From Good Guy To Groom (The Colorado Fosters #6)

by Tracy Madison

  Lord, no. She needed help. Had already admitted that to herself, and if Ryan could offer a solution other than unwanted medication or a call to her physician, well...that was by far Andi’s preferred route. And yes, she trusted Ryan on an innate, hard-to-define level. He would listen. He would offer his opinion. He’d also said he wanted them to work on this together.

  So. Okay. She’d talk. Really, how difficult could it be?

  Decision made, she nodded. “Come inside, I guess.” Giving him room to enter, she waited until he passed behind her to shove the swollen door shut. “We’ll sit in the living room. Can I... Do you want anything to drink? Or eat? I can probably—”

  “Nope,” he said, interrupting her. “I want to talk. To you.”

  Nodding again, she led the way through the arched opening to the living room and headed straight for the comfortable leather-framed sofa. She dropped onto one of the oversize, burgundy-fabric-covered cushions, assuming Ryan would choose one of the chairs across from her, on the other side of the coffee table. She should’ve known better.

  He did not. He sat next to her, smack in the middle of the sofa, and reached for her hand. Revel in his touch—in the warmth and the security of his body flowing into hers, by the simple act of skin meeting skin—or insist on her independence and yank free of his grasp? Warring instincts. Battling wants. Opposing desires. Where did the truth reside?

  The answer, in this precise second, escaped Andi.

  Ridiculous and perhaps a mite foolhardy, as well, but she went with the need in her heart. The demand to accept what Ryan so freely, so easily seemed to give. Swallowing a sigh, she soaked in the comfort that her hand being held by Ryan’s brought, the peace that being near him ignited, and inch by inch, her tension eased and her body started to relax.

  Miraculous, really, that this man had such a profound effect on her.

  “Tell me,” he said, his tenor even. Calm and steady and...annoyingly obstinate. “What’s going on? Why haven’t you managed more than an hour’s sleep since the night before last? Let me in, Andi, because I’m not going anywhere until you do.”

  “If I tell you to leave, you’ll leave,” she said, her mule-headedness kicking in despite her decision to do just as he’d asked, to let him in. “I feel as if I’ve been trampled by a...a herd of drunken elephants. Repeatedly. I can’t even think, Ryan, so you need to realize that, at this point, I’m fragile. I’ll...yes, I’ll attempt to talk to you about this, but don’t push. Please.”

  “I can promise you that I’m not leaving,” he said. “Because you will end up in the hospital if we don’t get this under control. But you already know that, don’t you? And I can see you’re fragile, barely holding yourself together, and I’m sorry. I hate that you feel this way, that you’re struggling. I’m glad you’ve decided to try. So where do we start?”

  All at once, the practical reasons to confide in Ryan melted into nothingness. She yearned to open up, to truly let him in, to be known by him. Because it was this man, Ryan, who beckoned to her loneliness, her bruised soul, a great deal more than the hope for relief. Why him? She didn’t know; didn’t dare speculate. But maybe the whys were meaningless.

  Maybe what mattered most was the recognition.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she admitted. “Or what words to use.”

  “Just...talk. Whatever is in your head, say it.”

  “Huh. Easier said than done.”

  “I’m right here, Andi,” he said. “Ready to listen. To help, if I can. All you have to do is try.” She felt, more than saw, him pivot his body toward her. “Would it make any of this easier if I asked questions or prodded you along or... What will help the most? You tell me.”

  Questions? No. Prodding? No to that, as well. “I think it would be better for me to get everything out in one fell swoop. I’m afraid if you ask questions or...even offer much more than basic input while I’m feeling my way through, I’ll get cold feet. Well, colder feet, I guess.”

  A small laugh reached her ears. “You say the cutest things, but I get it. Go ahead, whenever you’re ready. I’ll sit here and listen until you’re done.”

  Right. Okay, then. Where to start? Maybe before the beginning, before everything turned to hell, to her—quite literally now—worst nightmare. If she began there, perhaps the remainder would flow naturally, without any roadblocks obstructing her words. Maybe. Maybe not.

  But it gave her an easy, nonstressful time frame to focus on.

  “Christmas was about a week away, and it was a Friday. That night, a friend was having a party, so I had a bunch of errands to do before going into work. It was a...nice morning,” she said, remembering those last hours before the storm. “I stopped and had a coffee. Sang to Christmas carols in the car. Bought a few last-minute gifts and...well, I was dating someone then. We talked, agreed what time he’d pick me up after my shift. I was happy.”

  Ryan’s grip on her hand tightened slightly at the same moment she mentioned she’d been seeing someone, but he stuck to his word and didn’t voice any questions. She considered talking about Greg, explain what had occurred between them, but realized that would be an easy out. For her. Greg’s presence, and then his departure, from her life held little significance, if any at all. And therefore, focusing on him would just become another form of avoidance.

  “I got to work almost thirty minutes early,” she said, forcing herself to continue. “Sat in the break room and chatted with...” Hugh. He’d been enjoying a late lunch and had told her a silly joke about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She’d laughed. “Um. A few of my coworkers. It was normal, you know? Just a typical day at the hospital, like any other.”

  “That’s usually the way,” Ryan said. “One minute is perfectly normal and everything seems fine. Perhaps even good or wonderful. And then, the next is...anything but.”

  “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? For almost anything.”

  “Almost, not everything. But this is about you, not anyone else,” he said. “I’m still here. Still listening. Still on your side. None of that has altered in the slightest.”

  “I know. I do, Ryan, and I’m appreciative. Grateful. I’m just trying to...put this together. So I clocked in a little early, since I was already there and a lot of patients were waiting. We always seem crazy around the holidays for whatever reason. Busy. It was just...hectic. But normal.”

  She kept talking until she arrived at the exact second the first shot rang out, loud and clear and terrifying, sending a jolt of shock and fear through Andi’s body. Then and now.

  Oh, Lord. She didn’t want to do this, did not want to purposely revisit or verbalize this memory. It came to her on its own accord often enough. Why do this? Would it really serve any good? Well. Maybe it wouldn’t, but...it very well could.

  Like it or not, there was only one surefire way to know.

  “This is difficult,” she admitted. Again he squeezed her hand, reminding her of his presence. As if she could forget. But, yes, the reminder served its purpose.

  Swallowing again, she started to talk in broken syllables and halted sentences. She shared everything she had seen and experienced at Juliana Memorial Hospital on the December afternoon that her world had shifted angles and changed forever. She described the repeated sound of gunfire, the screams and sobs and pleas, the peculiar smell—that odd, hard-to-explain scent of the aftereffects of a fired gun, along with the stomach-churning mix of blood and fear and adrenaline and sweat—that drenched the air, making it impossible to think or breathe.

  Or believe there would ever be an end to the madness. One minute, sixty freaking seconds, might as well have been a month or a year or...an eternity. And how, as those minutes piled on top of one another, her hope had thinned and flattened and disappeared into nothingness, even as she fought against such a tremendous loss, knowing that giving up in any sense w
as not, could not be, an option if she were to survive.

  As the words poured from her gut, from her soul, her exhaustion and loneliness and sorrows and panic all bound together, begging for the release that crying would give. The great unburdening that shedding buckets of tears would offer. But the tears did not come. They just sat there, hostage behind her eyes, weighing in her chest and filling her lungs.

  Why couldn’t she cry? She needed to, damn it. Just as badly, just as acutely, as the human body requires oxygen and food and water. Yet, she couldn’t. And she did not understand why. What piece or part of her had become so broken that her tears refused to fall?

  “You okay?” Ryan asked. “Need a break or...?”

  “No. If I stop for very long, I likely won’t start again,” she said softly. She’d already dived in, had already gone too far to retreat. Cowardice could rear its ugly head at any second. Better to forge on, before that happened. “I’m okay enough.”

  “All right, then.” He let go of her hand and swung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him, until her head nestled in the curve of his neck. “Go on, whenever you’re ready.”

  Right. The time had come. The confession—her confession—needed to be vocalized, listened to and judged. She didn’t relish speaking one syllable of her shameful secret aloud, to anyone at all, but maybe especially to Ryan. This was her biggest regret, and the guilt ate at her, gnawing its way through blood and bone. What would he think of her?

  On the other side of the spectrum, if any solitary person existed on this earth with whom she could release this particular demon, he was sitting next to her now. In patience and support, holding her close and watching her with those dark, beautiful eyes.

  Yes. She could go to this place with Ryan. Maybe she needed to do so with him.

  “The rest of what I have to say...well, I haven’t really gone into this with anyone. But, okay, here I go. Trying to be brave.” Dipping her chin, she stared at her pajama-covered legs. “The attending physician that night, Hugh Keller, was a friend of mine. A good friend. A mentor, too, actually. He would tell these dumb jokes...that, you know, weren’t really funny. But he put so much into them, you felt his joy and you laughed. I always laughed.”

  Almost impossible not to, really.

  “I’m a better nurse due to him,” she said, pushing the words from her throat, where they were gathered in a clump. “We worked really well together, and he...always had my back when the nurses were short staffed or we had a difficult patient or...anything from the basic to the out of the ordinary. He taught me so much in his kind, unassuming way.”

  Ryan brushed the hair from her cheek, saying, “He sounds like a wonderful man, Andi. He obviously impacted you a great deal, professionally and personally.”

  “Yes, he was a wonderful man.” Emotion, strong and pervasive, rippled and swam in her bloodstream. She twisted in Ryan’s embrace to stare at the ceiling. “He died that day. I...saw him get shot, saw the shock and fear in his eyes. Saw him go down. And I started toward him, to help, to do what I was trained for, but I was scared. For him. For me. For everyone.”

  “You know, don’t you, that anyone in that situation would be afraid? Feel terror?”

  “I do know.”

  A minute or two passed before Ryan said, “Is there more?”

  “Yes. I saw him go down. Started toward him,” she repeated. “I heard yelling, the command to stop, but I didn’t. That’s...that’s when I was shot. It was weird, though, I didn’t instantly feel the pain. When I did, it came in an excruciating roar and I realized I was on the floor. Didn’t, don’t even now, remember falling. And...and—”

  Here, she paused to regain her equilibrium.

  “What else, Andi?” Ryan asked, his voice low. “Tell me all of it. Get everything out.”

  Everything. Right. That is what this was about. To determine if doing so would offer relief, another step forward. Okay, then. “I almost lost consciousness, and there was a lot of blood,” she whispered. “Enough blood that I knew, or guessed, that at least one of the bullets had hit an artery. And I went numb. Not for long, but I went numb. That scared me, too.”

  Shudders so faint they were barely noticeable shook Ryan’s body. And when he spoke, his voice seemed to resonate with the pain and fear that lived inside Andi. “Of course you were scared. I’m terrified now, hearing about what you went through. You...could have died.”

  “I know that, too. I...looked over at Hugh. He was down the hall from me, on the other side of the nurses’ station, you see, and...and—” she cleared her throat, inhaled and exhaled “—his chest wasn’t moving and his eyes were closed. His pallor was white. I said his name, he didn’t move. I said his name again and I stared at him, at his chest and his eyes, and nothing. I decided he was already gone, but I should’ve made sure. And I didn’t. I...I...”

  “You’re beating yourself up, Andi. You were in a horrific position.” He sighed. “If you want to know what I think, then—”

  “Stop. Don’t you get it?”

  “Get what? What do you want me to see that I’m not?”

  “I didn’t push myself to make sure. Instead, I was a coward. I got myself to safety and called nine-one-one. And he...he deserved more, Ryan,” she said. Whimpered, really. “So much more. From me. This wonderful man who told silly jokes with such enthusiasm, this man who was my friend and mentor, deserved more from me. And I failed him.”

  Oh, God, there it was, the awful, awful truth that lurked in the deepest recesses of her soul. Hugh, she was certain, would’ve done everything in his power before leaving her there, alone and vulnerable, if their positions had been reversed. And she hadn’t. She hadn’t.

  Insignificant, in her opinion, that she’d been terrified, hurt and bleeding. That she’d had to fight with every cell in her body to remain conscious. None of those truths mattered. Nor did learning that Hugh had died within minutes offer any relief or self-forgiveness.

  She hadn’t known that then. Not for certain.

  “I failed him,” she said again, her voice broken. “And it’s that moment I can’t get rid of, that I dream about, over and over. That decision. I don’t know how to let it go. How to forgive myself. If I even should...if I have the right to forgiveness.”

  She waited for Ryan to offer a laundry list of explanations why she shouldn’t feel as guilty and haunted as she did. Why wouldn’t he? It was what she would do if someone confessed the same scenario to her, and those words? They wouldn’t be empty or said just to soothe. She would mean every syllable from the bottom of her heart.

  So, yes, she assumed the caring, compassionate and thoughtful Ryan would utter the same. And, sure, she’d appreciate his words and the belief that existed behind them, but she doubted they’d soak in and change her thoughts. She had failed her friend. How could any amount of reasoning, regardless of how sound, wipe that slate clean?

  “Aw, Andi, that’s a huge burden to carry on your shoulders,” Ryan said, stroking her hair. “I get it, though. I’d feel the same. And I’m pretty sure you already know all the logical reasons you should forgive yourself, but you’d have to believe them emotionally, too, wouldn’t you? And that’s tough. So, I’m not going to try to talk you out of your feelings.”

  Surprised by this man again, Andi said, “You’re not?”

  “Nope. What I would like to do is suggest a different perspective for you to view this experience from, and maybe over time, the logic will settle into your heart and take root.” Pausing, he lightly turned her head toward him, saying, “That is, if you want my opinion?”

  “I do.”

  “If you were somehow able to talk to Hugh about all of this, what would he say to you? I think,” Ryan said, his gaze solidly on Andi’s, “that’s worth considering. You respected him, cared for him, and from what you’ve said, it sounds as if he
did for you, as well.”

  “Oh.” Closing her eyes against the barrage of emotions, Andi let Ryan’s question simmer. She’d given tremendous thought to what she believed Hugh would do, if she had been him and he, her. But she hadn’t considered his opinion on what had actually occurred.

  “This is for you, by the way,” Ryan said. “You don’t have to share. I don’t need to know. All I want is for you to find that alternate view. I’m assuming you knew him well enough in order to have a better-than-average guess, correct?”

  “Yeah,” she murmured. “We knew each other well.”

  “Good.” Ryan released his hold on her and moved to the other end of the couch, and he put one of the throw pillows on his lap. “Now, while you’re thinking about this, you should stretch out. Relax, close your eyes and bring Hugh to mind. Have that conversation with his memory. Just...be honest in that conversation.”

  Drained, emotionally and physically, Andi nodded without putting up a fuss. Besides which, without Ryan’s body holding hers up, she was ready to fall over. She stretched out, put her head on the pillow in his lap and, after Ryan covered her with the soft blanket that had been draped over the back of the sofa, closed her eyes. She breathed in and brought Hugh—the smiling, sweet, fatherly figure he’d been—to the surface of her memory.

  And trying not to feel too ludicrous or demented, she envisioned him in the employee break room, where they often talked, and started the conversation.

  * * *

  “Hi, Hugh,” she said, taking a seat across from him at a small, round table. “It’s so good to see you. And...I...I’ve missed you a lot.”

  “Is that so?” he asked with his trademark jolly grin. “I’ve missed you, too. Always loved seeing you, talking with you. So, how have you been, Andi, my dear?”

  “Not so good, actually. It’s been rough, you know? Trying to figure everything out, get stronger, keep...the faith. And I’ve made progress, but can’t seem to push past one specific barrier.” She paused, breathed air deep into her lungs. “I...feel as if I failed you.”