chapter Thirteen
Amberly awoke to the dawn light spilling in through the hospital window. Her first thought was for Max, and her second was for Cole.
She remembered Cole telling her that Max was safe, and although she wondered where he was at the moment, she knew wherever he was, he was okay, and that was all that mattered to her.
Even though she felt as if she’d been run over by a truck, she wasn’t in the city park, dead with a dream catcher hanging over her head. Ed was dead and his reign of terror was over.
She closed her eyes, remembering those horrific moments in the shed with Gershner. He’d never hit their radar as a suspect. He’d simply been the nice man next door, who was also friends with her ex-husband.
Who could have guessed the lengths he’d go to in order to “fix” his best friend’s life? She remembered him telling her about his own wife and son. Certainly Ed had been driven not just by John’s demons, but also by more than a few of his own.
Cole. He’d saved her life. Tears burned in her eyes as she thought of him, tears of gratitude and something else, something less definable.
Ed had been right about one thing. It was possible she’d been giving John mixed messages since their divorce. She often ate dinner at his house when it was convenient, after she got off work and went to pick up Max. Over the years, she’d asked him occasionally to fix a faucet or check the pilot light on the furnace.
Things needed to change. When she eventually got out of the hospital, she knew she needed to adjust the way she interacted with John. Boundaries needed to be drawn so they were both clear that she was never coming back to him, so she could truly free him to find another love.
She must have fallen back asleep, for when she awakened again, John sat next to her bed, his face somber as he stared at her with guilt-filled eyes.
“Where’s Max?” she asked.
“Outside in the hallway with Sheriff Caldwell. I wanted to talk to you alone for a minute.” He twisted his hands in his lap and for a moment seemed overwhelmed with emotion.
“I didn’t know,” he finally managed to say. “I had no idea about Ed. I had no idea about any of this. It makes me sick. It makes me wish that I’d been the one who had shot him.”
She reached out a hand to him, this man who had been a friend, a lover and the father of her child. “I know,” she replied.
He tightly squeezed her hand. “I’ll be haunted by this until the day I die. The faces of those poor murdered women will be with me forever. Thank God your face isn’t one of them.” He released her hand and leaned back in his chair. “It’s time I let you go.”
He raked a hand through his hair and winced slightly as if the wound he’d received from Ed was still extremely painful. “I know we were never meant to be, that we were great friends who made a mistake, but during our marriage, I truly fell in love with you. I know now that I have to let go, that it’s time for me to move forward with my own life.”
Amberly nodded, glad that somehow this whole ordeal had put them both on the same page. “I never meant to hurt you, John, but the things we want from life, from love are very different.”
“I’ve been a crazy fool, clinging to a wisp of smoke that was our life together, afraid to look forward and instead immersed in the past.”
“Somewhere out there is a woman who will love you desperately, a woman who will want the same things you want, who will fill all your needs. Find her, John, find your happiness.”
He nodded and got up from the chair. “And I think maybe you’ve already found yours.”
She frowned at him, wondering what he was talking about. He smiled, the sad smile of goodbye. “It was his name you called out when you were coming around. If you feel up to it, I’ll send him in with Max now.”
“Yes, please,” she said, stunned that she’d cried out for Cole in her semiconsciousness.
As John left the room, Max bounded inside and right to the side of her bed, where he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You had me worried,” he said as Cole stopped just inside the door.
Her heart filled with love as she reached out a finger and traced it down the side of Max’s face. “You had me worried, too.”
“Mr. Gershner stabbed you and the doctor gave you new blood to make you all better. Dr. Walsh said it was a miracle that the knife didn’t hit something important inside you.”
“I’ll be fine. You were so brave, Max.”
“Sheriff Cole says I’m smart as a whip,” he replied proudly. “I told him it was Mr. Gershner even though he had on a mask. He was wearing those dumb gardening shoes of his and I saw his mole once.”
Pride swelled up inside Amberly. “And I see you have your owl back.” She reached out and touched the talisman that once again hung around his neck.
“It came off when I was trying to get away from Mr. Gershner, but Sheriff Cole got me some new rawhide and fixed it for me.”
Amberly looked at Cole, who shrugged. “It was the least I could do for the hero of the day. Now, how about you go find your dad and let me have a little alone time with your mom?”
“Okay, but I’ll see ya later, right?” Max asked Cole.
“We’ll see,” Cole replied.
Max kissed Amberly on the cheek once again. “Hurry and get well, Mom. I want you home.” He leaned forward and whispered, “And I think Sheriff Cole likes you a lot.”
With these words he raced toward the door, high-fived Cole and then disappeared.
Cole stepped closer to the side of her bed. “You have no idea how glad I am to be looking into your eyes right now,” he said.
She smiled. “You have no idea how happy I am to be able to stare into yours. It got a little hairy in that shed.”
Cole suddenly appeared to fall apart. He stumbled into the chair next to her bed and collapsed, his eyes holding a torment that resonated inside her soul. “I thought I’d be too late. I was so afraid for you.”
“But you weren’t too late. I’m here and I’m alive.”
“Thank God.” Some of the darkness in his eyes lifted and he leaned forward, for a moment just looking at her. He finally shook his head with a small smile. “I can’t figure out how we got here.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I can’t figure out how an FBI agent I initially didn’t want to work with, a woman addicted to red licorice and with a son who is as charming and bright as the day is long, got so deeply into my heart.”
Amberly stared at him and she saw the depth of emotion that shone from his eyes, and she knew in the very depths of her soul that she felt those same emotions for him. But she was afraid to embrace them, afraid that somehow, someway, she would be making a mistake again, believing in something that didn’t exist.
“I love you, Amberly. I love you and I want to be a part of your life, a part of Max’s life.”
She opened her mouth to speak although she wasn’t sure what she intended to say.
In any case, he held up a hand to stop her from saying anything. “I know you told me you have no intention of starting a relationship with somebody while Max is so young. But he’s smart, Amberly. He’ll understand the difference between a dad and a stepdad. Heck, probably half the kids in his class at school come from broken marriages.”
Amberly closed her eyes for a moment, needing to think, wanting to savor the fact that he’d told her he loved her. And she loved him. As crazy as it was, in the time they’d spent together living under his roof, she’d fallen in love with the man she’d sworn she wouldn’t.
She opened her eyes again to see him watching her, waiting with a sense of both anticipation and anxiety. “I’m afraid.” The words whispered from her. “I’m so afraid to believe in the kind of love I want, in the kind of love I want with you.”
He reached out and touched her cheek, a light, loving touch that pierced through to her heart. “What are you afraid of?”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to give up who I am to be the woman you want.”
“But you are the woman I want, an FBI profiler who is bright and beautiful and loves her son and sets my heart, my very soul, on fire. Why would I want you to be anything other than what you are right now?”
“But these feelings we have for each other, how can we be sure they’ll last?” She wanted to believe, she wanted him to make her believe. He was slowly chipping away at any doubts she might have, and she needed him to somehow chip away the last one.
“Because I believe in us.” He reached out and took her hand in his. “You don’t have to believe in love or passion that lasts forever. All you really have to do is believe in us.”
The simplicity of what he said was the key that finally unlocked the last of her heart. He was right. And she did believe in him, in them together as a couple…with Max completing their family.
“I can’t figure out how we got here,” she said as she squeezed his hand with hers. “Who would have thought that the small-town sheriff I wanted nothing to do with would be sitting next to my bed after I’d been stabbed by a serial killer? Who would have thought that same sheriff would have my heart so completely?”
She watched his eyes lighten to the blue of sunny skies. “I love you, Cole Caldwell. I have no idea where this will take us, but as long as you provide me with plenty of red licorice, I’m in for the ride.”
He leaned forward and kissed her gently on her lips and then smiled. “Fifty years from now, when we’re sitting on our front porch with grandchildren running all over the lawn, you’ll be sorry you only asked me to provide you with red licorice.”
Her heart trembled with happiness at the thought of fifty years together with this strong, smart man, who would not only be by her side as caring support, who would not only make a perfect stepfather for Max, but would also light her nights on fire.
“And what would Granny Nightsong say about all this?” Cole asked.
Amberly smiled, thinking of the woman who had raised her. “She would say that now we will feel no rain on our heads, for we will be each other’s shelter. She’d also say that we’re entering into a phase of life where we will be blinded by happy sex eyes and everything will be wonderful.”
Cole smiled. “I would have liked your granny Nightsong.”
“She would have liked you, too.” And with those words Amberly felt a rightness in her soul, as if her grandmother was smiling down at her and telling her she had finally found the path in life where her moccasins would dance forever with happiness.