Safe

by Rachel Hanna

  “Because I heard gunshots and, as you might imagine, I don’t like gunshots. What I want to know is how the hell did Marcus Cantrell know where I was? You guys said this was a safe house, and I wasn’t safe there after a couple of days!”

  “We are looking into that, Carly. It appears he had an insider within the force. I am really sorry.”

  “Sorry? Gee, thanks.” Carly was angry, but not really at Detective Cloud. She was angry at herself for alienating Aidan yet again. Since he found her in the cave, his personality seemed to change. He appeared distant, as if he was preparing to walk away from her this time.

  “It actually turned out to be a good thing. He was lured there at the prospect of finding you, but he wasn’t prepared for the deluge of FBI agents.” Detective Cloud appeared to be pretty happy with himself.

  “Yeah, great…”

  “Carly, you are safe now. You can go home and wait for trial. Of course, that could be months,” he said looking down at his paperwork.

  “Safe… I don’t feel so safe,” she mumbled.

  ***

  Three weeks passed as Carly got back to her normal life. She realized after leaving the precinct that she did not have Aidan’s email address or phone number. She had no way of contacting him even if she wanted to, and maybe that was a good thing.

  Her cell phone was mailed back to her by the FBI. After coming home to her empty house, full of memories of her murdering husband, Carly decided to move. She was able to get an apartment in Atlanta near her work, which is what she immersed herself in as she tried to regain a sense of normalcy.

  But, things weren’t normal. One night with Aidan had brought up a lifetime of feelings. She knew what she was missing now, and it felt like her heart was carved up into a million little pieces. She wondered if he ached for her like she ached for him.

  The promise of a real love, a true soul mate, was almost too much to bear. Where had she gone wrong? Somewhere between having his warm body pressed against hers and rolling down a mountainside, she had managed to screw up the one good thing she’d ever had.

  “Hello?” Carly said as she answered her phone.

  “Carly! Oh, my God. Are you okay?” Zinnia’s screeching voice made her brain hurt.

  “I’m fine. Really,” she said, trying to convince herself more than anything else.

  “I heard all about this on Facebook, and I couldn’t reach you on your cell.”

  “The FBI had it,” Carly said.

  “Actually, Aidan had it. I talked to him a few days ago,” she said with a smile that Carly could hear through the phone.

  “You talked to Aidan?” Carly was shocked to hear that her two best friends from high school had talked on the phone.

  “Yep. He is still such a sweetie. I don’t know why you never hooked up with him,” she said flippantly.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Zinnia asked.

  Carly proceeded to tell her the details, clean and dirty, of what happened at the cabin and afterward. Zinnia was shocked.

  “So, when are you going out with him?” Zinnia asked.

  “Going out with him? I haven’t even talked to him. I think he’s done with me.”

  “Are you done with him, though?” Zinnia asked.

  “I don’t want to be,” Carly said after thinking for a moment. “But I also don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Why would you hurt him?” Zinnia asked.

  “I don’t mean to, Zinnia, but I seem to do it every time. He’s such a good person, and maybe I don’t deserve him.”

  “Well, if you want to know my unbiased opinion - and you know you do - it’s your turn to show him that you care. Don’t expect him to come running back to you. He’s a man with pride, Carly. Go to him. Let him keep his dignity.”

  Carly knew that Zinnia was right about what she was saying, but she also worried that she wasn’t the right person for Aidan. What if she made his life miserable?

  ***

  The next few weeks were filled with legal proceedings, depositions and divorce paperwork. Carly wanted to be done with Ethan, but she knew that their lives would be forever intermingled in the press and in the court room.

  Marcus Cantrell pleaded guilty to attempted murder, and Carly faced him down in the court room. The look in his eyes was one of avoidance and sorrow over what he’d done. Unlike Ethan, he didn’t have money and power. He had agreed to kill Carly for one reason: his home was in foreclosure and his wife was threatening to leave him. Ethan had offer ten thousand dollars to kill Carly, and Marcus was so distraught that he saw no way out.

  Carly kept expecting to see Aidan in court, but he never showed up. The other agents on the scene spoke for the FBI when Marcus pleaded guilty. Was he avoiding her? Had he moved on? Carly wasn’t convinced that Aidan shouldn’t move on. In her mind, she was nothing but trouble to him anyway.

  Chapter 13

  Aidan had spent the last few weeks trying to shake Carly from his mind. He had let himself get too close yet again, even ending up in her bed. Now, he was paying the price for his inability to leave her alone. So, that was just what he was going to do - leave her alone.

  He hadn’t shown up for her court proceedings, which he knew would hurt and confuse her. A part of him wanted to hurt her just as she had hurt him. When she left the bedroom and went down that mountain, he was terrified. Had he found her dead, he never would have forgiven himself. Allowing Carly access to his damaged heart was dangerous in his mind.

  “Aidan, there is a young lady here to see you. She says she is an old friend from school,” Aidan’s secretary, Mary, said as she appeared in his doorway.

  Aidan froze in his chair for a moment, never looking up from his computer screen. It had to be Carly. Now was the moment of truth. What would he say to her? Did he even want to see her?

  “Send her in,” he managed to say in a stoic tone. Aidan turned his chair and closed his eyes, trying to brace himself for the onslaught of feelings that came with Carly.

  “It’s rude not to turn around when a person comes into your office,” a female voice said. That was not Carly.

  “Zinnia?” Aidan said turning around in his chair with a smile. Her red curls flowed down her back now, making her look like the cover model for some strange Alice In Wonderland type novel.

  “Hey, honey!” she said with a smile as she walked over and hugged him.

  “So good to see you. What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I just wanted to catch up with you a bit. Have time for lunch?” she asked with a grin. Aidan knew this had to be about Carly, but he wanted to act cool.

  “Sure. Let me grab my coat,” he said.

  As the two sat down at a local deli, Zinnia could not wipe the smile off her face.

  “Why are you grinning like a Cheshire cat?” he asked with a smirk.

  “I love how you say ‘Cheshire’. You sound like royalty,” she said laughing.

  “Don’t divert attention, Zinnia. What’s going on?”

  “It’s about Carly,” Zinnia said with a sad face.

  “Is she alright?” Aidan asked, a little too jumpy for someone who was trying not to care.

  “No, she’s not. She misses you, Aidan.”

  Like an arrow through his heart, Aidan felt a wave of guilt. Had he pushed her away too soon? Had he unknowingly done the same thing to her that she did to him all those years ago? Left her in her time of need?

  “How do you know that?” he asked biting into his sandwich.

  “Because she told me. She thinks that she isn’t good enough for you… that she would just hurt you again,” Zinnia replied.

  “Well, she has hurt me a couple of times now. I don’t know if I want more of the same,” he said.

  “Aidan, she needs you. She has no idea I am here right now, but I am worried about her. She has been having nightmares about the shooting and getting hurt on the mountain. If nothing else, can’t you just be her friend?”

  “No, I can’t. I’m so
rry, Zinnia.” Aidan wouldn’t look at her.

  “What has happened to you, Aidan? You used to be such a good guy. How could you abandon her right now?” Zinnia snapped. She didn’t have red hair for nothing.

  “Carly has problems that I can’t solve, Zinnia. I don’t have the stamina to keep up with her running from me. This time, it’s up to her.” Aidan stood up, threw money on the table to pay for both of their lunches and walked out of the deli.

  It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, but he was determined that Carly would either come to him or the whole thing would be over. He just couldn’t watch her run away again.

  As the holidays approached, Aidan found himself wondering about Carly more and more. Who would she spend her holidays with this year? With no husband and no immediate family, would she be okay? He tried to wipe the thoughts from his mind as soon as they infiltrated his strong wall around himself, but they just kept coming.

  In mid-December, Carly finally got around to putting up a few decorations at her new apartment. She wasn’t really in the Christmas spirit this year. With no one to buy for other than Zinnia, she hadn’t even been to the mall like she normally did.

  She had plenty of time to think the last several weeks. Staying away from Aidan was the best thing for him. He thought he wanted her, but Carly knew that she would just be poison to him. Her strength was waning the closer it got to Christmas. All she really wanted to do was wrap herself in his arms and savor those moments together.

  Startled by a loud knock at her door, Carly went to open it. She found a gold package wrapped with a big red bow sitting on her doorstep. As she picked it up to take it inside, she wondered who might have sent it. She untied the bow and sat the box on her coffee table. When she opened it, she was stunned to see what was inside.

  There was a typewritten note that said “I can’t keep chasing you. If you love me, meet me tonight on the eighth hole at McGiboney Golf Course at nine o’clock. If I don’t see you there, I will know how you feel.”

  There was a golf ball inside of the package too, which made her laugh. She had only a few hours to figure out just how she felt, and what she would do next.

  Chapter 14

  Aidan paced the eighth hole of the golf course for thirty minutes. It was freezing cold outside, and it was also obvious that Carly wasn’t coming. How could he have been so stupid to have thought that she actually might show up? Irritated at himself and Carly, he started to stomp toward his car.

  “Wait! Wait!” he heard Carly yelling as she hobbled toward him in the darkness.

  “Carly? Why are you limping?” he asked with a smirk as the moonlight caressed her blond hair.

  “My car broke down on Third Street. My cell battery was dead. These damn high heels are hard enough to walk in, but I caught my right one in a crack on Fifth Street as I walked here. And, I am pretty sure the cop I passed now thinks I am a streetwalker,” she said growling the words through her teeth. “But, I am here. You asked me to come, and I came, Aidan. That should say something.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come,” he said. “You asked me. I got your gift.”

  “Uh, no. You sent me a gift.” At that moment, they both laughed, realizing that Zinnia had set them up. “That Zinnia… I am going to kill her.”

  “But you came? And you said it meant something?” Aidan was good at listening, and he was picking apart her statements. She stood there in a sexy red dress with strappy black high heels - albeit with one heel missing now.

  Carly forced herself to stand there. She wanted to tell him it actually didn’t mean anything, but why would she do that? Why did she keep denying that the person she wanted to be with most in the world was standing in front of her?

  “I’m not running anymore,” she said softly as she looked up at him.

  “You’re not?” he asked with a smile.

  “I can’t promise that I won’t be a pain in the butt or challenge you in every way imaginable, but I won’t run.” Carly grinned as she cocked her head up at him.

  “I love a good challenge. And, I don’t think you are all that good at running since it has now resulted in you falling down a mountainside and breaking a heel,” Aidan laughed. Carly slapped him on the arm.

  “I heard you, you know,” she whispered as she walked closer to him.

  “Heard me?”

  “The night that we made love. You whispered that you loved me when you thought I was already asleep.”

  “You didn’t say it back.”

  “No, I didn’t. I don’t move as fast as you, Aidan. I am a thinker.”

  “Yes, I am well aware,” he said.

  “But, I do. I love you more than anything, Aidan,” she said tilting her head up at him with their chests pressed against each other. “I came here tonight because not seeing you for the last few weeks has been torture. I want you with me, holding me and telling me everything will be alright.”

  “Carly, you are the best Christmas present I could ever get. I want to be there with you, getting lost in those blue eyes of yours. You just have to let me in and promise to talk to me if I go overboard,” he said pushing a strand of her hair behind her ear.

  “I promise.” She slid her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into his chest. Feeling the warmth of Aidan filled her up for the first time in weeks.

  “I love you, Carly. I always have, and I always will,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her head. “Now, let’s go home.”

  “Home?” she asked with a confused look on her face.

  “Your place or my place - wherever you are is home to me, Carly,” he said as he dipped his head down and kissed her passionately.

  “First, I have to do something.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I need to see a shooting star.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I never made my wish last time.”

  “You didn’t?” he asked.

  “No. I was so nervous that you were going to kiss me that I never made a wish.”

  The two of them stood there looking up until a shooting star finally streaked across the sky. Carly closed her eyes and smiled to herself as she made her wish.

  “So, did you make a wish?” he asked with a smile.

  “I did. And when I opened my eyes, you were still standing here so my wish came true.” Aidan whisked her up into his arms and carried her back to the car where they fogged up the windows like two lovesick teenagers before driving back home.

  Epilogue

  December 2012

  Carly sat in the court room as the attorneys battled back and forth presenting their cases. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how any attorney could try to paint Ethan as a sane, innocent man, but his attorney had tried to do so. Waiting two years for the case to come to trial had been tiring, but she had enjoyed spending more time with Aidan.

  She had given her testimony early in the trial and sat there each day listening to witnesses on the stand. She was determined to look Ethan in the eye as much as possible. When the jury came back, Carly squirmed in her seat. Zinnia held her hand tightly as the verdict was read - GUILTY. Thank God.

  His sentencing would come later, but she had gotten everything she needed that day. As they took Ethan away in handcuffs and his orange jumpsuit, he looked back at her with venom in his eyes. These were the same eyes that had looked into hers on a cool spring day and vowed to love and cherish her forever. The thought made her sick now.

  She knew that it must be killing him to see her free and alive, sitting between her two best friends. She stood to face him as he waited for the guards to take him back to jail. Her belly protruding with a baby bump, she had married Aidan six months ago. It had been the best day of her life. They were married in a small, private ceremony on the terrace of the safehouse, which they also bought as a weekend home. It was a reminder of the place where they fell in love as adults.

  Aidan also took his chance to shoot a look to Ethan who was boring holes thr
ough him with his evil eyes. With one swift move, he leaned Carly back and kissed her passionately before putting his arm around her, smirking at Ethan and leading her out of the court room.

  “I will see you guys later,” Zinnia said smiling as she hugged Carly outside of the court house.

  “You okay?” Aidan asked Carly as he looked down at her.

  “I am more than okay,” she said. “You know, I thought seeing Ethan would help me get closure over this whole situation, but I realized that I already had the closure that I needed. Fate conspired to bring us back together, and I am so thankful that you didn’t give up on me.” Carly pressed her cheek into Aidan’s chest.