Page 63 of Love Me Gently

It came as no surprise, but that didn’t help the fear. So much fear chilled my spine I jumped off my bed and rushed to the windows. I didn’t dare peek out, just yanked on the cord that tugged the blinds closed and darkened the room.

“He won’t let me go.”

“He’ll have to,” Valerie quipped back. “That’s not his call to make. It’s yours, and there’s not a lot he can do when you’re there. You’re safe right? With Cole…he’s been okay?”

Another round of emotion flooded me. The way he’d looked at me that morning. The care in his eyes along with the pity every time I flinched from him. The fact he wasn’t backing down in trying to help. Or his honesty.

Safewasn’t a word I’d used to describe the way I felt around him at all. But the danger alarms were definitely muted.

“He’ll come for me,” I whispered. “I know he will. And I don’t want Cole to get hurt.”

I didn’t want him hurt because of me for Jonathan’s revenge.

“You know he will, too, Val. Especially with that stupid card I saved.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t have saved it if you didn’t want that lifeline, as scary as it was. My advice?”

“You give crap advice,” I muttered.

She did, most of the time. It usually ended up with me having one more drink than necessary. Her thinking a color would look good on me but it turned me into a clown.

“Shut up.” She chuckled. “Listen to me and listen good. That man you’re with would walk throughfirefor you. He’d take everything Jonathan swung his way, no matter the danger he was in to keep you safe. We wouldn’t have let him go with you if Kip thought for a second he’d fall down on the job doing it. Take that lifeline you had the hope to reach for and hold on with all your might. I miss you like hell, but I’m super-duper proud of you. You deserve this chance.”

I wasn’t sure I deserved much of anything. But that stupid lingering question made me consider otherwise.

But what if…

“How’s Kip?” I asked. “Jonathan doesn’t suspect you guys?”

“He does. He’s pissed and has shut Kip out on anything other than absolutely necessary, but Kip has feelers out for a new job, and he’s started working on ways to get Jonathan removed by the board. Don’t worry about us. We’ll take care of us, you take care of you, and when I can, I’ll visit, okay?”

I hadn’t realized how much I’d absolutely missed her until the thought of seeing her again was a possibility. “I keep freaking crying,” I muttered as more tears fell and I sniffed and brushed them away.

“You’ve got years of holding it all in, my guess is it needs to come out so let it. Take a bath in your tears if you have to and let them wash away all the ugliness you’ve survived. But don’t forget that, Trina. You’vesurvived. And now you have a chance of something new.”

“Okay, maybe you don’t suck at advice.”

She laughed into the phone. “Tell me about your hometown. You never talked about it much. You’ve ventured out yet? Seen anyone?”

“No, not really.” I still told her about the drive Cole took me on. About the town as far as I could remember it, anyway. It’d changed and there was new growth all over. I told her about our talk, about not being ready to see really anyone else, and then I jumped on the bed when Bridget opened the door and popped her head in.

She waved and ducked out, same friendly smile that had more lines around the edges than I remembered.

When she was gone, I told Valerie I needed to go. “Cole’s mom is here.”

“Okay, but think of something for me?”

“What?”

“Your town is changing. It’s growing. That’s life. We change and we grow and sometimes we have to bury the rubble of what came before, but you can do that. You get to choose what you bury and how you grow and change from here, okay?”

I wasn’t sure my mountain of rubble, as she was implying, was possible to bury.

But what if…

“I get you,” I told her instead.

“Good. Then chin up, friend. We’ll talk soon.”

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