Falling for the Cop

by Dana Nussio

  Her mom’s arms automatically crossed over the pink flowers and lace near the top of her nightgown. “Why not? I like Shane.”

  So do I. More than she had any right. So she used the one excuse that might convince her mother to step away from him.

  “He’s a great guy, and he’s been so kind to share all of these activities with us. But I know you wouldn’t want him to feel obligated to do things with us. He’s already donated so much time to helping out with the team, so...”

  She let her words trail away and waited. She hated making her mother feel like a charity project, but that was better than allowing her mother to be hurt later, when Shane left them and Elaine realized that he wasn’t her friend, after all.

  For a few seconds, Elaine sat there, staring down at her crossed arms. Were her feelings more hurt than Natalie had predicted? But finally her mother looked up at her with the same incisive stare she’d used when Natalie had sneaked out after basketball practice. That too smart look of a woman who Natalie had once believed could read minds.

  “Why don’t you want to spend time with Shane?”

  Natalie blinked. “This isn’t about me.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course not,” she said, though it had always been useless for her to lie to her mother. Before the accident, anyway. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea—”

  “I would think you’d want to spend more time—not less—with the man you’re in love with.”

  Natalie started shaking her head. “I don’t know where you got that idea, but you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” She smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  Natalie’s throat tightened, and she stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans to keep from fidgeting because she didn’t think her mother was wrong, either. Now that someone had spoken the truth aloud, something shifted inside her. Why had she bothered denying it to herself, let alone to the one person who’d known her all of her life?

  “You should see the way you look at him, like he has all the answers to every question you’ve ever asked,” her mother said.

  Again, Natalie shook her head, not because it wasn’t true, but because it would be easier and safer for her heart if it weren’t.

  Her mother only smiled the knowing smile of someone who’d been there, even if her love story hadn’t come with a happy ending.

  “He looks at you the same way, you know.” Elaine rolled her lips inward and looked toward the ceiling as if considering, and then she shook her head. “No, it’s not quite the same. He looks at you as if you scare him to death.”

  Then they should look exactly alike, Natalie decided, though just the thought of him staring at her at all squeezed her chest with possibilities. Could there be something real between them? Something that could last?

  “You have such a great imagination, Mom. But this isn’t one of your shows. This is real life. My life.”

  “So, live it.”

  Natalie could only stare at her. Even though she’d been serious only seconds before, she couldn’t help grinning now.

  Elaine held her hands wide as she smiled back at her. “Okay, I know I’m not the best role model for doing that. I just don’t want you to repeat my mistakes. Some of them were even before the accident.”

  “You did the best you could.”

  “I could have done better,” she said with a shrug. “I could have searched for happiness for myself again instead of burying my heart to protect it from being hurt. I think I would have been a better mother to you if I’d been happier.”

  “But you were—are—a good mother.”

  “And I could have tried to make the best of it and realized I was lucky to be alive after the accident. I guess I was just angry. I’d already had so much taken from me, and I kept asking myself how this could happen, too. I got caught up in my own pity party, and I couldn’t get out.”

  “You’re getting out now. And that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Because of your young man.”

  “Mom, please.” Natalie squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them again. “But...you know he’s a cop.”

  “And you want to blame him and every other person wearing a badge for the accident that put me here.” Elaine waved her hand toward her chair, parked in the corner of the room.

  “You don’t blame all cops for it?”

  She shook her head. “In the beginning, I did. In fact, I blamed the whole world, including you, for what happened to me. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t deserve it. But I guess I’ve mellowed with time. I don’t even blame the two officers in the accident anymore.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Well, if you remember, those two officers performed first aid on the both of us though they were injured in the accident, as well. One of them even had a broken ankle.”

  Natalie nodded. “I guess I had forgotten that. But even now I can’t see someone in a police uniform without thinking about the accident.”

  “I’m not likely to forget it, either,” Elaine said with a smile. “I doubt I’ll ever be able to hear any kind of emergency vehicle siren without thinking about it. But I can see police officers now and recognize the good they do. And when I think of Shane and the other officers he’s introduced us to, I remember what good people they are.”

  Natalie stared at her hands for several seconds. When she finally looked up, her mother was watching her.

  “Did you think that letting Shane into your life would somehow be betraying me?”

  “No, Mom. That’s not it.” Natalie stopped and considered. “Well, at least not all of it.” After all they’d discussed, how could she tell her mother that her misgivings were far more about the risk to her own heart than worries over what her mother would think?

  “Well, that’s not acceptable to me.”

  Natalie blinked. It was as if her mother had sneaked into her private thoughts and had responded to them. “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t use me as an excuse.”

  “I’m not. It’s just—”

  “That you worry that loving Shane somehow hurts me though he wasn’t in the car that night? Though he wasn’t involved in any of the decisions about whether to call off the high-speed chase.”

  “Well, when you put it that way...”

  “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? That’s like blaming me for Eve eating that apple. I am a woman, after all.”

  Natalie nodded. It did sound silly.

  “I was trying to tell you this earlier, but you weren’t listening.”

  “What? When?”

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “Tonight. At the movies. Why do you think I chose that awful police flick?”

  “Because you have lousy taste in movies?”

  “Possibly true as well, but I also wanted you to know that I don’t hold a grudge against law enforcement.”

  Natalie only shook her head. “It’s still difficult for me to see how you don’t.”

  “That’s because you never accepted that it was just an accident. Why was it so hard for you to accept that?”

  Natalie shook her head. “I don’t know. Guilt. For being born and making your life so hard. For being the one who walked away from the accident.”

  “And I’m grateful for that every day.” She took her daughter’s hand. “I know I’ve been selfish, but I have always believed if one of us had to be hurt, it should have been me.”

  Elaine brushed her hands together as if to say that the topic was closed. “Now back to Shane.”

  “Mom, can we just talk about him another day?”

  “Are you looking for an excuse?”

  “What do you mean?” Then she shook her head. “No.”

  “Good. I just can’t let you use Shane’s career, the accide
nt or even me as an excuse not to take a risk on someone. Because love is always a risk.”

  “You, of all people, have to know that the risk doesn’t always pay off.”

  Elaine nodded. “I guess I do, but I also know that there are worse things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like always wondering what you missed and wishing you hadn’t been too much of a coward to try.”

  * * *

  “KELLY, IS THAT you?”

  At the sound of Shane’s voice filtering in from the other room, Natalie stopped and leaned against the door to the garage. Her pulse pounded in her ears, and her coat felt too warm though she’d been freezing moments before. She hadn’t stopped or even slowed since the moment her mother had finally fallen asleep. A cacophony of sounds playing in her head—her mother’s words tonight overlaying bits of the conversations and intimate echoes she’d shared with Shane—she’d rushed out into the night.

  She’d had to get here. To him.

  But now that she was here, so close that she could hear his voice, her feet were frozen to the welcome mat. She’d planned on throwing herself into his arms, holding nothing back, and now she couldn’t even make it past the garage. What was she supposed to tell him when she finally peeled herself away from the door? That she’d only now recognized that she loved him, so he should get started immediately with breaking her heart? She hauled in a breath, as she’d had no time to think or breathe until now. Or to stop herself. To tuck all of those feelings back inside while she could still shield her heart.

  Natalie swallowed, but she still couldn’t move. This was like taking a step forward on a swinging bridge where each of the planks she crossed dropped away behind her. And she wasn’t ready to have no path for retreat. She really was that coward her mother had spoken of, too afraid to reach out for the one thing she wanted more than anything. Shane.

  “Kelly?” he called again, voice sounding closer.

  Taking a deep breath, she toed off her boots and pushed herself away from the mat. She padded down the hall in her socks, and just before she rounded the doorway into the family room, he rolled into the hall.

  “Oh. It’s you.”

  He couldn’t have looked more surprised.

  “It’s me,” she confirmed.

  He backed his chair through the doorway again and then moved out of the way, gesturing for her to follow him into the family room. He parked near a TV tray in the middle of the room. It was covered with half-empty dishes. He’d been watching basketball highlights on some sports show, something he pointed to with a grin before clicking off the power. He gestured for her to sit on the recliner closest to him, but she remained where she was, her hand gripping the white-painted door frame.

  “What are you doing here? Did you forget something?”

  She was grateful that he didn’t point out that if she’d forgotten anything, he could easily return it Monday when she picked him up for the game. Clearly, she had no good excuse to be here at this time of night, and they both knew it.

  “Sorry I interrupted your late-night dinner,” she said to fill the long pause. She had no clue how to answer his question.

  If he noticed that she hadn’t, he didn’t mention it. “No, I’m done. Guess I wasn’t hungry, after all. All that popcorn your mom and I ate at the movies wasn’t such a good idea.”

  “You’ll have to tell her that. She refuses to give it up.”

  “Everything in moderation.”

  Everything except him, a voice inside her suggested, making her grip the frame tighter. A little of Shane would never be enough for her. She would always crave more. All.

  She blinked away the thought. Why couldn’t she do this? She had so much to say to him, so many feelings to reveal, and yet the words wouldn’t come. Was that a sign that maybe this leap of faith she was tempted to take would end in a crushing fall? Could she survive if she put her trust in him and he walked away like the others had? Was that kind of pain worth the risk she was taking to let him in?

  The silence having stretched too long, Shane cleared his throat. “When I heard the door, I thought you were Kelly because she’s my on-call person tonight,” he explained unnecessarily.

  Still, Natalie’s jaw automatically tightened over the truth being spoken aloud. Good thing he was looking at the screen of his cell phone and missed it.

  He pointed to the digital time on the screen. “But it’s too early for her to be here, anyway.”

  “She’s still coming?” Glancing behind her, she checked to see if the other woman had magically appeared since she’d come inside.

  “Later. After her shift.”

  She nodded. She would have preferred that he not have female officers as overnight guests, even on the sofa, but she had no hold over him, and she would have to accept that if she told him what she came to say tonight.

  “So what’s going on, Natalie? You’re making me nervous.”

  “That makes two of us.” She licked her lips. So much for her grand gesture.

  “Did something happen?”

  “I guess you could say that.” How could she begin to describe a realization that had changed everything? Like giving birth to possibility when only a barren womb had existed there before.

  Shane gripped the armrests of his chair. “Well, are you going to tell me what it is, or do you need to me to keep guessing?”

  She had to smile at that, as he would do just what he said. In fact, his follow-through was one of the things she loved about him, whether with coaching the youth basketball team, helping her mother to get out in the world again or making patient love to her. Yes, just one of the things she loved about him.

  “I’ve been fighting it since the moment I met you at the clinic,” she said finally. The weight that lifted off her right then confirmed that it was true.

  “Your hatred of cops?”

  She frowned at him, and he shrugged his apology. If he wanted her to answer his question, then he just needed to be patient and let her talk.

  “No. My...uh...attraction to one.”

  “Oh.”

  He said it as if her words had knocked the wind out of him. Maybe it surprised him as much as it had her.

  “I had all of these preconceptions about what you would be like, and, let’s admit it, some of them weren’t so far off the mark.” She paused, waiting for his nod before she continued. “But a lot of them were wrong. Dead wrong.”

  “I surprise people that way.”

  She crossed her arms and frowned at him. “Would you let me get this out?”

  He gestured with his hand for her to proceed.

  “You’re this mass of contradictions. A good-looking guy who turns out to be nice. Cocky yet vulnerable. A big, burly police officer who’s impossibly kind to kids and senior citizens.”

  “But...?”

  Her head had bent and her gaze had lowered to her gray cotton socks as she’d touted all of Shane’s qualities, but at his question, she jerked her chin up again.

  “What do you mean, but?”

  “But you want me to stop coaching and stop hanging out with your mom so you can get back to focusing on what’s important. But you can’t see yourself with someone whose past is as checkered as mine. But you don’t want someone who’ll never really be whole whether I can shake this piece of metal or not.”

  He slammed his hands on the armrests of his chair. Instead of looking to her for confirmation, he shoved his hands back through his hair and stared out the window, where dark smudges of night had overwhelmed the sheet of drab gray that had passed for Michigan daylight earlier. Did he still feel that way? That he wasn’t good enough?

  “There isn’t a but.”

  “There has to be one.”

  Now his insecurities were beginning to annoy her. “Can yo
u ever, just once, accept that you might deserve to have people who care about you? Can you just forgive yourself and get over what happened when you were a kid? You’ve paid your debts. When are you going to stop lying prostrate and wearing sackcloth? Even most of the people you arrest who are convicted eventually serve their sentences and get out of prison. Are you ever going to stop punishing yourself?”

  Her words had grown louder with each sentence until the last came out as almost a shriek. Like a stone rolling downhill, she hadn’t been able to stop until it was all out, but when she glanced back to him, he was staring at her with wide eyes.

  “Um, do you want me to answer each question individually? If so, you’ll need to repeat them slowly.”

  Natalie shook her head and shoved her fingers through her hair. Then she met his gaze. “I just want you to know that you are worthy. You’ve always been worthy. The only one who can’t see it is you.”

  His licked his lips, his gaze lowering to the floor and then lifting again. “I’m trying.” He paused for several seconds and then asked, “Is that what you came here to say?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Then what was it?”

  She cleared her throat. “What I’m trying to say is...well...I want you.”

  For what seemed like hours rather than only a brief gathering of heartbeats, neither spoke. Neither moved. Shane simply stared back at her with those same piercing eyes that had seen through her all along. What was he thinking? He didn’t give her any clues. He didn’t roll closer, but he didn’t reverse the chair and retreat, either.

  Finally, Natalie couldn’t wait any longer. Whether he planned to reject her now or later, this was her time to be honest with him and with herself. Her first, slow step away from that doorway and toward him felt like stepping out on faith, no pausing for the future to be written in indelible ink, no stalling for the safety nets to be properly hung. She took that first step. And then another. And then another.