Adele accepted the end of the kiss graciously but not without a slightly smug pout. “Oh, yeah. He’s getting a bicycle, complete with training wheels, and a super cool helmet. It’s in the garage all ready to go for tomorrow. Santa will come to Baton Rouge tomorrow morning while he’s with Landry. And my house next year when Logan will be with me. So the bike is from me.”
Natalie snuggled close to Adele’s side, their thighs pressed tightly together as she glanced up at the pretty lights. “I remember my first bike. My mom bought it from a neighbor’s yard sale. It was really old and had a banana seat and yellow flag on the back. I loved it. I was maybe six or seven years old.”
“Sounds nice.” Adele brushed her lips to Natalie’s head, warm breath tickling her scalp.
“It was. Sadly, I forgot to lock it up one night that following summer and it was stolen.”
Adele gasped. “There are actual thieves in Madison?”
Natalie delivered a devastating poke to Adele’s thigh causing her to yelp, then laugh. “Madison is not Mayberry!”
“All right! Ouch. Ouch!” Adele swatted Natalie’s hand away. She grimaced in pain when she moved her arm the wrong way.
Natalie’s brows drew together with worry and she gave Adele’s good arm a sympathetic squeeze and didn’t let go. The contact felt good and she didn’t have the heart to deny herself or Adele. “Almost time for a pain reliever. What are you going to tell Logan about your arm?” Natalie found herself nervous about meeting him again and hoped against hope that they would share even a sliver of the connection she felt with his mother.
The body next to hers went very still before Adele exhaled noisily and unhappily. “I’m going to lie and say that I fell.”
“He’s really little, Ella. I don’t think you have a choice.”
“I know. But I still hate to lie.”
“How are you going to explain me being at your house?”
Adele turned sideways so they were fully facing each other. “I’m going to tell him the truth.”
Natalie’s pulse began to race. “Which is?”
Suddenly Adele’s unease was so strong that Natalie felt its presence like a third person in the room. “We should talk about that.”
Natalie’s palms grew damp and she let go of Adele’s hand to rub them on her jeans. “Okay.” She was amazed the word came out without cracking. She drew her legs up underneath her.
Adele took a few seconds to compose herself before speaking in a penetrating voice that captured Natalie’s attention completely. “These past few days in the hospital, I had a lot of time to think about things. The first thing that was on my mind, always, was you. I missed you.” She looked a little bewildered with herself. “I mean, we saw each other at some point every single day, but I still really missed you.”
Natalie melted a little. “I missed you too.”
“And I-I thought a lot about the things that I want…that I need to be happy. I’m not an innkeeper.”
Curious, Natalie could only nod. The statement was undeniably true. Running an inn was a fine profession, and if Adele were merely trying to make a living, it would be a good one. But it would never touch the core of who Adele was, or capture her drive and hunger to be there for someone who needed her. “No, honey. You’re not.”
“I can never be a cop again either, even if I have the surgery on my leg and get back into physical therapy. There’s a good chance I would be able to use my cane less and a small chance that I will be able to ditch it altogether, if I work hard enough and get lucky. But my doctors were clear; I’ll never be able to pass a police physical.”
Natalie’s stomach clenched with worry. “Will you do those things anyway? The operation, the rehabilitation, even if it’s not to be a cop?”
“I’m not ready.”
Natalie’s heart sank, and she opened her mouth to protest, but Adele stopped her with a look.
“Not until my arm gets back into shape, that is. Before, well, I didn’t think I had any reason to make myself get better. I was an idiot. Being with you has made me see that I do have a reason. As much as I care about you, and God how I do, the reason needs to be that I have to do it for myself. And I will.” She nodded as if confirming it to herself. “I will.” There it was. Definite. Absolute.
Natalie closed her eyes in profound relief and felt the sting of impending tears. Adele’s word was as good as gold. It would happen. “Thank goodness.” She wiped at her eyes. “I thought I was going to have to drug you and kidnap you to get you back into rehab.”
Adele narrowed her eyes. “You would have teamed up with Amelia and Georgia, wouldn’t you?” She sounded shocked, but also impressed.
“It might have been discussed.” Natalie grinned sheepishly, a little giddy from the sudden release of anxiety. “Once…or a few times.”
Adele snorted softly. “Underestimating you would be a mistake, Natalie. One I won’t make.” She drew in a deep, but still shaky, breath. “Okay, so I’m going to get my act together and get as well as I can physically, and then I think I want to use my social work degree. I can still help kids and use my investigatory skills, just in a different way. Those jobs pay nothing, are high stress, and I will spend my days fighting the system and trying to make lost causes a little less lost. Most of the time I will lose.”
Natalie’s chest filled with pride and fondness. “You’ll be the best.” Her smile turned wry. “Within a year you will have six adopted children and twelve foster kids of your own. You’ll need to keep the inn just to have enough bedrooms.”
Adele chuckled guiltily. “I’m not good at saying no when I want something.” She threaded the fingers of one hand into Natalie’s hair and looked her square in the eyes. “I’m going to need a little help with that. I’m going to need…I do need and desperately want you. Us. And I want you to desperately want and need me too.”
“I-I do,” Natalie breathed solemnly. “But how?” She didn’t trust her voice to say more. She wanted Adele so much she could hardly think straight. But it felt wrong to even consider turning her back on everything she’d worked so hard to achieve. Tenure, especially in her specialty, was nearly impossible to get nowadays, and walking away from it was tantamount to career insanity. It meant giving up the stability she’d worked so hard to gain. Yet, wasn’t that exactly what she’d been considering even before coming to New Orleans this last time?
“Listen to me, okay?” Adele’s powerful gaze burrowed into Natalie, wrapped around her heart, and squeezed. “I don’t want to let you go. I know the circumstances that brought us together have been so far from perfect that it’s not even funny.”
Wordlessly, Natalie nodded, hanging on her lover’s every word.
“I get that in an ideal world we would have more time together before we needed to figure things out and make big decisions. We would have had lots of dates full of stolen kisses and heavy-lidded glances, and so much less worry and pain. There would have been heartfelt discussions about practical things like PTSD, what it’s like to have a child in your life, and long-distance relationships. We can still have those discussions. And should.”
Natalie couldn’t bring herself to do more than nod, her eyes riveted on Adele.
“But I don’t need an ideal world, or a situation that’s perfect or easy. I just need you.”
Adele’s words were so passionate, so earnest, that Natalie thought she might pass out.
“It’s happening all out of order, but you said it earlier, we need to move forward. I’m asking you to stay here. Give us a chance. You’re smart and talented. Find a job here. This apartment is paid up for the next six months because that was the shortest rental term Amelia could get. It was what we needed, and it’s all yours. Or you could stay with me while you figure out what you want or longer than that, and I would cherish every single second of it.”
Adele took Natalie’s breath away. For a moment, she didn’t know how to process what Adele was saying and the cascade of feelings that were bub
bling up inside her.
“I want a real relationship with you and that means us together. In the same place. In the same bed as often as humanly possible. Doing all the mundane, domestic, wonderful things that couples do. I want to take care of you when you’re sick. I want to grocery shop with you, and have picnics in the backyard.”
“Sleep late together on Sunday mornings and argue over whose turn it is to make breakfast?” Natalie’s voice was soft and filled with so much longing she barely recognized it as she made her own contribution.
“Yes.” Adele nodded fervently, and a bolt of sudden optimism splashed across her face. “Yes. All that and more. I’m asking you to try to make things work here in New Orleans because I can’t move out of state without getting a modification in my custody agreement with Landry.” She cupped Natalie’s cheek with a warm, smooth palm. “It would be nearly impossible to do, but-but I would try.”
For once in her life Natalie wanted to be just that selfish. But…God. “Ella…”
“I know. I know,” Adele interrupted. She glanced away. “But I want…” She seemed suddenly frustrated. “I would move heaven and earth for you, if I could. If you’d let me.” She stroked Natalie’s cheek with her thumb.
Like a moth to a flame, Natalie leaned into the irresistible touch, and her eyes fluttered closed. Love. Fear. Tenderness. Hope. They all collided inside her. She wanted to break into joyous laughter and sob at the same time.
“Give us a chance. Take the leap. I swear to God I’ll catch you.”
Natalie’s tongue was frozen and her mind reeled. Never in her life had someone so plainly and vehemently laid out her feelings before her like an offering. It was in that very second that she realized they both wanted two very different things.
Adele wanted back the life she had in a city she loved before violence cast its shadow over her. New Orleans was ingrained in her, just like her family. Just like Al. The last thing Natalie wanted was to be the reason that Adele gave away another piece of herself. She had lost too much already.
Natalie had gotten nearly everything she wanted, career-wise, only to find out there was still something missing. Something she hadn’t realized she didn’t want to live without. What she needed was something fresh and new, something she’d only had the barest taste of but was somehow already addicted to. She opened her eyes to see Adele’s heart showing plainly on her face. It was right there for the taking, if Natalie was only brave enough to reach out and grab it.
“So what do you say, Nat?” Adele’s eyes blazed. Adoration and attraction arcing between them. Crackling. Alive. Magnetic. “It’s your move.”
Natalie’s natural inclination was to be ruthlessly pragmatic and continue single-mindedly down the path she’d already started. It was how she’d always lived. It was how she’d built her life. She never quit. She endured. Natalie had never put all her hope and trust and faith in another person. She’d never thrown herself willingly into that abyss. But this time her heart was demanding something different, and it wanted a path for two.
All she could think of was Adele’s kindness. The dedication and loyalty that was woven through her every fiber. Her soft throaty laugh, gentle nature, and a fierce protective streak. Those damn dimples she wanted to kiss every minute. And that voice.
The smile reached all the way to Natalie’s eyes and beyond. A sense of peace enveloped her as realization hit home and sank all the way into her bones. To stay. There was so much more to talk about. More to work out. Details to organize. Priorities to address. But there was really only one answer when logic rightly, and finally, yielded to love. “I’m all in.”
Epilogue
Four months later…
Adele’s mind drifted peacefully and then parked itself on her two favorite subjects, snippets of time playing one by one behind her eyelids like a flickering movie on a screen.
Natalie wrapping up her research project early one afternoon so she can help Logan learn how to tell time on a clock with hands.
Logan and Natalie snuggled up on the sofa watching The Lion King and Natalie crying harder than Logan when Mufasa dies.
Logan coloring Easter eggs at the kitchen table and then not believing Natalie when she tells him that chocolate eggs do not come from chocolate chickens.
Natalie finally agreeing to move in with them the same day the Touro Street Inn officially becomes Georgia’s.
She and Natalie in bed. Natalie’s lips and teeth making a slow trail up her leg. Each sensual kiss flooding her with desire. Every love bite burning with pleasure and stinging with just a hint of pain. A kiss. A bite. A kiss. A bite. A harder bite. Ow. Another bite where there is only pain. Ouch! Her leg!
Adele’s eyes fluttered open, and for a moment, she was confused. The room was still mostly dark, and Natalie was sitting in a chair next to the bed reading, not on the bed tangled up with her. They weren’t naked. And the room had a faintly medicinal smell…
“Well, hello.” Natalie beamed a smile down at Adele that dissolved her into a puddle. She loved it when Natalie wore her reading glasses. “Welcome back.”
“Hey.” Adele licked dry lips and immediately felt a plastic straw pressed to her mouth. She drew in a sip of cool water with pleasure and reached over to pick up the hospital bed controls so she could sit up a little. She let out a hiss when she stretched too far.
“Let me.” Natalie reached for the control box. She pressed the button and the head of the bed lifted. “How are you feeling?”
Adele grimaced and mentally focused on the area just below her hip. It felt hot and throbbed in time with her heartbeat. “It hurts, but I’ll live.” She glanced at a large clock on the wall, giving her eyes a few seconds to adjust. It was almost eleven p.m. “It’s late, and you’re still here.”
Natalie’s eyebrows rose and she pushed a shock of hair off Adele’s forehead as she deposited a kiss to the newly exposed skin. “Where else would I be?”
“At home. In bed. Asleep.”
Natalie carefully took Adele’s hand in hers and traced the ridges of her fingers. “Don’t be silly, I’m not going anywhere.”
Adele’s face showed her intense adulation, and she knew it, but couldn’t help it. Natalie’s presence always seemed to make everything better.
The surgery on Adele’s leg was the last scheduled operation of the day. It had taken longer than expected and hadn’t wrapped up until after eight p.m. After an hour in the recovery room, she was wheeled to the private room where she lay now. She couldn’t recall a second of the trip, but she vaguely remembered talking with her family, and then Natalie, before she slipped back into oblivion. “I fell asleep in the middle of talking to everyone, didn’t I?”
Natalie smiled indulgently. “Don’t worry about that. You lasted for a good fifteen minutes before you conked out again.”
“Tell me I didn’t say anything stupid.” Drugs did terrible, humiliating things to her. Even though she knew they were holding the worst of the pain at bay, she hated the groggy state she was in now.
“You didn’t say anything stupid.”
Adele was pleasantly surprised. “I didn’t embarrass myself? Really?”
Natalie chewed her lip. “I didn’t say that. I mean, what you said wasn’t stupid, but had you not been under the influence, I don’t think—”
“Just tell me.”
“Ella…”
Adele steeled herself. “Tell me.”
“You sang me a love song, then proposed to me, all while trying to pull me in bed with you.”
Adele’s face went scarlet.
“In front of your family.”
Like a car hitting a brick wall at sixty miles per hour, everything came to a screeching halt. “Wh-What?”
“You asked me to marry you and—”
“Oh, my God.” Adele was horrified. “That’s what I thought you said!”
Natalie burst out laughing.
Adele moaned. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
A nod.
Adele closed her eyes. Well, she did love Natalie. And it’s not like she hadn’t dreamt of putting a ring on her finger someday. Just not now. And certainly not in this train wreck scenario. Why didn’t someone smother her with her pillow to stop her? “I’m so sorry.”
Natalie was clearly trying not to laugh again. “Honey, why are you sorry? It was really sweet. Honestly.”
“What song did I sing?”
Natalie’s lips turned down. “I don’t think—”
“What song?”
“‘My Heart Will Go On.’”
“But-but, I hate Celine Dion music!” Maybe this wasn’t really happening and she was still dreaming. But one look at Natalie’s grin, and she wondered if things could possibly get worse. “I don’t even know all the words to that horrible song.”
“I know.” Natalie gave her a sympathetic look. “You made up a lot of the lyrics as you went along.”
The tips of Adele’s ears burned as red as her cheeks. “I suppose this was all recorded on Amelia’s cell phone?”
“Well, hers…” Natalie began counting off names on her fingers. “Jackson’s, one of the nurses’, and your mom’s. Your dad tried too, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it, and somehow he ended up accidentally turning on his phone’s camera flash and taking picture after picture instead. But it did give the room a strobe-lighting nightclub feel while you sang your heart out.”
“Christ,” Adele wheezed, choking a little on her own tongue. Natalie was probably sweet enough to ignore that this ever happened. Maybe. But her family would never let her live it down. Thank goodness at least one person hadn’t stooped so low as to record her humiliation. She couldn’t count Logan because he didn’t have his own phone yet. “At least Georgia didn’t—”
“Oh, yeah. Her too.”
Adele closed her eyes. “Fuck.”
“You swore a lot in your song, too, Ella.” Natalie smirked and smoothed Adele’s blanket across her chest. “For some reason, the drugs really give you a potty mouth.” She winced. “Your, um, mom is going to talk to you about that later. She wasn’t happy about the curse words, and I think you’re in trouble.”
A Dark Horse Page 43