My heart slammed. "You came out in the storm-"
A woman wearing a Santa hat came through the door before I could finish. She smiled at me and then smiled at Mason. "How did you sleep, hero?"
Hero? He chuckled and shook his head. "I'm fine. I want you to tell me that she's fine," he said and looked at me.
"Well," she spouted and looked into my eyes with a light, "she's not freezing to death anymore, so that helps things, right?"
"What?" I heard myself say.
She turned her curious gaze to me. "What do you remember about the accident?"
"Just…that. The snowplow was coming and a truck came around him. I had nowhere to go but the trees."
"That's it? You don't remember Mason bringing you in?" I shook my head. She smiled and proceeded to tell me how Mason had been looking for me for hours out in the snowstorm. How he went to the police and the hospital refusing to quit until he finally found me. Then how he smashed the ice around the car with a wrench to get the door open to retrieve my freezing body, almost freezing to death himself in the process.
"When he carried you in, he had mild hypothermia himself, and you, my dear," she smiled again, "were knocking on death's door. Literally." She shot a look at Mason. "We had to bring you back once. And then Mason laid in the bed with you to warm you up until you were stable."
I swung my gaze over to Mason. He had been watching my face the entire time, and now, he gulped and didn't look away. He looked heartbroken and concerned. I didn't understand why he'd feel heartbroken. I was all right, I was right here…unless he thought I wasn't going to forgive him.
I squinted at him. Yeah, it sucked that he didn't mention Adeline. And yeah, it hurt when he said that he felt guilty loving me. But those weren't deal-breakers. Didn't he know that? I tilted my head and watched his thumb as it caressed the backs of my fingers. He didn't, did he? He honestly thought I was going to leave him, to break off everything, because of this.
We were supposed to be getting married in less than a week. I couldn't let him think that for another second because he had saved my life, risked his own life for me, and then stayed here with me all night, keeping me safe and warm…and he sat there thinking I was going to leave him.
I leaned forward as much as I could, grabbing his arms and pulling him to sit on the bed beside me. His arms stayed loose and tentative at our sides, unsure of my motives, but I reached around his neck and held on for dear life as I burst wide open.
Everything that I wanted for myself was right here in this bed with me. I didn't care if the nurse was there. I needed Mason more than I needed my dignity right then. I loved and hated the fact that he had risked his life for me. It was such a strange contrast.
I whispered in his ear through my sobbing throat, "I love you."
It was then he let himself go. All his muscles released and his arms, though careful, engulfed me with his warmth. With me pressed into his chest, he lifted one of those big warm hands and cupped my cheek, his thumb running over my lips as he rested his head to mine. I could practically taste the gratefulness coming from him. He had bandages on his arm and his hands. I ran my fingers over them gently, telling myself I'd ask him later. They were new, so I knew it had been from his search of me.
He got hurt for me even while he thought I was so angry I was going to leave him forever.
I heard the door close somewhere behind him, but we stayed like that. When he felt my tears on his hand, his intake of breath was slow. "Baby," he soothed. "Shh."
He pressed and rubbed my entire body in intervals of warm pressure. He even rubbed down my legs and back up again. With my face buried in the crook of his neck, and my arms around him as much as I could get them with wires and tubes, I cried for the way he loved me and somehow always found blame within himself that he wasn't good enough. I knew right then he was blaming himself, thinking that was the reason that I'd been driving around. I could tell in the way that he confessed, and it all made sense. I pulled back, the nurse long gone, and looked up into his hazel eyes.
"I wasn't driving around because I was angry."
His brow furrowed and he spoke softly. "What do you mean?"
"I wasn't blowing off steam because I was upset. That wasn't why I got caught in the storm." And then my heart ached because I knew his present was still in the car, and I didn't know if it was even usable now. "I was…" I gasped with my realization. It didn't matter. He would still blame himself. Whether I was out because I was angry at him or out because I had been getting his Christmas present, the point is that I was in that storm because of him, one way or another. Dang, Mason still was going to feel guilty either way.
"What is it?"
"I was coming home from…getting your Christmas present."
His lips fell open and he took a deep breath. "What?"
"It's in the car. That's why I was out. Not because I was angry." I chuckled wryly. "I was trying to surprise you."
I expected his face to fall, his breaths to turn angry, and his fist to clench with hatred for himself. But he half-smiled. "Really? I was so worried when you weren't at your parents'. I thought…I had messed everything up. And then when Adeline called and said she called you, I thought you'd never take me back. I thought I'd never get to clean up all this mess. And then she said that the line went dead and there was so much noise..." He shook his head, his hair a mess on his head. A sexy mess. "I thought I had lost you forever."
"I'm right here," I promised and gripped the nape of his neck tighter.
He pulled my hand up. The left one. "Is there anything else you want to ask me? Anything at all? I promise I'll tell you the truth, the whole truth." He kissed the ring on my finger, his eyes closed.
I shook my head. "No, Mason. I trust you."
He squinted up at me and spoke against my fingers. "Why?"
"Because you came for me." I could taste the fresh tears that fell over my lips. "You saved me. Again."
"Again?" he said confused but adorably hopeful as he leaned toward me.
"You saved me the first time when I opened my eyes and you were there in the hospice, taking care of me, fighting for me, always waiting for me to wake up."
"I had to," he said vehemently against my cheek. "Because you saved me first. At that party when I looked into your sad eyes and saw how much a person can want to change...it not only makes them able to, it makes them worthy of it. For the first time since my mom's accident, you gave me a piece of hope that I could one day be worthy of it, too."
"You are," I insisted and kissed his jaw.
He pressed his lips to my ear. "I love you so much, Em."
When he looked back at me this time, it was a quick glance before closing his eyes and touching his lips to mine. It was bridled and I didn't want that right then. My body was sore and ached in a strange way, but I wanted to feel his passion all over me, crawling through my veins and under my skin. I licked at his lips before pressing closer. "Whoa," he said gently. "Easy, baby." He gave me a stern look. "I just got you back. You need to rest and—"
I was having none of the "rest" talk. I had spent six months of my life resting. I leaned back onto my pillow and took him with me. He groaned, a small protest that carried no real punch, and leaned over me, his palms on either side of me. This time when I opened my mouth to him, he dove head first. Moving my favorite hand up to my face, he held me in place for a series of kisses and licks and bites that had me forgetting me were at a hospital and wanting it to be our honeymoon.
When he pulled back with a small laugh, I scowled. "I wanted to kiss you so badly that day in your room at the hospice on your bed. The day we were supposed to have a date and I was late."
"The day you teased me with your 'I just wanted to taste that coconut' line," I said in my best Mason voice.
He smiled, full-wattage. "Yeah. That."
"Why were you late?"
"Mamma had a doctor's appointment that day and the nurse's son got sick at the last minute, so she couldn't take her
."
I frowned and chided softly. "You could have just told me."
"I know." He nodded. "I wish I had. I just loved the way we were and I thought if you found out about me you'd want nothing to do with me."
"But you didn't know that it would make me love you even more for it, did you?"
He smiled bashfully, but right into my eyes. "I should have. I'm sorry I didn't trust you."
"Mason, you got hypothermia for me." Even saying it brought on a fresh round of tears. I smiled through them. "It's all forgotten."
He sighed and leaned his forehead to mine. "Tell me you still love me."
"I never stopped," I whispered.
He lifted his head just barely, just enough to see my face. He groaned, "I love you, Em."
"I love you."
He scooted as close as he could and held my face gently. "Thank you for not leaving me here without you."
I felt a sob break free of my lungs as the fact of how close I'd really been to death sank in. The nurse said they had to bring me back…
I didn't want to know right then what exactly that entailed. But soon I'd get Mason to tell me the story.
"Thank you for coming to get me."
His thumbs caressed achingly slow across my cheeks. "I will forever do that." He smiled and glanced out the window. It was bright and white. The storm had calmed, leaving a peaceful, quiet morning behind. Funny how that seemed to be the theme of our lives."Merry Christmas, baby."
Dolly Parton once anonymously entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest…and lost to a drag queen.
Mason
Emma's parents were relieved, to say the least. They were also very upset with me that I hadn't gotten in touch with them sooner. I didn't tell them the extent of Emma's situation. They thought I went out and found her right away. They didn't know their daughter almost died again. I didn't have the heart to tell them over the phone. They didn't know that I'd stayed in bed with Emma all night to keep her warm and stave off hypothermia, and then long after that because I couldn't make myself leave her. I stood at the desk of the nurses station, the landline phone to my ear, and wanted to laugh at them the way they handed the phone back and forth, grilling me, laying into me, and then thanking me within seconds of each other.
Emma couldn't go home today, but she was in excellent spirits. It was Christmas after all. Her family was bringing the Christmas to her as soon as the roads were cleared.
And they said they would check on my mom before they came there since my truck got towed from the ambulance bay this morning with a dead battery. But that was OK. It was worth it.
I went back into the room with her and watched her sleep as I waited in my green scrubs. The news had said we were in a state of emergency from the storm, so there were plenty of things still not working properly, cell phones being one of them.
I sat there, waiting and watching until her family showed up. I wondered what Rhett and Isabelle were going to think of my small, normal house. They'd never been there, but they were going to be my in-laws, so they better get used to it.
However, I was shocked when I saw the officer from last night come through the doors and head right for me. He stared at me expectantly and then sighed. "Well? You found her, didn't you? How is she?"
"I found her." I crossed my arms and pushed through Emma's door open for him to follow me. "I thought you said no one would come out on Christmas to check on people?"
"Well," he twisted his mustached lips, "my girls understand that Daddy has to go help people sometimes. They think I'm a superhero for it."
"You came up here just to see if Emma was OK?"
"Yeah." He handed me a cup of coffee I hadn't even seen him holding because I'd been so surprised as he looked at her. "She doing all right?"
I told him everything that happened after I'd left him. He kept whistling and hissing in sympathy. I thanked him for the coffee and he said for us to take it for what it was—a Christmas miracle. He also said he'd look around and find out who the snowplow driver was on that road, find out why he left the scene, and if he got the make and model of the truck who ran Emma off the road. He said it was a long shot. Since the plow hadn't stopped, he probably hadn't seen or heard anything in the cab of that big truck with the piles of snow flying up. I agreed, hating it but accepting that he was going to look into it, and shook his hand before he left.
I gave him Adeline's phone number, but he said the line had been disconnected. He said he didn't think any criminal charges would be brought up on her. She hadn't officially been harassing us. Keeping photos isn't a crime, he said. The texts were annoying, but since the phone had been disconnected, no criminal charges were possible unless she called again from another line. Her apartment was almost empty when they went there. I doubted that we'd ever hear from her again. It looked like she had skipped town, and that was just fine by me.
I knew it wasn't Adeline's fault directly, any of it, but I couldn't help but hold a piece of blame in my gut for her. They were my actions though. I had left my phone that day and I had chosen not to tell Emma about Adeline and the one date we'd had. So, I shouldered that and decided it was way past time to move on.
When I heard Isabella call through the door that they were there, I reached over to rub Emma's cheek. "Wake up, baby."
She did, almost immediately moving her fingers to press the buttons on her bed to sit up. She looked up and smiled. "Mrs. Wright."
I turned, confused, to see my mom in her wheelchair, Emma's dad with his hands on the handles, and the nurse beside them. They had brought my mom for me? He smiled and shrugged over her shoulder. "It's Christmas."
Before I could look back, Isabella was engulfing Emma and then apologizing for squeezing too hard. They brought a couple of presents and hot apple cider. Or what was once hot. Now it was lukewarm, but it didn't matter. We were all together and that was all that did matter.
When Emma asked about her brother and sister, her mother said the airports were closed. She was sure they weren't able to fly in, but couldn't get a hold of them. So they wouldn’t be there for Christmas, and with the way things looked, maybe not the wedding either. Emma was bummed, I knew, because she felt the need to get to know them, to have them there, being their sister, remembering how to be.
When Isabella pulled a few small gifts from her bag and laid them on Emma's lap, I recognized them immediately. And so did Emma. They were the Christmas presents her parents had brought to the hospice for her the year before, the ones that sat in the window. She refused to open the presents before. She said that her parents had bought those for the "other" Emma and it didn't feel right to open them. But Isabella had gone up into her room and gotten them on purpose.
Emma looked at them and up at Isabella. She shook her head. Isabella touched her hand. "We bought them for you. Old you, new you, doesn't matter. We bought these for our daughter. It's time you see what we gave you, Emmie."
It was the first time they called Emma Emmie and she didn't flinch or make a face. I thought she was going to refuse, politely, but she surprised me. She surprised us all by picking up the biggest of the small packages and twisting it in her fingers. She smiled and put her finger under the crease of that pretty paper, but before she pulled it free, she looked up at me.
I leaned back into the door with the force of that gaze. I felt my breath fall in and out as we stared at each other.
I smiled, knowing it was crooked and my adoration for her was right there on my face. She smiled back and ripped the paper before looking down at it. Peeling it open and seeing the small box, she laid the paper down gently. She glanced up at her mother and opened the maroon box to reveal a locket. She lifted it from the satin. It was a silver oval on a long chain. She turned it over and smiled. Her mom sat on the bed beside her and took it from her. She helped her put it on and leaned back, lifting it in her fingers. "Remember my mom's necklace?" She showed her the one around her own neck. "We got you one to match. E. It stands for Emma, Em, Emmie. All of it.
It doesn't matter what we call you, what you remember, or who you marry. You are our daughter," she said and smiled, letting the tears fall. Emma pressed her lips together, her own eyes glassy."Always have been, always will be."
They group-hugged with Rhett, so I went and knelt in front of Mom while they talked. "Hey."
"Mason," she said in her usual confusion. I coaxed her into the present and I took her with me to get everyone something hot to drink. In the small vending room we rounded up cups of hot chocolate. Emma was going to have to get used to my love for the hot brew. Mom used to make it for us when we were kids. We'd chop wood on the weekends for the fireplace and then come in and she'd have it ready for us. We'd sit by the fire and get warm by the wood we worked so hard for, back when Milo was still around.
I took a deep breath as we walked back, a tray of cups in my hands. I hadn't heard anything about Milo or from him in a while. Weeks. It had never been this long before and it didn't make me feel better to not have to go save him all the time. It made me worry why I didn't need to. Was he in jail? Did he move away? Something worse?
I pushed all that away and pressed my hip to the door to push it open. I held the door open for Mamma with it and let it close behind us softly. Rhett and Isabella were back to sitting in the chairs on the other side.
I went to give them both a cup and Isabella reached up, taking my face in her hands. Her lip trembled as she pulled me to her. I held the cups off to the side and wondered what in the world was… Ah. I peeked over at Emma and saw her face, adoration spelled plainly across it. She told them about me finding her.
She released me. "We love you, Mason. I'm so glad you were brought to us. Thank you for what you did."
"Yeah, son," Rhett continued and shook my hand. It was like it used to be, back when I was just Emma's therapist, back before she stole my heart and they no longer wanted me to have anything to do with her. Back when they respected me and knew I'd take care of their daughter, no matter what. Finally, after months, I could see that respect back in his eyes. It was surreal because I had been sure I'd never see it again.