Page 70 of Love Me Carefully
“What happened?” Leah whispered, looking at the men dressed in dark pants and red jackets frantically working on the body.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” Rosie shook her head from side to side. “Me and Donald were in here, about to go out and do some sightseeing, when Cable came barging in hollering about Donald being a snitch and lying to him.” Tears streamed down Rosie’s cheeks, and Terrell hugged her closer to him.
Donald was a snitch? Had he been working with the FBI all along? Is that what Jeff had meant when he said there was a lot Terrell didn’t understand?
“They yelled at each other, and then Cable pulled the gun out and shot him. He just shot him. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop him,” she sobbed. “Donald fell out there on the balcony and then Cable turned to me. He was going to…to shoot me too, but then these other men came through the door yelling that they were the FBI, and when Cable kept pointing the gun at me, they shot him ’cause he wouldn’t put the gun down. He just kept saying how I had messed everything up, how I made Donald change. I had turned him into a snitch.”
“Shhh, Mama it’s alright, everything’s gonna be alright now.” Terrell tried to console her but wasn’t sure what to think of this turn of events himself.
That’s why Donald didn’t kill him and Leah, but instead had instructed his man to take them to Donald’s house. Perhaps getting them out of the way until he could finish his work with the FBI. Terrell felt like an idiot, even though a part of him knew that all the clues that he’d come upon would’ve led any intelligent person to the same conclusion he’d formed. Still, he’d been wrong about Donald.
The paramedics came into the room, rolling the stretcher toward the door. Rosie stood and prepared to follow them, but a bulky man stopped her. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to stay here for now. They’re going to take him to the hospital, but we need to ask you some questions first. Then you can go and be with him.”
“No, I’m going with him now! I don’t have any answers to your questions, so you might as well save them. I don’t know anything except that man came in here and shot him, that’s all I know. Now I gotta go be with him. He needs me.” She tried to push past the man.
Terrell rose, pulled on her arms and begged her to listen. “Mama, come on, sit down. You’ve been through an ordeal, just sit down and get yourself together.”
“No, Terrell, I’ve waited too long for happiness, and I won’t let him go. I won’t let him leave me like…” Her voice trailed off.
“Like Daddy left you,” Terrell finished, his heart aching for her, for all that she’d lost and for the undeniable fact that he’d fought believing for so long—she loved Donald.
“I have to go with him, you have to understand.” Rosie was pleading with the agent who looked from Leah to Terrell in question. Terrell walked out onto the balcony and Leah looked away, unable to speak. Agent Blum came into the room then and went to Rosie.
“Ms. Pierce, you can ride to the hospital with me.” Taking her by the arm, he led Rosie to the door. “Combs, you can question her later,” he told the bulky man who stood in the middle of the floor with a stunned expression on his face.
Leah, who’d watched the whole scene from an outsider’s point of view, wondered how she was going to console Terrell. How was she going to make him see that he’d been wrong about Donald? He’d never liked the idea of his mother re-marrying and the moment he’d come up with a valid reason, he’d grabbed hold and clung to it for dear life because for him, that’s what it was.
Donald was a threat—he was taking his mother away from him, just like that car accident had taken his father. And Rosie loved Donald, just as she’d loved his father. Would he understand that he needed to let his mother go to find her own happiness? Would he understand that if he didn’t, he’d lose her forever?
Leah joined him on the balcony. His back was to her and his hands gripped the banister. She was a little leery of touching him, but then discarded her own anxiety and went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I guess I was wrong,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Dammit, how could I have been so stupid?” He pounded his fists on the railing. “What do I do now?”
With her cheek against his back, she wished she didn’t have to say the words she knew he didn’t want to hear. “You have to let her go, Terrell. She loves him.”
“I know she does,” he admitted quietly.
“She still loves you, Terrell. You’re her son. But she needs Donald, she needs the man who’ll become her husband. She loves him.”
Terrell took a deep breath, understanding now, more than ever, how it felt to love someone so completely. Leah’s warmth was pressed against his back as she soothed him, and he knew he never wanted to lose her. That’s what his mother felt for Donald. That was the love she had for this man, and, as much as it pained him to accept it, he wouldn’t deny her that feeling, not for anything in the world.
He turned, taking Leah into his arms. “I guess you have a wedding to plan.”
Leah smiled up at him, burying her head in his chest. “Yeah, I guess I do. But first we should go to the hospital. Your mother shouldn’t be alone.”
“You’re right. I owe her and her fiancé an apology.”
They didn’t break their embrace as they moved through the agents still cluttering the room toward the elevator. “You’re a good man, Terrell Pierce,” she told him once they were in the elevator alone.
“Really? You think so?” He feigned ignorance.
Leah smiled. “I know so. You made a mistake, and now you’re going to admit it. Not many people are good with admitting their mistakes.”
He brushed his knuckles over the smooth skin of her cheek. “Just let me know when you’re ready to admit that your four-step plan was a mistake and that you believe in our relationship. Then I’ll believe I’m a good man.”
She thought about his words even as they stepped off the elevator and moved toward the lobby door. Once they stepped outside into the bright sunshine, she stopped, held both his hands and looked into his eyes. “I believe in you. And because I do, I now see the error of my own thinking.”
Terrell grinned. “You couldn’t just say, ‘I was wrong and you were right’?”
