Page 66 of Grissom
A tiny hand crept into her limp, cold fingers. “I gotcha, Miss Tuesday,” Tanner whispered, like the tiny angel he was, his voice full of worry and panting as if he were running to keep up with his dad. Or maybe he was flying? That didn’t make sense. Little boys couldn’t fly. “And we’re gonna take you to the hospital, and you’re gonna be okay, and so’s Luke and me, and we’re all gonna be okay and… and…”
She lost track of his dear sweet huffing and puffing over the hubbub of Grissom’s rowdy F-bombs. Oh, how she loved that man. He was fierce and so, so angry. Maybe angry with her. But his temper was born of worry and fear now, and every one of those F-bombs was precious music to her heart.
At last, the gurney slid inside the wide rear gate of an ambulance. Blue lights flashed overhead. An army of extra-large men surrounded her, bent over her, and packed her body with long bags of delicious warmth. Eric, that was his name, pulled a warm blanket out of nowhere and covered her from her neck to her bloody toes.
Tuesday lay there, breathing and listening.
“Be careful, damn it!” Grissom barked.
“Then get out of the way!” That order came from Alex.
Men. Always arguing. Grissom mostly, exerting himself, defending her at what might be the end of her life. But what a way to go, surrounded by men who’d fought for their country, and in some infinitesimally small way, for her.
A hand landed softly on her forehead. That guy with dark, curly hair looked worriedly down at her. “Ma’am, I’m Eric Reynolds. I work with Grissom. You’re in shock, and you’ve lost quite a bit of blood. But you’re not dying, you hear me?”
Tuesday wanted to tell him, yes, she could hear him. She wasn’t deaf. She understood. But Eric’s face kept going in and out of focus, like a loose camera lens. She closed her eyes before it made her sick and breathed, “Grissom.”
Eric pressed that big warm hand to the side of her face and gently forced her head to the left. To the man she adored. “You’re not dying,” he told her gruffly, his eyes glistening. “I won’t fucking let you. Keep breathing!”
Sweetest F-bomb ever.
“Me neither,” sweet Tanner piped up from somewhere… else. Tuesday thought for sure he was there, but it didn’t make sense that a little boy would be crammed into an ambulance with these big, angry guys. Most of them didn’t know her, well, except through the press, they all did. But most of what the press wrote and said wasn’t kind or true or…
Where was I going with this?Tuesday closed her eyes, too weak and too discombobulated to concentrate. Her life had been one long lonely road after another. It’d be nice to stop breathing and let go. Grissom deserved to keep living. So did his boys. The only way that could happen was without her. She was the jinx. The unintentional killer.
Just when despair nestled into her soul, like an unwelcome bedmate, that tiny little boy-hand slipped beneath the warming blanket and grabbed hold of her index finger. “I gotcha, Miss Tuesday,” Tanner whispered, “an’ I’m not never letting you go. Not no more. You’re mine and Luke’s, and we’re gonna take especially good care of you from now on. Forever!”
That sweet, enthusiastic little boy had to be a hallucination. Or an angel. No way could Tanner be there. But just in case, Tuesday whispered, “I love you, Tanner. Take care of your dad and your brother. I’ll miss you guys, but I can’t stay. You have to live. Not me. Not any—”
An alarm shrilled in the suffocating back of that ambulance.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Tuesday!” Grissom roared overhead. “I mean, us! Me and my boys. You’re all we’ve got!” He was suddenly so much farther away. Fading, at the end of a long dark tunnel that kept getting narrower and darker. “Save her, Eric. Save my woman!”
Tuesday wanted to tell Grissom everything was going to be okay. But the light was gone.
And so was she…
Chapter Thirty-Four
Three Days Later…
Grissom sat watching the woman he adored love on his boys. There sat Tuesday on his couch, Tanner in one arm and Luke tucked protectively under her other. She’d recovered quickly from her escapade with Moreno. After surgery to repair the graze burn just above her hip, she’d spent a day and night at George Washington University Hospital. The next afternoon, Alex had his medical team: Nurse Judy Mortimer, Dr. Libby Houston and Dr. McKenna Fitzgerald-Villanueva, aka Doc Fitz, travel west with Tuesday on his private helicopter to Grissom’s place.
And now, it was time for Grissom to face the truth. Not once before or during these past hectic days had Tuesday said she loved him. As hard as it was to swallow, he knew she might never love him as much as he loved her. Why should she? Tuesday was as shattered as he’d been. Him, by the parents he still had; her, by the parents she’d loved and lost. That kind of pain went deep. It didn’t just fade away. They were matching bookends with a million unfinished chapters stuffed between them. They were the perpetual yin and yang of life. Too much baggage kept them apart. They might not have enough reasons to meet in the middle.
As brave as she was, Tuesday didn’t seem to want to stay, to give him a chance. To wrap her toes over the edge of her own cliff of despair and take the leap he wanted to take with her. Grissom wasn’t sure marriage was the best answer for them anymore. He loved Tuesday with every beat of his heart, that much he knew with certainty. But sometimes, most of the time in his case, aguy didn’t get what he wanted. Didn’t mean Grissom would give up. Just because Tuesday didn’t love him today, didn’t mean she wouldn’t someday.
She’d certainly jumped straight into the fires of motherhood when she’d literally fought Pam and her now-dead accomplice to save Grissom’s sons. Without question or hesitation, with a butt load of passion and—love.
It was hard not being included within the circle of her love. He was the problem, the idiot who’d unintentionally pushed her away the day he’d run to save his sons from their mother. In doing so, he’d saved them, absolutely. But he’d unintentionally left Tuesday out. The story of her entire adult life. Awkward and forgotten. Alone. Overlooked. Never able to heal from losing her parents. That loss compounded when Maeve Astor killed her benefactor, Freddie.
Grissom’s reaction on Christmas Day had been instinctive and spontaneous, shaped by a father’s fear for his children. He hadn’t meant to hurt Tuesday by choosing his boys over her. Had never intended her to feel unwanted. But mean it or not, Grissomhadleft Tuesday out of his family circle and it had crushed her. That was why she’d taken off. She’d been saving herself.
It was natural Tanner would run to his dad, not to her. Tanner’d been running to Grissom all his life. What kid wouldn’t run to his old man for safety and security, especially after the ugly encounter with Tanner’s witch of a mother?
But that simple gut reaction had reinforced the lie Tuesday still believed today. That she was unwanted. An interloper. An outsider. The woman no one saw because she didn’t matter enough to anyone. Because no one cared. Somewhere deep in her psyche, she’d decided she was the reason her parents and Frederick Lamb had died; that it was their love for her that caused their deaths. That she’d killed them…
Grissom wished he could go back in time and redo that day. He wished he’d circled her in his arms along with Luke and Tanner. That he’d cried with her while together they held what Grissom considered to betheirboys. Tuesday surely cared for them, as if she’d always been their mother. But time didn’t work that way, and a man had to face facts. Tuesday was going to leave.
