Embracing Juliette (Texas Heroes: Station 9 #1)

Chapter 50

50

Juliette

T he phone rang again, and again I ignored it. The only person I wanted to talk to, the only one I needed, I couldn’t have. I didn’t even look to see if it was him. It would only make it harder to ignore. I hadn’t answered his call in two weeks. I’d been trying to avoid everyone else too.

I snuggled deeper into my bed, pulled the blanket around myself like a shield, and tried to read. All I wanted to do was read and cry and not think. I couldn’t turn my phone off, though. I’d turned it off once and was seized by panic that there’d be an emergency, and no one would be able to reach me.

I couldn’t let go of the phone at all, to be honest. After Liam begrudgingly drove me home from the hospital while Dylan was still sleeping, he gave me my phone and my purse that had been in Dylan’s car. When I realized that the dozens of voicemails and texts from Cole’s phone were actually from Dylan, I nearly had a breakdown. In the two long weeks since I’d seen Dylan, I’d tortured myself every day, reading and listening to each heartbreaking message he’d left from the hospital, as well as all the new ones. Hearing his voice get stronger each day and knowing he was home with his family caring for him were the only things keeping me semi-sane. His voicemail from this morning had been particularly heart-wrenching:

Juls, I realize now what you’ve been trying to tell me. You were right. I was holding onto guilt that I shouldn’t have about Kayla and my family, and it put pressure on us that never should have been there. I should have accepted that I did the best I could at each point in my life, and I should have known my parents didn’t hold any of it against me.

I wish I’d been strong enough to see things the way you do, and then maybe we wouldn’t be here. I’ve always been so proud of how hard you’ve worked to accept yourself and even when self-doubt creeps in, you never let it take over. You accept that things are the way they are, and you see the best in everything and everybody.

I’m so fucking sorry that my hang up made you think my job is more important to me than you are. I hate that I made you doubt yourself.

I understand why you left. I know you think you’re making the safe decision, but love is not a decision. Our love just is, and we can’t turn it off, and we can’t be happy without it. I cannot be happy without you. If I have to choose what I want, what I need, in my life, it’s you. Every single time, baby, I’d choose you. You are what makes me happy.

Please, Juls. Give me a chance to tell you how much I need you. Give me a chance to hold you and tell you I love you. We’ll find a way to move forward together. Please, baby. I love you.

God, my heart felt like the seashore being battered by a storm. Love and hope rushing in, then reality crashing down, dragging all that hope away again. It was eroding my very soul.

The phone stopped ringing and then beeped, indicating a voicemail. My traitorous heart fluttered, stupidly hoping for another message from Dylan. A local phone number. Ignore.

I started reading again, but panic took over. I didn’t have Eli or Max’s phone numbers, and they’d be local. What if something had happened to Dylan?

I jabbed at the play button.

“Hi, Juliette, I hope you don’t mind me calling. It’s Sarah, the girl Dylan saved from the fire. I just brought cupcakes to the fire station, and I made some for you too. I asked for your address to bring them to you, but they wouldn’t give it to me. They did give me your number though, obviously, because I’m calling. If it’s okay with you, I’d love to bring these to you and thank you in person. So, please call me back, so I can at least say thank you, and maybe we can arrange to meet too.”

I couldn’t say why, but I did want to meet Sarah. I couldn’t deal with the concern of my friends or family, and I really couldn’t deal with anyone connected to the fire station. They kept saying how proud they were of both Dylan and me. The girlfriends and wives of the Station 7 guys understood the fear I felt about Dylan getting hurt, so they thought they knew how I felt. But they didn’t get it. Those women were the strongest I’d ever met. They’d survived horrors I didn’t even want to think about. But Sarah felt safe. She might want to thank me, but she’d also be angry at me for how long it took for help to get to them. Sarah might be one of the only people who knew what really happened and was willing to be objective about it.

An hour later, I left my apartment, locking the shiny new lock that I absolutely hated behind me, and drove to The Cozy Cup, a coffee shop in downtown San Antonio.

A quick glance in the visor’s mirror proved that washing my face and applying makeup had done nothing to hide weeks of crying and not sleeping, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have the energy or interest to pretend to be okay.

I walked into the coffee shop and the scent of pumpkin spice flooded my senses, a painful reminder that my favorite time of the year was here, but my usual enthusiasm for Halloween was as nonexistent as my peace and happiness. I looked around, numbly taking in the twinkling lights scattered overhead, the mismatched furniture, and the soft acoustic music playing.

I pushed away the thought that I’d love to come back here with Dylan. Swallowed the memories of all the times I’d met him at the Urban Grind. Especially that first time when he offered me a do-over. I’d never forget the words he said that day.

“That evening at Nolan’s with you was the most fun I’d had in a long time. I’m not really sure what happened at dinner, but it doesn’t matter. Juls, I think the girl I played pool with is the real you. I’m going to figure you out, Juls. I’m going to learn what it takes to make you smile and laugh like you did at Nolan’s, and I’m going to learn what you need when you have a hard time like at dinner. Is that okay with you?”

He really had kept that promise. He’d made me smile and laugh more than I ever had, and he’d helped smooth things over for me so easily, I usually didn’t even realize he was doing it. He was perfect for me.

But there was another promise, one that I’d asked him for weeks after that.

“You have to promise me that if there’s things that you want to do that I can’t, you'll just do them without me. And if that happens too often, or with things that are too important, we’ll break it off. I don’t want that, but I don’t want you to ever feel saddled by me. I’d rather lose you than be with you and feel like a burden.”

Now that I thought about it, he’d never actually agreed. We got distracted with sex instead.

I shook off my thoughts and looked around for Sarah. She was sitting in the corner at a table with two oversized chairs that looked like they belonged in someone’s living room. I’d been nervous I wouldn’t be able to recognize her after only meeting for a few minutes in the hospital, but I knew it was her the second I saw her. There was a covered tin on the table. The cupcakes.

Sarah stood, and we hugged for a long time. Thankfully, it was the hug of women who had shared the worst moment of our lives. I wasn’t at all interested in a polite conversation with a stranger.

Sarah pulled back and I saw the moment she got her first full look at me. Surprise was quickly replaced by a frown before she hid it with a fake smile. I offered a fake smile in return.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get coffee, then we can sit and talk.”

A few minutes later, we sat down with our coffees and Sarah jumped right into it. “It looks like your last few weeks have been as tough as mine.”

“No! Hell, no. I’m sorry for making this about me at all. How are you doing? How is Benji?” I couldn’t believe it took me so long to ask. Geez, I was so bad at even the most obvious conversations.

“Benji is great. Looking at him now, you’d never know anything happened at all. All the doctor reports are coming back good. We’re staying at my parents’ house, and he’s loving all their attention.”

“That’s good. And you?”

Sarah sighed and sipped her coffee. “I can’t sleep. I can’t relax. I just replay it in my head over and over, but in my nightmares, asleep or awake, I don’t make it to Benji in time. It was so awful being outside, seeing the smoke and knowing he was alone and helpless, trapped inside the burning house. It felt like I was moving in slow motion running back in. Like every step I took, the door moved further away. Then I finally got to him, and I panicked.”

Sarah looked away and swallowed hard. “If I had just grabbed him and run back out the front door, we would’ve made it in time. The fire was still small enough. But on my way to him, before I knew that, I was imagining the worst-case scenario and planning what to do. If I couldn’t carry him safely out of the house, I’d go out the window of his room, jump with him in my arms, and use my body to cushion his fall as best I could. I was more than ready to break every bone in my body to save him.

“Then for some dumb reason, when I got to him, I panicked. I continued with that plan even though the fire was still contained in the kitchen. We could’ve made it safely downstairs and out the door. But I didn’t even try. Dylan found me upstairs in Benji’s room, stupidly trying to open his window. By then, the fire had spread, and we couldn’t make it back down.”

Wow. I admired Sarah’s forthright honesty. “Then you, Benji, and Dylan were all stuck in there. I can’t imagine how scary it was waiting, not knowing if help would arrive in time.”

Sarah leaned back into the oversized chair, looking more relaxed for a moment. “No, that part actually wasn’t too bad. Dylan was so confident in what we should do, so confident in you and the other firefighters… I couldn’t help but trust in everything he said. He even had a plan to get us out if help didn’t come quickly enough.”

My heart tripped over itself at Sarah’s words. “Can you—what did—” I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and tried again. “What makes you say that he was confident in me?”

Sarah looked at me for a long moment, like she was seeing way more than I wanted to show her. She leaned forward and grasped my hands.

“Juliette, Dylan loves you so much. It felt like a long time, but I was really only with him for a few minutes, and even in that short time, it was so obvious. Our lives were in danger, and he was just as worried about you. I was terrified, but Dylan was so certain that help was on the way. He told me his girlfriend knew we were in there. He said you’d run through fire yourself, if necessary, to get us help.”

I stared at the twinkling lights and blinked quickly to fight back the threatening tears. “He’s right. I would’ve done anything to get help to you. But wanting it and being able to do it are two completely different things. I’m so sorry it took so long.”

“You listen to me now,” Sarah said firmly, releasing my hands but holding me prisoner with her intense gaze. “I don’t know why you’re saying you aren’t capable, but it doesn’t matter. You did it. We are all here today, alive and healthy. That’s all that matters.” Sarah’s voice cracked, and for the first time since we sat down, she looked on the verge of coming undone.

“You think I don’t know guilt? I left my baby alone in that damn house. I was outside pulling weeds, enjoying the sun and fresh air and—” She dropped her head into her hands and took a few shaky breaths. When she looked up at me again, despair was etched into her face. “I was enjoying the quiet without Benji there,” she whispered, as though she were ashamed to say the words out loud.

“Sarah—”

“No. I don’t want to hear anyone else tell me it wasn’t my fault. It was. I made a mistake. The biggest, dumbest, worst mistake of my life. But thank God Benji is okay. And thank God for my husband. He keeps dragging me back from the edge of insanity. He keeps telling me that he loves me and that Benji loves me. He tells me that he loves me for exactly who I am, even if that includes a love of being alone in my garden. He tells me that he’ll love me forever, even if I become paranoid and psychotic and never let Benji out of my sight ever again.

“He says, when you really love someone—the way I know he loves me, and the way I know Dylan loves you too—that you love them just as they are. We don’t get to design a person like we’re creating a piece of pottery. If you want to make a vase, you can make it into the shape you want, you can repair cracks, choose to add a little of this color or that. If there’s a part you don’t like, you can rework it to your liking. You can cover up any blemishes, and if you do it well, it’ll be like it was never there. But that’s not how people work. If you love a person, you have to accept them exactly as they are. To keep the cheesy analogy going, you may like the shape of that vase, but not the colors. You may like one side of it, but not another. It may have cracks, or be more fragile than you’d like. Or be thicker and rougher than you’d like. But if that’s the vase you choose to keep, you accept it all and you love it all. Because you can’t change what’s already there. You can only love and accept it, just as it is, the good parts, the ugly parts, and the broken parts too. And once you choose that vase, it’s yours to take care of. If you take good care of it, maybe you can patch up some of the cracks. If you can do that well, it can even be stronger than before, but the scar of that will always be there. And even if it breaks, you don’t throw it away. You fix it. You accept it.

“Juliette, this past week has completely broken me apart. My husband is trying to glue me back together, and somehow I got lucky that he loves me enough to forgive me. I’ll never be the same again, but I have to believe that my husband and I are strong enough to put me back together. Thanks to you and Dylan, I still have a son who needs me. I’m going to work on being strong enough, I’m going to let my husband help me, and I’m going to hope that when the pieces are put back together, I still resemble who I was before, even with some extra scars.

“I don’t know your story, but from what Dylan said, I know that he knows there are cracks there, and he still loves you exactly the way you are. So if you can love him the way he is too, hold onto that with everything you have. If you guys are a little more broken after this nightmare, help fix each other. Trust me when I say, life is too damn fragile.”

Sarah took a big breath. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lecture you. I’ve just been so emotional, I can’t help it. I only meant to bring you cupcakes and say thank you.” She pushed the tin towards me, and we both laughed, breaking the tension.

“You gave me a lot to think about. Thank you. Go get back to your husband and Benji. You’re an incredible family and I’m so happy you are all okay.”

We stood and hugged again. At my car, I waved awkwardly with one hand, while trying to open the door and hold the tin steady with the other. Was Sarah right? Could Dylan really accept me as I am? I sat inside, but didn’t drive away yet. I replayed Dylan’s voicemail.

I’ve always been so proud of how hard you’ve worked to accept yourself and even when self-doubt creeps in, you never let it take over. You accept that things are the way they are, and you see the best in everything and everybody.

Was he right? Could I accept myself enough to be strong for him?