Coming Undone (43 page)

But she wasn’t kidding, and she wasn’t about to be dissuaded by the joke. “It’s been a long time since someone cared about me that much.”

Concern went across his face. “But you have friends…”

“
It’s not the same. They have their own life. They can’t just drop everything to take care of me.”

What she was telling him went through his heart. She took care of so many others without a single complaint. But who was there to take care of her? With everything in him, he wanted to be that person for her. Turning, he put his hand on hers, and the nerves dissipated in the wave of love and admiration. “Kathryn.”

Her gaze fell from his, and she breathed for a moment. “Maybe this is crazy, but I so don’t want this to be a dream. I mean I keep thinking I’m going to wake up, and you’re not going to be here, that it was all in my head.” The pain was scrawled on her face, but it wasn’t physical.

He saw it then—her fear of being left alone once again.

“
It’s not,” he whispered as he slid from the chair to his knees in front of her. “It’s not a dream. I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere.” His hands came up to gently touch her face. The bruises there tore his heart out. He never wanted to see her hurt like this again… never, ever again. “I was so scared last night.” His gaze dug through hers. “I was so scared. When they told me you were hurt… I couldn’t even think straight. I was freaking out.”

“
I couldn’t believe it when you came. I didn’t… I never expected… that.”

Hurt and concern spiraled through him just as it had the night before. “Why not? Why didn’t you think I would come? Where else would I be?”

Her gaze fell from his. “I don’t know.”

He exhaled, needing for her to understand what was in his heart more than he could even find the words to express. “Don’t you get it, Kathryn? I can’t imagine what I would do if something ever happened to you. I don’t even want to think about it.” Needing to reassure himself that she was really there, he pulled up to the couch next to her and gathered her into his arms, trying to remember not to tighten his grip too much. It was difficult not to. All he wanted was to hold her like that forever and forget all of the rest of everything. “Kathryn, you have to know what a difference you’ve made in my life. I would never have gotten through this last month without you.”

The words stopped, but his thoughts didn’t. “Look, I know I don’t deserve you, but if you’ll let me, I want to be here for you, just like this. I’m not perfect, and I’ll probably screw the whole thing up more than once, but I couldn’t live with myself if you were having to deal with things on your own without anyone there for you. I don’t want you to ever be alone again.” He kissed the top of her hair. “I love you so much.”

All of her movement stopped. Slowly she twisted up to look at him with concern and confusion on her face.

“
What?” he asked, looking at her. “I do. I love you. I think I was just too bone-headed and stuck in shallow to realize it. Okay, it took me hitting rock bottom with no way to get up on my own to realize that I needed someone, someone with passion and hope. Someone I could count on. But if that’s what it took to get me to wake up, then I’m glad it happened because I never want to go back to being how I was.” He pulled her head to his shoulder and kissed it again. “I thank God I hit bottom so you could find me.”

Kathryn let his hand pull her in even as her mind struggled to contemplate all that he was telling her. Her? Passionate? Hopeful? Someone to be loved and counted on? She didn’t feel like any of those things—especially now. He was so worldly. He had confidence that she couldn’t manufacture if she tried. What could she have that would even come close to getting his attention or holding it? “Ben…”

“
No, Kathryn. Don’t even go there. Look, I know that other guys have overlooked you.” He tilted his head, his eyes sparkling. “Personally, I think God put blinders on them so He could save you for me until I realized how stupid I was being about everything, and that took some doing. Not that you get a great deal out of the bargain, but…”

“
I don’t know why you keep saying that. Look around you. You’ve got a great apartment, a life most guys would kill for. You said it yourself you didn’t want to be married, you liked being single.”

“
Yes, but that was then. Look, I can’t really explain this, but something in me has changed, and I really feel like it’s for the better. Before, it was all about me—what I wanted, what was best for me. I didn’t care about anyone else, and I liked it that way. But then you came along and the whole thing with Dad, and I just started to see things so differently than I ever had before. I started seeing how selfish I was and how many people I had let down and looked over because it was too much trouble to care about them. Like Kelly. Did you know his wife’s mother died a year or so ago?”

“
No,” she said softly.

“
She did, and I didn’t even go to the funeral, not even the wake service. In two days I was giving him hell for not coming to the poker game. That’s how I was. And maybe it’s how I still am, but it’s not how I want to be. I want to learn to have what you have, to figure out how to be there for people and really see them, but I don’t even know how to do that. I mean I see you do it, and it looks so natural, like it’s just who you are. But then you said that you had to go to the chapel and stuff, and I’ve seen you do that, so I know it’s not as easy as you make it look. And I don’t know, maybe I can’t even have that. Maybe it’s not even in me. But I want it to be.”

Kathryn heard the whole thing as much with her spirit as with her ears. She did not want to ask the question because she knew it could destroy even this tenuous connection that they had now established. Yet she had to know. “So where are you on the whole God thing? I know you have really been struggling with that.”

“
I still am, but I’ve been talking to Him again. You know. Like last night after you were here. I said some prayers, well, not the kind I got taught in Sunday School, more like just talking to Him kind of prayers. And it’s weird, I really felt like there was somebody on the other side of that line this time.”

“
There is.” She knew that now, more clearly than maybe she ever had. The answer to all of her prayers was sitting right next to her, and only now did she understand why God had made her wait.

“
It’s weird, you know,” he said, the awe sounding in his voice. “I went to church growing up. Did all the stuff, got my sacraments, was an altar boy, the whole nine yards, but then when Mom and Dad broke up, I decided it was all just a big show for people who went. They all seemed so stuck up and holier-than-thou anyway. I had one kid in my Sunday School class that spread all kinds of rumors about my dad and why they had broken up, said he’d heard his parents talking about it. I think I decided if that’s what church was, then I didn’t want any part of it. When Dad started going again, I told him I wasn’t going, and that was the end of that. Until now.”

She let that settle for a moment. “And now?”

“
I don’t know. It’s really hard to put into words because I’m seeing that yeah, there may have been a lot of stuck up people at my church, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is like that. I mean Father Patrick was great. He didn’t push all the religion stuff on us. He just helped us through. And you and all the staff at hospice. I know that sounds weird, but I could just tell you really meant what you did to care about us. It wasn’t just a job or whatever. But you weren’t superwoman either.

“
That day I found you in the chapel crying… I can’t explain it, but I was like, ‘Whoa. Why would she do something like that?’ I mean I couldn’t get why you would go sit in front of that Jesus on the cross thing.”

“
The crucifix.”

“
Yeah, that thing. I never liked those things, even growing up. I remember having to carry it for Mass, and I was like, ‘Ew.’ It creeped me out. But then I started to see it the way you do—that Jesus up there understands what we are going through. I mean, he was beaten and spit on and hung on a cross. He knows. He understands pain. I think He even knew how much I was hurting when I turned my back on Him.”

“
He did.”

“
I know. That’s what I mean. It just… amazes me that through all of that, even though I’d totally rejected Him, He still sent you to find me. I mean He could just as easily have left me out in my misery and said, ‘See ya,’ but He didn’t. That He would love me that much to send you to get me. It’s just…” He shook his head. “I can’t even put it into words sometimes.”

“
I know,” she said softly. “I was a little girl when He did that for me too.”

Ben grew sincerely silent at that as he looked down at her, and she felt the shift from his story to hers. She’d never told anyone this story, not even Misty or those she worked with. And at weird times she wasn’t even sure it had happened at all. But as the words came to her heart for the first time, she chose not to censor them out.

“
My grandma was really like my best friend when I was little. I went to her house all the time, and we’d bake cookies and she’d read me stories. And then she got really sick, and the doctors didn’t know why. When I went to the hospital to see her with my mom and dad, that was back before hospice was even invented. Grandma was really sick, and they wouldn’t let me back to see her. I was too young. So Mom and Dad would go in and leave me out in the lobby by myself. There was this one nurse that saw me crying out there one day. She came over and asked what was wrong, and I told her the whole thing, not realizing who she was or why she was even there. She asked if I knew Jesus, and I told her I did, and she asked if I wanted to go see Him, to talk to Him about everything. I said that I did, so we went down to this little chapel that was there. It was a lot like the one at hospice come to think of it. A few benches and the crucifix hanging up there.

“
She told me I could always go and look into Jesus’s eyes as He hung on the cross and tell Him what was wrong and how scared I was, and He would always hear me because He understood about being in pain. I still think about that little chapel and that nurse. I don’t even know her name, but she stopped what she was doing that day, and she helped me find Jesus when I was really lost and hurting. That’s all I try to do for other people now because I know what a difference it made for me.”

Love for her flowed through Ben along with gratefulness for her, for her grandmother, and for that nurse whom he would never know. The forks in the road that led to this place were amazingly complex. Had God been planning this all the way back then? And then another question, much more frightening, what if that nurse had been too busy to comfort that scared little girl that day? What if she had thought it was someone else’s business, that it wasn’t any of hers? What if she had talked herself out of helping? Ben shuddered at the thought. “What happened with your grandma?”

“
She died. A couple days later. I only found out years later that it was cancer, the real sudden and invasive type. I never really got to say good-bye.”

“
That’s why it’s so important to you to help others say good-bye.”

Slowly she nodded. “I don’t want them to have any regrets.”

Ben couldn’t help it. He pulled her even closer to him. “For what it’s worth, I think God set it up that way… not to hurt you but so you could help others.”

“
I just feel so inadequate sometimes, like nothing I do really even makes a difference.”

From this new perspective, he saw the lie of that. “Oh, it does. Trust me on that. It makes all the difference in the world.”

The next day they went together to the tow lot, and Kathryn couldn’t believe how bad her car looked. It was indeed totaled. The whole front side was caved in. There would be no fixing that thing. She would have to get a new one. Ben took her back to her apartment, helped her call the insurance companies and then took her to get the rental they set up for her. She was glad he followed her back to her apartment because she was still quite shaky behind the wheel. Never before had she looked both ways when the light turned green. Now it seemed she couldn’t help doing so.

Her nerves were frayed strands by the time she got back to her apartment, and tired was once again overwhelming her senses.

“
You look like you’ve been beat with a stick,” Ben said as he stood behind her, waiting for her to open her door.

“
Gee, I wouldn’t know why.” She pushed the door open and walked in almost hoping he would decide to go so she could sleep even though it was only four in the afternoon.

However, he never slowed down upon entering. Instead he went right into the kitchen. “Do you want your meds now so you can take a nap?”

The question took her aback. He’d been on taking-care-of-her duty since the wreck. She had assumed that once she was close to back on her feet he would stop. “Sure.”

In seconds he was back. “Here you go. I cut it in half like you did this morning.”

She took the pill from him and the water, and her alert system saw him standing there in her apartment, hands on hips watching her take the medication. When it was down, he took the glass from her and headed back into the kitchen.

“
I thought about ordering Chinese tonight,” he said. “How does that sound?”

“
Um, fine. It sounds fine.” The whole thing was just so weird. Here was this guy, this gorgeous guy, in her kitchen, getting her medicine, ordering take-out for them. How exactly was that possible? Somehow she had to have slipped into some parallel dimension.