To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) (20 page)

She lifted herself off the door and walked the short distance down the hall, but as she turned the corner, she saw Eric, his arms wrapped around a woman, her lips to his. In that moment, Debra felt the world disintegrate. Her heart fell from the hole in her chest and smacked the tiles of the hospital floor as her knees threatened to buckle.

“Eric?”

~*~*~

Eric had been standing in the hall, talking with the police for the first half hour or so that Debra was in with her sister. So far, there was nothing on the man that had broken into Debra’s home, only that he was assumed to be a drifter and not a local. There were too many friends and neighbors in the town of Blue Jay, too many people who were outraged by the event for it to be one of their own. Eric tended to believe the theory, and while he wasn’t out for revenge, he wanted justice. Any man who threatened Debra courted the righteous fury of a man in love, as far as Eric was concerned.

It was then, as the police left him, as he stood alone in the hall, that he felt arms wrap around him. It was familiar in the sense of the warmth and contented feel that surrounded him whenever he was with Debra.

“I’ve missed you.”

The voice made him stiffen, made his blood run cold. Eric took the arms that snared him and pushed them away. He turned, his face painted with utter disbelief.

“Julia?”

“Who else would it be? I heard on the news about the attack. I was worried, so I came here.” Julia blinked, fluttered her eyelashes and made an attempt to look innocent. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Eric shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here. I thought I made it clear before where I stood with you.”

Julia’s expression literally turned sour in the time it took for a heart to thump. “You don’t have to be cruel to me. I know you have your sights set on someone else, I know that. But,” and she paused long enough for tears to make her eyes appear liquid, “can’t you just understand that when you love someone, you would do anything to make sure they’re okay? I love you, Eric.”

“I am Dr. Nelson to you,” Eric spat without thinking and for once not regarding Julia’s feelings. Perhaps if he was harsh with her she would understand the futility in pursuing him. He watched as her eyes darted past him down the hall and he was a fraction too late to understand why she was moving towards him to prevent her from entangling him in her arms or from preventing her from pressing her lips to his in what Julia figured was a passionate embrace.

“Eric?”

Debra’s voice called out behind him, the break in the sound shattering his heart into a thousand pieces. Eric knew the sound of betrayal, had heard his heart break with the same kind of sadness the moment Tina’s heart stopped beating and she left him alone, and realized in an instant that Julia had planned for this to happen.

Eric tore Julia away from him and she stumbled backwards, a small smirk on her face. Glaring at her, he said, his voice so dangerously calm that it could have frozen the entire hospital over, “Don’t you ever come near me again, you miserable woman.”

Eric turned from Julia again, her pleas to choose her and not Debra muffled by the sound of Debra’s sneakers on the tiled floor as she ran away from him.

Before he really knew what he was doing, he took off down the hall after her, only to discover that she was well on her way down the street, speeding off into the night, further and further away from him.

Eric found his way to his car and even before he started the engine, he took a few minutes to calm down and figure out what he was going to say to Debra. Everything he’d wanted to say, everything that he’d wanted to confess all seemed like silly excuses to him - they were things a man might say to a woman who’d caught him cheating. ‘She means nothing to me, it’s you I really love. I never meant to hurt you. Please forgive me.’

Eric shook his head and hit a fist against his steering wheel. He didn’t believe himself as far as he could toss his own body and he realized in a depressed sort of way that Debra wouldn’t believe him either. However, what kind of man would he be if he allowed the woman he loved to believe he’d been unfaithful? What kind of man wouldn’t run after something so precious when it was threatened to be taken - no,
driven
- away?

Eric started his car and not for the last time that night, prayed that Debra would hear him, that she would at least give him a few moments to tell her how he felt.

~*~*~

Debra’s tears were falling so hard by the time she reached her house that she couldn’t be annoyed with the yellow police tape that marked her home as a crime scene. There was a squad car parked down the road - a promise of protection from the good police chief of Blue Jay - and Debra let her eyes dart to the officer sitting behind the wheel just before she rushed inside of her house and slammed the door behind her.

How could he? After everything, after what he did for her tonight, after all she’d done to help his children - how could he be with another woman? Her mind struggled to come up with reasons, to rationalize the situation so that she wouldn’t drown in a sea of her own cynicism. Didn’t she know that it would turn out this way? Every person that she’d ever loved had left her in one way or another - wasn’t it better to be alone? Hadn’t she come to that conclusion before she’d even met Eric?

The sound of Eric’s name as her mental voice said it made her cringe, made her claw at herself and hit the floor as she sobbed. What she’d seen tore her apart, took every ounce of the happiness she’d felt in the last several weeks and turned it into something sinister. How long had he planned to be with her while he had someone else he wanted?

Debra couldn’t help but think about her relationship with Robert and how that had ended. She had, for a time, convinced herself that she loved Robert, that marrying him had been the right thing and a good direction to take her life in. She hadn’t seen the way he shied from her, the way he had looked at her sister, or the times when Robert had tried to talk to her. She’d known long before he broke up with her that they had drifted apart, that whatever feelings they’d begun the relationship with had faded until there was nothing left but the continuance of a habit.

She’d never known that being with someone out of habit, even if they hurt you, could do the amount of damage Robert had done to her. The worst part was that she harbored no ill-will towards him, didn’t blame him. In fact, when it became apparent that Robert was truly in love with Nikki, that they planned to spend their lives together, Debra did everything she could to ensure that relationship’s survival. In a way, she flung herself at their happiness so that she wouldn’t see how miserable she was.

In the end it wasn’t because Robert had needed to break ties with her to find happiness, but because there was something fundamental missing from Debra herself. It was her life in a nutshell, she knew. First it was her parents, their too early death, and then being left to raise her siblings on her own. She’d been the cause, the reason they’d left the house the night they drowned, and she had to live with the fact that she’d orphaned her brother and sister by being selfish.

“I should’ve known I wasn’t meant for him.” Debra shook at the sound of her voice and, on the floor, in the cluttered wreck of her home, she cried in the release of the pain she’d harbored for what seemed like an eternity.

In the midst of the pain that threatened to consume her came a quiet voice, like an inner knowledge finally clicking into place.
Be still, my child, for I love you and will never leave you
. Debra knew this was true, had believed it since she was just a little girl sitting on her daddy’s knee. She knew beyond a doubt that her Lord was all she ever needed.

The knock at the door sounded like thunder, shocking her out of this revelation.

~*~*~

Eric thought an eternity wasn’t long enough for the time he’d spent waiting for Debra to answer her door. Once he had her understanding, made her see what was going on, then he would remind himself to tell her that she shouldn’t spend time in her home until the person who’d broken in was caught. He doubted it was safe. The squad car parked down the street reassured him for now that Debra was protected, but any person with a reasonable amount of intelligence could get by the country cop eating his donuts as the flatfoot played lookout.

When the door opened and he took a look at Debra’s blank expression, Eric felt his heart speed up with the need to keep her safe from everything that threatened her. He’d felt so protective earlier, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if anything happened to Debra, he wouldn’t survive it. A part of his brain told him that he was lucky to be alive after he’d lost Tina, and that he wouldn’t live through losing Debra. He wasn’t strong enough.

“I only opened the door so that I could tell you I never want to see you again.” Debra’s eyes were like black marbles in the darkness of the evening, and as Eric tried to find Debra in them, all he hit was a solid wall of self defenses. This was the Debra that fought desperately to protect herself from pain, the woman who had to be strong enough to survive the loss of both her parents before she’d even graduated high school,  the girl who’d had to take care of her brother and sister without thought of herself and who had to grow up too quickly because there wasn’t an adult around to tell her that it was okay to be a kid. Once he’d known this about her, been with her and seen her laugh and found out how utterly quirky she was, Eric had fallen in love so completely that there wasn’t any going back for him. He was the type of man that was all in or nothing. There wasn’t a halfway marker for him where he could just ‘like’ Debra or be friends with her.

Eric blinked, stood there for a minute dumbfounded, but when he found his voice to speak, he said, clearly and more certain than ever, “Marry me.”

Debra heard the words come out of Eric’s mouth, saw that he was very calm, that even his body language said that he was as serious as a heart attack and she asked, confused, “What?”

Eric stared into Debra’s two-toned eyes. “Marry me, Debra Brown.”

Debra folded her arms to her chest, cocked her head to the side and asked, as she would if she were questioning an alien from outer space, “What in the world makes you think I would say yes? Have you been drinking?”

Eric remained still, and forced himself not to smile. For him, there wasn’t anything left to do, there wasn’t another option, and in his soul he knew that this, above everything else, was what he wanted most. All or nothing.

“I want to be your husband. I want everyone who sees us to know that I belong to you, that you won me. I’m in love with you, Debra.”

Debra knew that her brows were knitting together, that she was about to let loose on the man standing before her, but before she could say anything Eric was moving close to her, his presence overpowering. Suddenly, he was the lighthouse in the storm, the clear path that she never knew she could take. “But I saw…”

“I love you, trust in it.” Eric unfolded Debra’s arms, took her hand and placed it to his chest, keeping his eyes on hers the whole time. “Feel my heart, how calm I am. You know what I’m saying is the truth.”

“But…”

“Marry me.” Eric placed his hand over hers as he held it to his heart. “I belong to you now, so take care of me. You own my heart.”

Debra could feel the soft thump of Eric’s heart beneath her fingertips, feel as her own heart pounded away in her own chest, and knew that whatever she’d seen in the hospital, whatever it meant, that it didn’t matter. Eric was right. She had to trust him and trust that he loved her. Wait -
he loves her
?

She gripped the fabric of Eric’s shirt, perhaps as if she were going to strangle him, and she gave him a hard look and searched his soul with the years of practice she’d had lifting the naughty lies from children’s eyes. Truth was staring back at her, making its stand, rock solid and there for the taking.

“Debra?”

Debra said, “Shh, I’m thinking.” She took her hands from him and put them on her hips. “You beat me to it, you know. I had a speech planned and everything.” She made a show of pouting.

“Forgive me, Debra, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“In case you didn’t understand it all, that was me telling you that I love you more than you love me.” And she’d proved it, hadn’t she? No matter the circumstance, he was hers and she’d forgive him. Love was like that.

Eric’s breath caught in his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but found that emotion threatened to constrict him. “Really?” It was barely more than a surprised whisper.

Debra moved to Eric, pressed her lips to his and when she parted from him, she whispered, “Really really.”