If I Say Yes (30 page)

Reid leaves the room, I glance at Heidi for a moment and push
myself off the floor. I round the chair and stop in front of Eli. “I am so
sorry,” I say gently. “For this and everything else.”

“Don’t apologize. We’re okay because of you.” He shifts in his
chair and lets out a deep groan.

Eli and I remain quiet while Reid is gone. We don’t say anything
else about what has happened today, or the past few weeks. We don’t
have to. I know I have him back, and I will never let him go. He’s my
best friend, my rock, and means the world to me. Although I have Reid
in my life now, no one will ever take his place. Reid and Eli will just have to figure out between the two of them whatever problem they have with one another. They both have a place in my heart, whether
they like it or not, and will have to figure out how to work that out
amongst themselves as well.

“Reid isn’t as bad as I thought.” Eli breaks the silence first. I smile
and nod my head in agreement. “Do you love him?”

“I do. With all my heart.”

“He loves you, you know,” he says softly. “I mean, he like
really
loves you.”

“I know.” I smile.

“And you’re okay with that?” Eli shifts again uncomfortably in
his seat.

“Try not to move around so much. And yes, I am. Okay with him
loving me, I mean.”

“What does that mean is going to happen to us?” Eli casts his eyes
down to the floor and grips the arm of the chair tightly.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” I stand up, place my hand under
his chin, and turn his face so he is facing me. “He’s the love of my life,
and you’re my best friend. I have room for the both of you.”

“I love you, too, you know.”

I drop my hand from his chin and turn away. “I know.” That’s all
I can manage to say. Until now, I might have never admitted it. But I have known the only reason Eli has stuck around is because he loved
me in more than the way of friendship. And while he has never
attempted to do anything about it, I always knew. Which might explain
why he refused to talk to me when I chose Reid over him.

I
love Eli
, but not in the way he loves me. He’s f
amily
. He is
everythin
g
that has held me together over the past six years of my life. He’s like
my brother. Always watching out for me, even when I didn’t want him
to. He is someone I never want to lose. “You have to move on, Eli,” I say regretfully. “I know this is cliché, but there are millions of other
women out there who will be lucky to have your love. It just isn’t me. I
love you, but you have to find someone who can reciprocate the same
level of feelings.”

“Love sucks. I’m never falling in love again.” I laugh and jump
when someone wraps their arms around me from behind. I instantly know who it is and pull his arms tighter.

“Ah man, love isn’t all that bad.” Reid says. Eli shakes his head, and I laugh softly.

“Says the man who won.”

The room falls quiet after that. I hate feeling like crap, but I had to be honest with Eli. It’s time for him to move on, in the sense of finding
someone new to love, but not leaving me completely. I know it won’t be easy, and that I will have to spend time with him away from Reid
for a while. Eventually, he’ll get over it and move on. He has to. That’s the only way we can still be friends. If he can’t, then I will have to say
goodbye to him, even if I don’t want to.

The police arrive faster than
expected
, along with a few ambulances.
Reid talks to some officers, giving them the rundown of his side of the
story and how he ended up here. From what I gather, he was drugged
and doesn’t know much of anything else. I stand off to the side and
cry softly as I watch the paramedics lift Eli out of the chair and onto
a stretcher while he screams in pain. It’s just as I suspected. Both of his knees are completely shattered, and he is going to need surgery to replace them. Reid rejoins me as they begin to wheel Eli out of the
room and sticks by my side as I tell them my story. Starting at the
beginning, I tell them about the emails and packages I have received.
I tell them about the mystery person who showed up at the cabin, and
what happened today when I arrived. I can feel Reid tense next to me
as I replay every detail from the beginning. I glance up at him, and he
mouths, “We’ll talk about this later.” I know he isn’t happy with me for
keeping this a secret, but I know he isn’t going anywhere.

I clutch onto Reid as Heidi begins to stir back to consciousness, and
as soon as she is awake, they place her on a stretcher and handcuff her
to the bed. They read the Miranda rights to her, and I bury my head
into Reid’s chest as she shouts obscenities as they wheel her out of the
room. One by one, the police officers trickle out of the room, leaving us
alone with the police captain. He leaves his card with Reid and gives him
instructions to call if we remember anything else that is important. The captain tells us that Heidi said she hired a homeless man to help
her get the men upstairs and that it was all a game they were playing.
The thought makes me cringe. Nothing about tonight has been a game.

Once he leaves, the two of us are alone. Reid squeezes me tightly a
nd presses a kiss against my temple. “Let’s get out of here.” I nod my
head in agreement. He holds me close as we exit the room and he leads
me down the stairs out the front door. As we walk down the driveway,
I gaze back towards the house one last time with a new resolve settling
in. First thing tomorrow morning, I am calling a realtor and putting the
house on the market. Of course, after the police finish their investigation
and the house is cleaned out. With the plan set in stone, I am ready to let
go of the past and start working on my future with the man beside me.

Six weeks later

I WALK THROUGH
the halls of the hospital, following the path I have
followed every day for the past six weeks. In one arm, I am carrying a bouquet of flowers, against Eli’s request. He’ll get over it, just like
he’s gotten over the last five bouquets I have brought him. Every person
deserves to have fresh roses next to their hospital bed, whether they are male or female. The scent of chemicals mixed with the roses fills
the air. It reminds me of hand sanitizer. Fresh, clean, and germ free. The
walls are blinding, the white walls clashing with the white flooring, and it sends my senses into overload. I enter Eli’s room and find that he is sitting up in bed and talking — more like flirting — with a cute, petite nurse. I clear my throat, and the two stare at me; their faces
flush and turn a shade of pink, embarrassed at being caught. The nurse
says something low so that only Eli can hear, and he smiles. As she
walks past me, I nod and smile, and she returns the favor.

“Well, she is certainly cute.” I place the vase of flowers on the table
next to his bed and sit down in the boring white chair next to him. “This
room is seriously depressing,” I say, scanning the room.

“Try being stuck in here for the past six weeks.” Eli shuffles around
the bed and tucks a pillow behind his back. “One more week of therapy
and I can break free of this place.”

“What shall we do first?”

Eli laughs, “All I want to do is sleep in my oversized, over-fluffed
bed and not to be disturbed for a couple days. This bed is seriously the
most uncomfortable thing I have ever slept on.”

I laugh and we fall into our familiar pattern of joking, teasing, and
just talking. Neither of us have once mentioned the incident with Heidi
since it happened, but I have to bring it up. Eli needs to know what
is going on. “So… they finally set the hearing.” Eli stares at me and
frowns. “Her attorney is going to try to get an insanity plea.”

“Well, the bitch is crazy.”

“True.” I laugh and shake my head. Crazy she most certainly is. I
had to change the number for my office shortly after her arrest. Heidi
decided she had the balls to call and harass me several times the first week. It got to be too much.

I lean back in the chair, take in the silence passing between the t
wo of us, and reflect on the changes over the past few weeks. The first
change was I packed up my apartment and officially moved in with Reid.
The next change was I decided to stay in the Romance department and
signed my first author. Reid’s uncle tried to give me a promotion as an
apology for what Heidi did. He felt as though he is to blame, because
he offered her the internship. I refused, of course, because I didn’t want
the promotion to come from the terror of what we endured. No, I want
to earn it fair and square.

Another surprise, no more harassing emails from Viola. Not one
single email. Lawrence finally got his head out of his ass and filed for
divorce when he found out that she was sleeping with someone in the
Sci-Fi department. He vows that he is not going to marry again and
that it will be a while before he dates. We’ll see how long he really lasts.
Now that he is single, he will be going through women more than he changes his underwear. The thought is frightening and sickening.

Eli has come to terms that he and I will never happen, unless our
relationship remains solely focused on the friendship aspect of things.
Things between him and Reid are still a little tense, but I can see that
they are both trying. Eli has promised to come to our place — still
getting used to that — for dinner once he is out of here. After a daylong
surgery, both of Eli’s knees were replaced, and he’s well on the road to recovery.

Things with Reid and I are far better than great. After we got checked
out at the hospital that night, our wounds properly attended to, we
went home and had a long talk. I told Reid everything he needed to
know about my life, starting with my childhood. I shouldn’t have been
surprised when he told me he knew my true identity and who my
parents were, but to hear him confirm it was shocking. What he didn’t
know were the small, intimate details. It took a while to hash the story
out, considering there were years I had to tell, and I had to stop every
so often because I couldn’t stop crying.

Things were rocky a couple of weeks ago, when I asked Robert for
a DNA test, and what I hoped was a lie was actually the truth. Heidi
did one thing right, something neither of my parents did, and that was
telling me the truth. After talking about it with Reid, things from my
childhood started to make sense. Like why my parents couldn’t stand
each other, why my father was as hard on me as he was, and why they
avoided me, and each other, like a plague. I am the child they never wanted. Though I already knew that.

The biggest step I took, with Dr. Uria and Reid’s encouragement, was that I went to the prison. I sat down, with Reid by my side, and told my father to his face everything I have ever wanted to say. Jared said nothing, and when I was finished, he stood up and just walked
away. Since then, I haven’t been plagued with nightmares. The police
finally finished up with their investigation, and my childhood home was
no longer a crime scene. It’s up on the market now, and I am counting
down the days until it is nothing more than a distant memory. A piece
of my past.

“Hey, so Reid came and talked to me the other day,” Eli says, cutting
into my
thoughts
. I stare at him and wait for him to
elaborate
. Reid never
mentioned anything about coming to see him. I am going to have to
talk to him when I get home. “I guess congratulations are in order.”

“Hmm, what?”

“The two of you are getting hitched, aren’t you?” Eli asks. His voice
is soft, but carries a tone of hurt underneath it.

“Oh yeah,” I whisper. That’s the biggest change in my life. I’m
getting married. Reid asked me last night. He left work early yesterday,
and when I got home, all the lights were off inside. A trail of rose petals
and candles greeted me at the front door and led me out to the balcony,
where he had a four string quartet softly playing and a candlelight dinner waiting for me. Before I could say anything, he kneeled down on one knee, gave me some long speech that I can barely remember because I was so focused on the man himself, and then he asked me to marry him.

“Can I see the ring?” I nod and pull the ring out of the front of my pants pocket where I placed it before coming into the hospital. I
slip it onto my finger and hold my hand out for Eli to see. “At least
he knows how to pick a diamond out. That thing is a rock!” I smile at Eli and lean down to give him a hug.

A soft knock raps across the door, and I turn my head to see Reid
standing in the doorway. “You ready to go, sweetheart?” I nod to him
and squeeze Eli one more time. “I hear you’re getting out of this hell hole next week. Let me know when you’re up for that round of golf you promised.”