Make Me Yours: The Bellamy Creek Series

by Harlow, Melanie

  I yelled so loud, I woke my mother.

  * * *

  The following day, baskets of fruit and plates of cookies showed up at the police department, and I fielded phone calls from reporters who wanted to interview me. My boss had to essentially give me the day off just to keep up, but he said he was glad to do it.

  Burying all my emotions, I calmly relayed the events the way they’d occurred, saying only that I was grateful for my training and happy the baby was okay. It was all in a day’s work of keeping Bellamy Creek safe. The baby’s family came to the station, and we took a photo together, me holding the baby and the child’s parents standing beside me. By the time I got home, my mother had printed it and taped it to the refrigerator.

  Local Hero Saves Baby, read the headline.

  I looked at the picture. Beneath my bloodshot eyes were dark circles. My smile looked forced. My chest seemed artificially inflated.

  My legs trembled as I went upstairs to change out of my uniform.

  I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like I was faking it.

  * * *

  That evening, I took Mariah to her therapy appointment.

  While she was in the office with Jessalyn, I sat in the waiting room, staring at a dog-eared parenting magazine and sipping a cup of coffee. I was exhausted and on edge, hoping it wouldn’t show. I was also hoping Mariah told her therapist that I’d asked Cheyenne to move in with us—that would prove to her she’d been wrong about me, wouldn’t it?

  When the hour was up, Jessalyn and Mariah came out. I rose to my feet.

  “Hello, Cole.” Jessalyn smiled at me. “I heard the news.”

  “About Cheyenne?”

  “About the baby.” Her grin widened, and she shook her head. “Quite a story. Thank goodness you’re so good at what you do.”

  “Thank you.” I looked at my daughter. “How did it go tonight?”

  “Great!” She beamed. “We made a—oh!” She flicked worried eyes to Jessalyn. “I left my perfect-day collage on the table so the glue would dry. Can I get it?”

  “Sure.” Jessalyn stood aside, and Mariah scooted past her.

  “So did she tell you about Cheyenne moving in?” I asked the second we were alone.

  “She did.”

  “Told you I was fine,” I blurted.

  She was silent a moment. Then she cocked her head. “Are you?”

  “Of course I am. Why else do you think I asked Cheyenne to live with us?”

  “Is that why you asked her? To prove you’re fine?”

  I opened my mouth and shut it. It seemed like a trick question.

  Mariah came bustling out again, carefully carrying a sheet of paper with pictures cut out from magazines posted on it. “Look, Daddy! I made a perfect day collage.”

  I took it from her and carefully held it by the edges. There was a picture of a dog, a snowman, a pizza, someone ice skating, an old-fashioned horse-drawn sleigh, a house strung with Christmas lights, and several photos of families that included a mom, a dad, and children. There was also a picture of a girl about Mariah’s age cradling a baby.

  It was the baby that threatened to undo me—the room spun, and my breathing was labored all of a sudden.

  But I fended off the panic.

  “Wow, Mariah. This looks great.”

  She pointed at the photo of the girl holding the infant. “That’s me with my little sister. Penelope.”

  “Penelope, huh?” I hoped Jessalyn didn’t notice the way I’d begun to sweat.

  “Yes. Penelope Mitchell. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  I swiped my forehead. “We should get going, Mariah. I’m sure Jessalyn wants to get home. Zip up your coat.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at the therapist. “See you in two weeks?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Off next week for break.”

  “Enjoy the holidays,” I told her.

  “Same to you.” Just for a second, I thought I saw something like sympathy on her face.

  But I hustled Mariah out the door before I could be sure.

  * * *

  Wednesday night, the guys and I got together at the pub—all except Griffin, who was on a plane to Nashville. He and Blair were going down to spend Christmas with her family, since they’d been unable to make the wedding. Mariah was with Cheyenne at her house—they were baking cookies and wrapping gifts.

  We sat at a table near the back of the pub, ordered some beers and bar food, and caught up a little. It was the first time we’d seen each other since the wedding.

  After they made a big deal about the incident with the baby and gave me a bunch of shit about being a hero—people kept coming over to shake my hand or hug me—Moretti took over the conversation, bemoaning his unsuccessful attempt to convince his parents to give him some more time to find the right bride.

  “What happened to Reina?” I asked, happy to discuss something other than myself.

  He shrugged. “Reina’s fine. But I just don’t think she’s the right fit,” he said, like he was talking about ceiling joists and not marriage. “Hey Beckett, how’s your old man? He seemed okay at the wedding, although he did think I was my dad all night.”

  Beckett frowned. “Yeah, the signs of dementia are all getting worse. He wandered away from the house again yesterday, and a neighbor saw him walking down the highway without a coat. Luckily she recognized him and drove him home.”

  “Shit. Is it that bad?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I keep trying to lock him in, but it doesn’t work. And I can’t be inside with him all day. I’m running a fucking cattle ranch by myself at this point.”

  Beckett’s parents had divorced when he was young, and his mom had been out of the picture for years. He’d been raised by his dad and two older siblings. The best student of all of us—also the biggest and brawniest thanks to all the manual labor he did growing up on a farm—he’d left Bellamy Creek right after high school on a college scholarship and hit Wall Street after that. But city life hadn’t been for him, so a few years ago, he’d left it behind and never looked back.

  Even now, his cowboy hat was resting on the couch between us next to him—brim side up, and don’t fucking get him started on why you can’t set a cowboy hat down any other way. We sometimes teased him that he was more Texas than Michigan, despite having been born and raised right up the road.

  “What about your sisters?” Moretti asked. “Can they help?”

  “They’ve got jobs and kids, and Amy lives an hour away. They can’t really do much.” Beckett pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll probably have to hire someone eventually. There’s no way he’ll move to a facility, and I can’t babysit him all day.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Moretti said. “I once dated a girl who did that—home care for an elderly guy. She’d help him get dressed and all that.”

  “Dated her for how long?” Beckett gave him the side eye.

  “At least an hour,” Moretti quipped, tipping up his beer. “Long enough for her to undress me. I dressed myself.”

  We laughed, and I felt more like my old self. It was good to be around the guys, even though I was so tired I couldn’t stop yawning.

  “What’s going on with you?” Moretti asked me. “You look a little rough. Cheyenne keeping you up nights?”

  “Ha. Right. At my mom’s house?”

  “You’ll be in your new place soon enough.”

  “Yeah,” I said, grabbing my beer bottle off the table.

  “That’s cool about you and Cheyenne,” Beckett said. “So is it serious?”

  “Um, yeah, you know.” I took a sip of beer. “I guess it’s serious. I asked her to move in with me. To the new house.”

  “Shit, did you really?” Moretti looked surprised.

  “Yeah.” I shifted in my chair.

  “That is serious,” said Beckett.

  “And Mariah’s doing okay with it?” Moretti asked.

  I shrugged. “She says she is.”

 
“You don’t believe her?” Beckett paused with his beer halfway to his mouth.

  “I do, it’s just kind of hard to believe she doesn’t have any issue whatsoever with me being in a serious relationship. She’s always been so scared of losing me. At one point she made me promise I’d never get remarried.”

  “But this is Cheyenne,” Beckett pointed out. “It’s not some stranger. She’s known Cheyenne her entire life.”

  “Right, but that’s exactly why she might not feel like she can be entirely honest about how she feels. She doesn’t want to hurt Cheyenne’s feelings.” It was total bullshit and I knew it, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop talking.

  “And wasn’t she really tiny when she made you promise that?” Moretti asked. “I remember it, but it seems like it was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, she was only five, but that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t still there—in fact, I worry that it’s moved from her conscious mind into her subconscious and she doesn’t even recognize it. But is it going to blow up later?” My lip was starting to twitch, and I covered it with my beer bottle.

  “I don’t know, man.” Moretti frowned and shook his head. “You and Mariah have such a great relationship. I feel like she’d be up front about her feelings with you. And she seemed fine that day at the house.”

  “You don’t know her as well as I do,” I shot back, sitting up taller in my chair. “There was this period of time last year where she was writing these letters to me and hiding them in her room. They were full of questions she was too afraid to ask me.”

  “Oh.” Moretti’s face was grim. “I didn’t know that.”

  “And she’s been having these nightmares.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. My hands started to shake, and I set my beer bottle down and crossed my arms over my chest, hiding them in my armpits.

  “What kind of nightmares?” Beckett asked.

  “She’s, um, alone in the dark. Trapped. And there’s a monster or something that’s going to attack her and she can’t escape. So she’s just like waiting in there to be attacked.”

  “That sucks. You know what my sister did when my nephew was having monster nightmares?” Moretti said. “She had this spray bottle and she put a label on it that said Anti-Monster Spray, and every night she’d spray his room. Worked like a charm.”

  I couldn’t even smile. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work in this case.”

  “Does she see a therapist?” Beckett asked. “If not, you might consider it.”

  “She does.”

  “What does the therapist say about the nightmares?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Mariah never tells me what they discuss.” I swiped my beer off the table and took another drink in the attempt to disguise my trembling lip. But my hand shook so much I knocked the lip of the bottle against my tooth. I set it down again. “I just need to talk to Cheyenne.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Moretti said. “Maybe Cheyenne can help her. She’s good with kids.”

  I squirmed in my chair. “No, I mean I need to talk to Cheyenne about us. Maybe we’re moving too fast.”

  Beckett and Moretti exchanged a look that pissed me off.

  “Didn’t you just say things were going great?” Beckett asked.

  “They are,” I said, knowing I was making no sense and getting aggravated about it. “Maybe they’re going too great.”

  “Cole, what the hell are you talking about?” Moretti looked totally confused.

  “I’m talking about the fact that I’m in love with her, okay?” I snapped. “I’m in love with her, and Mariah’s in love with her, and everything is so perfect, there has to be something wrong.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Beckett shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong, Cole.”

  “Except that you don’t trust good things,” Moretti said.

  “Why should I?” I demanded, taking another big swallow from my beer. “Huh? Why should I?”

  “Because they’re real, Cole.”

  “You know what else is real? Bad luck. Tragedy.” I locked my jaw. “Look at what just happened Monday. One second that baby was fine, the next, she couldn’t breathe.”

  “But you were there, Cole,” Beckett reminded me. “You saved her. That was a good thing.”

  “It could have easily gone the other way.” I was not going to be talked out of this.

  Moretti leaned on the table. “We’re not saying bad things don’t happen to good people, because they do—we know it. But you can’t live in fear of them. And you don’t have to go looking for them.”

  “I’m not looking for them,” I said defensively. “I’m just not choosing to be blind to them.”

  Moretti sighed, lifting his beer. “Look, I’ve never been in love, so I don’t know what it feels like. It sounds scary as fuck.”

  “It is,” I confirmed.

  “But I do know you. And I think you’ll regret it if you walk away.”

  “I do too,” Beckett added.

  “I’m not walking away,” I said irritably. “Nothing I’ve said is about walking away.”

  “Then what’s it about?” Moretti demanded.

  “It’s about being smart. Strong. Tough. It’s about protecting the people you love. It’s about making decisions based on what you know is true, not about how you feel in the moment. You have to—you have to put aside what you feel in the moment and go with what you know.” My body was sweaty beneath my clothes, and my heart was pumping fast inside my ribs. “Maybe I just need to take a step back and make sure I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Okay.” Moretti held up both hands, as if offering a truce. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.” I pulled out my wallet and threw down some cash. “But I better go pick up Mariah now. It’s getting late.”

  * * *

  In the car on the way home, I went over the uncomfortable conversation again and again, hating myself for lying to my friends but also irritated that they thought they knew better than I did how to handle the situation. It was easy for them to trust in good things. They weren’t me. They hadn’t been through what I had.

  I had to take a few minutes and calm down before I walked over to Cheyenne’s.

  She greeted me at the front door with a hug and a smile, flour dusted all over her clothes. “Come on in! We’re just waiting for the second batch to come out of the oven.”

  I went inside, inhaling the homey scent of fresh-baked cookies mingling with the Balsam fir Christmas tree, trying desperately to relax. Cheyenne was good at reading my face, and I didn’t want her to ask me what was wrong tonight. I was too exhausted to be convincing.

  “Daddy!” Mariah yelled when I entered the kitchen. She wore a red apron that was way too big for her, which she’d obviously wiped her hands on many times. “Want to help us decorate?”

  I yawned. “How about I just watch?”

  “Tired?” Cheyenne asked.

  “A little.”

  “Want a cup of coffee?”

  “That sounds great.”

  “Hello, dear,” Darlene called from the sink, where she was washing out a mixing bowl.

  “Hi, Mrs. Dempsey.”

  I sat at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and watched Mariah and Cheyenne frost and sprinkle their cookies. They laughed and teased each other, trading funny looks and making inside jokes that should have made me trust in good things.

  But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  Over Cheyenne’s shoulder, there was a clock on the wall. I could hear it ticking.

  Twenty-Eight

  Cheyenne

  Christmas Eve, I was getting ready to head over to the Mitchells’ house when my mother popped her head into my room. “Got a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, holding up two different earrings and checking the mirror to see which one I liked better with the high-necked black lace top I had on. “Which one do you think?”

  My mother sat on the
bed behind me and looked at my reflection. “Hmmm, I like the smaller ones.”

  “Okay.” I set the dangly one down and put on the little hoops. “What’s up?”

  “I just wondered if you’d noticed anything unusual about Cole last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he just seemed off to me. Not his usual self.”

  “How so?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “Quiet. Distracted. Even anxious.”

  “He said he was tired. And he had a really eventful week.” I felt the need to defend him, even though I was worried too. “I get the feeling he hasn’t been sleeping well lately.”

  “That could be it.” She hesitated. “So he’s mentioned the nightmares to you?”

  “Nightmares?” I finished fastening the second hoop and turned to face her. “No. What nightmares?”

  “Oh, dear. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but his mother mentioned to me that he’s been having nightmares so bad he wakes up yelling in the middle of the night.”

  A chill swept up my spine. “What? Since when?”

  “She didn’t say exactly when it started, but I had lunch with her yesterday and she seemed so tense about something—it took me a while to get it out of her, but then she confessed. She said it happened at least twice this week.”

  “Wow.” My heart ached that Cole hadn’t felt he could confide in me about it. “That’s . . . that’s awful.”

  “I knew he used to have them when he was younger,” my mother went on, “and for the longest time he couldn’t sleep over with Griffin. But he grew out of them. Odd that they’re back all of a sudden.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said, a strange mix of dread and sadness in my belly. “Maybe it was the episode with the baby?”

  “Maybe.” My mother sighed. “But it makes sense now why he’s seeing a therapist.”

  “A therapist?”

  “Yes. Deb Culpepper saw him in the waiting room of her son’s therapist a couple weeks ago, and said he was acting very strange.”