You wrote a fabulous story. I sure couldn’t figure out that you were involved with her, so I know it must have been objective. I know you would never do something like that on purpose. It’s okay. Really. I don’t care. You’ve got so much potential, Jay, it just doesn’t matter to me. You can love anyone you want. Hell, who wouldn’t want to be married to that woman!”
Jay smiled shyly. “Yeah, she’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?”
“Yep, honey, she’s a real looker. So this is what we’re going to do: I’m going to put you on floater status.” She winked. “No firm assignment, just an ‘in case’ kind of deal. You call in once a day this week to see if I’ve got anything for you, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
It was the first spark of life Trish had seen in her friend’s eyes
“Positive. You love her, right?”
“Oh God, do I.”
“Then go get her and bring her back here. I don’t give a damn what they say about you, you’re mine and I’m not going to let anyone mess with you. Don’t worry. Now, you better get going, and don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”
“You’re the best, Trish,” Jay gushed, getting up and hugging her friend hard.
“Careful, you’ll bruise me. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, kid; let me know how it’s going.”
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Jay nodded and ran out of the coffee shop and out the front door of the building, not stopping until she was on the subway headed to her apartment.
“What do you have, Peter? Anything?” She was breathless.
“Nothing solid, but I have a pretty good guess.”
“Okay, I’m listening.” For the first time that day, Jay felt hopeful.
“I think she was in Flagstaff this morning when you talked to her. She said she was someplace big enough that they had a newsstand, which knocks out everyplace else in the area. I think she was on her way to Sedona.”
“That would make sense. She told me once that it was one of her favorite places and she’d been there many times.”
“I can’t guarantee that she’ll follow through with that now, though.”
Jay closed her eyes and thought for a minute. “I think she will. It’s a very important place to her, and I would think she’d want to seek solace in the familiar.” Her chest ached at the thought.
Oh, love, I’m so, so
sorry. I’m going to find you, whatever it takes, and get you back here
with me, where you belong.
“You may be right about that. If not, there’s not much I can do to find her under the radar screen without alerting people we don’t want to alert.”
“I hope you’re right, Peter, and my heart tells me you are.”
“Good, ’cause I’ve taken the liberty of booking you on the next plane leaving from New York for Phoenix in oh, two hours. And I’ve got you on a private plane from Phoenix to the Sedona airport.”
“You’re amazing!”
“Don’t mention it. There’s a car waiting for you downstairs to take you to the airport when you’re ready. Don’t worry, the driver won’t ask any questions.”
“Peter, do you think you’ll hear from her again before I see her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Kate tends to pull completely into herself when she’s wounded.”
The thought of that made a silent tear slide down Jay’s face. “Okay, but if she does...”
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it. Call me when you land in Phoenix and I’ll give you an update.”
“Thanks, Peter, you’re a prince.”
He rolled his eyes. “Now you sound like someone else I know.”
“Bye, Peter.”
“Bye, Jay. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
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Kate wasn’t sure how long she’d lain there crying. Eventually she fell asleep for a short period of time, her body reacting to the extreme emotional release. When she awoke, all she wanted to do was run away and never stop. The pain was unbearable. She had hoped the combination of her love and time would be enough to help Jay over her insecurities; instead, it seemed that it was something Jay was going to have to work out for herself. Kate had failed; she had gambled on the strength of Jay’s faith in her and lost. Her lover was gone for good.
She thought about her options: there was nothing she needed to be doing, no responsibilities to be taken care of, and no place she needed to be. She literally could drop off the face of the Earth and no one would care, except for maybe Fred, Peter, and Barbara. She’d go back briefly and pick up Fred; the other two would get over it.
As she lay there on her back thinking, a wave of nearly nauseating fear struck her. She opened her eyes wide. Odd; it was as if it wasn’t coming from her, but from somewhere else. She quieted her mind and concentrated on the feeling. After a few minutes the fear was replaced by self-loathing, resignation, and despair. Huh. Kate remembered her conversation with her lover the day she’d gotten fired, when Jay had told her she could feel Kate’s anger and distress. Could these be Jay’s feelings and not hers?
Kate thought about it for a minute. The sensations certainly weren’t consistent with her own normal range of reactions; but then, these weren’t normal circumstances. It wasn’t every day your heart stopped beating while you were still alive and breathing. As she was debating this, the emotion shifted to a sense of determination. Definitely Jay, she thought; it sure as hell wasn’t her right now. She wondered what it meant. Then, just as quickly, she tried to put it out of her mind.
No,
Katherine, Jay made it clear where you stand; you’d do well to try to
train yourself to let go.
Nonetheless, the fact that she had some connection to the love of her life gave her cause to be grateful. She decided to get up, shower, and move on to Sedona as she had planned. It was, after all, one of the most spiritual places in the world, and God knew she needed the help just then.
Jay twirled the ring on her finger for the thousandth time, watching it sparkle, then took it off and looked at the small, neat script her lover had had engraved on the inside of the band:
Forever
. She could only hope it was still true. She was almost there. If she could have flapped her wings herself, she would have; the flights had seemed to drag on for an eternity.
There had been plenty of time to think, and it had made her miserable.
Once Peter had knocked some sense into her, it was all so clear: Kate had 268
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given up everything for love, everything for her—her career, her future, her life, and her happiness.
Wow.
For her, Jamison Parker.
And she had repaid her lover by doubting her and damning her, judging her not by her actions and words, but by those of a sleazy tabloid reporter. Jay was ashamed of herself. She wished she could somehow turn back the clock and do that morning’s conversation over again, but she knew real life didn’t work that way; she’d just have to make it right somehow.
She flashed back to the conversations between her and Kate about trust
. She asked me to trust in her, trust in us, and I failed abysmally.
Great, Jamison, this time it may have cost you your one chance at love
and happiness. Worse yet, you managed to devastate this incredible
woman who sacrificed everything for you.
She knew she was going to have to work harder to overcome her trust issues. No one else could do that for her, not even Kate; she just hoped she wasn’t too late.
As soon as the small plane touched the runway in Sedona, she was out of her seat. Now that she was there, she wasn’t sure what to do. There were more than sixty trails in the area, and that was assuming that Kate had gone hiking.
If
she was there, which was yet another assumption. Jay chewed her lip.
Peter had reconstructed the places he thought his friend had been in the week she’d been gone. He knew she’d been to the Great Sand Dunes and to Mesa Verde; he also knew she had stopped briefly at the Grand Canyon. He’d looked at maps and routes and was fairly sure she’d gone through Navajo and Hopi reservations. He thought she’d been in Flagstaff the previous night or that morning. He had told Jay all of that when she had called him from Phoenix. And he told her that he’d had no word from Kate.
Closing her eyes, Jay tried to focus. She knew Kate favored quiet, peaceful places, mountains and water. She also knew her partner loved to hike. She would have gone hiking someplace quiet where she could be alone. Jay looked at her watch; sunset was a little more than an hour away. She thought about everything she knew about Sedona. Growing up only two hours away, she had spent much time in the land of extraordinary red rock. There were so many beautiful, peaceful places to hike. And then it came to her. All of the places Peter thought Kate had been were spiritually significant.
She would have gone to Bell Rock.
One of seven vortexes in the world, Bell Rock was a fantastic place from which to watch the sun set, and perhaps the most spiritual place in the area.
Walking out the front door of the tiny airport, Jay hailed a waiting cab, which she had deliver her to the trailhead for the Bell Rock Pathway.
She would have to hustle; it was a three-and-a-half-mile hike each way.
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Fortunately, she had brought only a light backpack with a single change of clothes and her hiking boots, which she put on before settling the pack on her back and setting off up the trail. Although there were several ways to get up Bell Rock, she was fairly confident that this would have been the one her lover had taken; it had the nicest views from the top.
As Jay jogged up the trail, she tried not to think too much.
What if I’m
wrong; what if Kate didn’t come to Bell Rock? Heck, what if she’s not
even in Sedona?
She couldn’t entertain such notions; her lover had to be there. There wasn’t a soul in sight as Jay wended her way up the red rock, red rock dust coating her boots and a light sheen of sweat on her brow.
Within half an hour, as the trail turned sharply steeper and more difficult to follow, Jay caught a glimpse of a single figure sitting near the very top of the rock formation. She couldn’t make out the features or even determine if it was a man or a woman from that distance, but in her heart she knew it was Kate. She redoubled her efforts, pouring all her energy into getting to that lone figure, fighting for footholds and handholds in the rock, not caring about anything but her ultimate destination.
Twenty minutes later, she was close enough to see clearly that the solitary hiker was, indeed, Kate, and that she had her eyes closed. Jay approached cautiously, quietly, unsure of exactly what to say or do. She got to within seven feet, and her heart broke. She could feel waves of despair and hopelessness that she knew belonged to the proud figure seated before her. Silent tears tracked unhindered down Kate’s face; she looked so lost, so forlorn and alone. She was gaunt despite her tan, and too thin, and it was obvious that she didn’t know she was being watched.
Looking at that immense pain, Jay began to cry herself.
Oh my God,
what have I done to you, my love? I destroyed you. What have I done?
She stood there, rooted to the spot, unable to move forward or back.
Sitting there, deep within her own world of pain and anguish, Kate fought with herself and prayed for wisdom. She had been so sure of herself, so positive that walking away would be the right thing. And on one level it was. But on the other hand...she replayed for the millionth time that morning’s phone conversation.
Can I live with Jay thinking I’ve betrayed her? That I’m just like
everyone from her past?
Kate knew she could survive with Jay believing she’d been played for a sucker and that Kate was a cold-hearted, scheming bitch. But that Jay would be convinced yet again that she didn’t deserve anything better?
There was no way that Kate could allow the woman she loved more than 270
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anything in the world to spend the rest of her life believing that. She had to go back.
Just as she reached that conclusion, she was suddenly bombarded by feelings of deep self-loathing and self-recrimination and a stabbing ache in her heart. Her eyes snapped open as she recognized instinctively the cause of the emotions. There was Jay, standing mere feet away, tears rolling down her cheeks, pain etched in every aspect of her manner. Red-rimmed and bloodshot blue eyes locked on green for a timeless moment before Kate simply stood and opened her arms.
Dropping the pack off her shoulders, Jay covered the remaining distance between them in three steps, falling into her lover’s arms and choking on her own sobs. “Oh, Kate, I love you so much. I would give anything to have this morning to do all over again. I’m so, so sorry. I was overtired and stressed, and I missed you so much. I wasn’t thinking straight and I was way off base. You didn’t deserve that. I...I don’t even know where to start or how to begin to apologize to you or ask for your forgiveness. I know I have no right to ask it—”
“Shh,” her lover interrupted her. “That you’re here is enough, love.”
Kate felt her heart slide back into place. “I wish that we could have been together longer before this happened. If I had only had more time to earn your trust—”
Jay cut her off. “No, Kate, you’re wrong. You
have
earned my trust, with every word and every gesture; if I hadn’t been half out of my mind with fear, I would have known that. You can’t take responsibility for my mistakes, love; I have to do that, and I will. That’s why I’m here.” She paused. “Well, that and the fact that I love you more than life itself and I can’t live without you. Oh, and Fred told me I couldn’t come home without his mama.”
Kate smiled for the first time in days. “How did you find me?”
“After I hung up on you, I talked to Peter again. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that he helped set me straight.” Jay could feel the outrage building in the body holding hers. “Don’t, Kate, don’t get mad at him. He was right; there was so much I didn’t know, wasn’t seeing, and didn’t understand. I begged him to help me locate you; I just had to make this right. I had to. What I did to you this morning was like cutting out my own heart.”