Page 93 of Heart of Stone
“You can ask me anything.”
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
Relief leaked into his features as the tension eased out. Then his lips twitched, and he lifted from his seat to lean over and kiss me. With just one touch of his lips, I felt myself being slowly pieced back together.
“Does anyone know we’re here?”
“My parents do,” he answered. “Dad stopped in yesterday. Danielle did, too. Cole was here when we came in, and he brought dinner last night.”
I winced. “Sorry if I made a bad first impression.”
“You did nothing wrong. He knows that. And he’ll be by later today, so you can meet him.”
“Okay. If I scoot over a bit, will you climb into this bed and hold me?”
“I’ll do anything you want me to do, but let me help you. I don’t want you to hurt yourself worse.”
Reid lifted me, scooted me, and climbed in beside me.
Then he wrapped his arms around me and held me close, refusing to let go for even a moment.
Even when the nurse came in to offer me meds, Reid kept his hold on me.
And I finally settled in and accepted that perhaps he really did love me and that I hadn’t made a mistake when I gave him my heart.
EPILOGUE
Natalia
Nine months later
When I woke in the hospital nine months ago after Tim had come to Sandstone Heart and attacked me, I thought the most difficult thing I’d endure was the conversation that I’d have with Reid about what had happened between us mere minutes before I was attacked.
Unsurprisingly, Reid found a way to make me feel reassured about the future of the retreat and about us.
So, I considered what my next big hurdle would be, and it hit me when it was time to leave the hospital that I had to return to the cabin I’d called home and felt safe in for eight years.
But Reid took me to his cabin instead. He let me rest and recover there, so I didn’t have to worry about horrible memories assaulting me. And he took care of getting things for me from my place as I needed them, never complaining about it or expecting me to just do it on my own. Eventually, he moved all my things from that cabin and into his. We considered using one of thehouses on the property, but since we were still working out things between us, we decided to keep it simple.
With my body on the mend and my living arrangements dealt with, I worried about the consequences of Reid’s actions the day he’d stepped in to defend and protect me. He pleaded with me not to worry and insisted that everything was going to be fine.
Miraculously, after weeks of stressing about it, I was relieved to learn that no criminal charges were being filed against Reid.
It was at that point that my focus shifted, and I learned that Reid was interested in taking me out. Not just on a date at a restaurant. He wanted me to go out. Into the real world. Outside the confines of the retreat.
He wanted me to join him on a couple of weekend trips to Pittsburgh while he worked on figuring out the details of making his move back to Cardinal and keeping the show running on his business.
He wanted me to enjoy places I’d always enjoyed when I was younger but had been too terrified to visit for far too many years.
And so, I believed that would be the thing that would break me, that would finally have me meeting my match.
While it turned out that my first trip back to Lake Erie was challenging, it didn’t break me. It liberated me. And being there with Reid made it so special.
Every time something popped up in the weeks that followed the attack in my cabin, I worried and stressed over the outcome. And every single time, it all worked out the way it was supposed to.
So, when it was just shy of three months since that attack when Reid was served with a civil lawsuit, I was confident the downward turn had arrived.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one injured the night of the attack. Tim was, too. When Reid went after Tim and landed the first blow that sent Tim falling to the ground, he’d whacked hishead on the arm of the couch. Yes, there had been punches and kicks after that, which resulted in bruises and broken bones and split lips and surface lacerations, but it was decided that it was likely that initial whack on the head that led to Tim suffering a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
