Page 73 of Taken from Her
"Is that overwhelming?"
Lavender considered the question, testing how the weight of community expectation felt against her shoulders. "It's motivating. We proved something important about collaboration and partnership. Now we get to keep building on it."
Diana's arm tightened around her. "Together."
"Always together."
The afternoon quiet felt different from the morning's community energy. Visiting hours had ended, leaving Diana and Lavender alone with sunshine streaming through windows that faced the harbor. In the distance, Lavender could see boats moving through water that sparkled like scattered diamonds, the familiar view grounding her in the reality of Phoenix Ridge's continued existence.
Diana had pulled her chair as close to the bed as medical equipment allowed. Her hand rested on Lavender's, her thumb tracing patterns across knuckles with absent concentration.
"What aren't you telling me?" Lavender asked.
Diana's thumb stilled. "About what?"
"About how scared you were and what it felt like to find the houseboat empty. About whether you thought you'd be too late." Lavender turned her hand palm up, interlacing their fingers. "You've been taking care of me since the rescue, but you haven't processed your own trauma."
"I'm fine."
"Diana."
The single word carried the gentle authority Lavender used when people tried to deflect instead of dealing with difficult emotions. Diana's professional mask couldn't survive that tone.
"I thought I'd lost you." The admission came out rough, scraped raw. "I walked into the houseboat and saw the overturned furniture and found your phone tangled in the sheets, and for about thirty seconds I couldn't think, couldn't move. I just stood there imagining?—"
She stopped, jaw tightening against whatever images had filled her mind.
"What did you imagine?"
"All the ways I might never see you again. All the things I should have said but didn't because I was too careful about professional boundaries." Diana's eyes met hers. "I realized I'd been so worried about protecting our relationship from my job that I'd never told you how completely you'd changed everything for me."
Lavender felt something shift in her chest, recognition that they were finally moving past crisis management into territory that would define their future together.
"Tell me now."
Diana was quiet for a long moment, gathering words for thoughts she'd apparently never voiced. "Six months ago, I defined myself entirely through my competence. Professionalsuccess, department effectiveness, case clearance rates. I thought caring too much would make me weak and hesitate when people needed me to act."
"And now?"
"Now I understand that caring about you makes me better at everything else. I’m more intuitive with community members, more strategic about resource allocation, and more effective at building the kind of trust that actually solves cases." Diana's smile was soft but certain. “You taught me that emotional intelligence supports professional capability instead of diminishing it.”
"You taught me something too." Lavender shifted to face Diana more directly. "I've spent fifteen years believing that community leadership meant giving everything to everyone else. That romantic partnership would drain the energy I needed for service."
"But?"
"But loving you doesn't diminish what I have to offer the community. It amplifies it. When we work together, I'm more confident, more effective, and more myself than I've ever been alone." Lavender squeezed Diana's hand. "You make me better at the work I was already good at."
They sat in comfortable silence, processing the recognition that their relationship had enhanced rather than complicated their individual purposes.
"What happens now?" Diana asked eventually.
"What do you mean?"
"The community knows about us. My department accepts our partnership. We've survived the ultimate test of whether personal and professional can coexist." Diana's expression carried vulnerability Lavender had rarely seen. "So what do we do with that?"
Lavender studied Diana's face, seeing uncertainty beneath the question. Not doubt about their relationship, but confusion about how to navigate territory neither had experienced before.
"We build something sustainable," Lavender said. "We figure out shared living arrangements that support both our work. We develop routines that honor our individual needs and our partnership. We create a life together that serves both our communities."
