I swallowed the panic rising in my chest. “What’s wrong? Am I going too fast?”
He didn’t answer as he kept pacing at a slow clip, his eyes focused on the horizon.
“Mark? Are you feeling worse?”
His whole recovery had been three steps forward, one step back, and I reminded myself he might simply be having a bad day. The doctor had dug a bullet out of Mark’s chest. My husband was entitled to a few bad days.
When he stopped, I didn’t realize it right away, so I was four steps ahead of him before I turned around. “Are you in pain? Having any trouble breathing?”
He shook his head while I returned to his side.
“Then what is it?”
“What if… if… I’m never…
right
again.” His gaze caught mine and, for the first time since he was shot, I saw fear.
“Right again? You mean back to work?”
He nodded, but the fear didn’t leave his eyes. There was something more bothering him than whether he could be a good detective again.
“You’ll go back when you’re ready, probably just a couple more weeks. The doctor said—”
“The doctor doesn’t know,” he snapped. “He can’t tell me if I’ll be myself again.”
I took his hand in mine. Despite the warmth of the day, his fingers were cold. “He said you’ll be fine.”
“I know I’ll be fine. But will I be
right
again?”
I suddenly understood. Mark had resigned himself to his own mortality. He’d never been afraid to die, and that was what made him a great cop. What he was afraid of was showing a chink in his armor and admitting he was human after all.
“You’re getting better, Mark.”
“I’m getting older,” he countered.
“Aren’t we all?” I replied with a chuckle.
“I’m going to be forty-nine, Jackie.”
“Thirty-nineteen,” I corrected. “And old is just a state of mind.”
“I’ll remind you of that when I have to start taking Viagra,” Mark said with a smirk.
“Is that what you’re really afraid of? Getting too old?”
His reply was a curt nod.
“I’ll still love you when you’re ninety-nine. I’ll chase you around the house with my walker.”
“I’ll let you catch me.” He stared down into my face, searching my eyes. “I’m not always going to be so…vital. I’ll slow down. We’ll
both
slow down.”
“Of course we will, but it won’t change a thing. We can just line our prescription bottles up on the counter and clean each other’s dentures.”
I put my arms around his waist, pulled him close, and kissed him. Instead of one of our scorching kisses that made us both want to hop into bed, this one was slow and deep and full of all the love and tenderness I could muster.
“I love you, Mark Brennan,” I said. “I’ll always love you.”
“This is forever, isn’t it?” He squeezed me hard against him. “Promise me it’s forever.”
“Forever and ever.”
***
Mark went back to work on his forty-ninth birthday—six weeks after being shot.
EPILOGUE
“Happy birthday, Mark.” I sat up from where I’d collapsed against my husband after we made love.
I eased our intimate connection and rolled to my side, wrapping my arm around his chest and putting my cheek on his broad shoulder. I played with the patch of dark hair on his chest, loving the feel of it against my fingertips.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he said with a chuckle.
“Like I told you before, old is just a state of mind.”
“Says the woman who says she’s going to be thirty-thirteen instead of forty-three.”
God, I’d almost forgotten how close my birthday was. I thought back to my last birthday—to the promises I had made to myself while I was blitzed out of my gourd on white zinfandel and feeling much older than I really was. What was it that I had promised myself?
Ah, yes...
I swore not be a clichéd middle-aged woman.
I gave myself credit for success on that score. I hadn’t looked for Botox injections or investigated a face-lift. There’d been no crash diets or fretting about a new gray hair or laugh lines. I’d learned to love myself, to be comfortable in my own forty-something skin.
I swore to be myself despite what chronology was telling me.
I’d held true to that vow, too. I’d been brave enough to date. I had found the courage to get married. I’d enjoyed the best sex of my entire life. I had even embraced myself and stopped apologizing for being who I was. I now thoroughly loved being noisy, stubborn, middle-aged me.
And I’d promised to make this a year of self-discovery and productivity.
Hell, yes!
I sat up, leaned over, and kissed my handsome husband. “Thank you, Mark.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For the greatest year of my life.”
The End
Author Biography:
Sandy James lives in a quiet suburb of Indianapolis with her husband. She’s a high school social studies teacher who especially loves psychology and United States history. Since she and her husband own a small stable of harness racehorses, they often spend time together at the two Indiana racetracks.
Sandy is published through Forever Yours, Carina Press, and BookStrand, as well as self-published. She has been an Amazon Bestseller and has won numerous awards, including two HOLT Medallions (Murphy’s Law and Rules of the Game).
Website:
sandy-james.com
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Murphy’s Law (Damaged Heroes 1)
Free Falling (Damaged Heroes 2
)
All the Right Reasons (Damaged Heroes 3)
Faith of the Heart (Damaged Heroes 4)
Twist of Fate (Damaged Heroes 5)
The Reluctant Amazon (Alliance of the Amazons 1)
The Impetuous Amazon (Alliance of the Amazons 2)
The Brazen Amazon (Alliance of the Amazons 3)
The Volatile Amazon (Alliance of the Amazons 4)
Runaway (Safe Havens 2)
The Bottom Line (Ladies Who Lunch 1)
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (Ladies Who Lunch 2)
Table of Contents