodded. “I knew it.”
Any shyness evaporated as her natural sass returned. “You hoped so.”
“I never doubted it.”
And she believed him. Tamara opened her mouth to say more but his mother spoke first and Wulfric’s gaze turned toward her voice. She backed away from the bed as Helga nattered to her son in a mixture of German and English, as his sisters cooed and fussed over Wulfric. Tamara stared out the window into the sunlight of a fresh day, a new beginning and realized she’d never take anything for granted ever again.
By evening Wulfric sat propped up in bed, pillows behind his back, still pale but he radiated happiness. Tamara held his hand and his fingers wound tight around hers. She had him all to herself after his family headed home and she suspected they realized how much she needed to be alone with Wulfric. “How do you feel?” Tamara asked him for the fiftieth time.
“I’m fine, just kind of weak,” he replied, same answer he’d given each time. “But I’m happier than I’ve ever been, honey.”
“I love you,” she told him. Once she admitted it, she couldn’t stop saying it, but he hadn’t complained about it yet. “I always did but when I thought you might die, I realized how wrong I was not to say it––not to tell you.”
“Forget it,” Wulfric told her. “I always thought you did, Tamara, and I love you. Our night together, it gave me the will to live. I don’t know what happens when I walk out of here but you’ll be with me so it doesn’t matter. Nothing does but being together.”
He nailed it, she realized, the truth she’d missed for two long years. When his blood poured out of his chest, Tamara understood where he worked wasn’t important at all. Neither was what town they called home. In the long hours since with time heavy and slow, she’d also decided her parents weren’t her responsibility. She could love them without remaining caught in the hell they’d created together and if they wanted help, she’d offer a hand. Anthony’s death would always be tragic, but it wasn’t her fault. She’d made the choice – she would live, too, on her own terms with Wulfric.
“Remember when I said I’d stay the night?” she asked him now.
“Yeah, I do.”
“And you said ‘forever’?”
“I did.”
“I’d like to give it a shot,” Tamara told him. “So when you get out of here, I’d like to go home with you to stay.”
His face flushed red with pleasure. “That’s what I’m counting on, Tamara. There’s just one catch, though.”
“What is it?”
“You can’t change your mind.”
“I won’t.” And she knew she wouldn’t.
The door opened from the hallway and a nursing assistant carried in a huge bouquet of crimson roses. “Oh, how pretty,” Tamara cried. “I wonder who sent them to you, Wulfric.”
“They’re not mine,” he told her. “They’re for you, from me.”
Tamara cradled the flowers in her arms and inhaled the sweet fragrance of the red roses.
Red no longer stood for anger or fear but it would be her favorite color forever: the brilliant scarlet, the bright-cherry hue of love.
“Thank you,” she told him. “Wulfric, I love you.”
And she did, for keeps. He didn’t even have to say it because her heart knew the truth of it. He loved her too.
The End