Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Epilogue

Trina

Three Months Later

* * *

It was wild the changes that happened once I decided to stop living in fear and start reaching for freedom.

The night Jonathan was arrested changed everything.

First, and most importantly, Jim Bower recovered from the gunshot wound.

He’d bled out a lot, and that had been the most dangerous, but after being stabilized, I learned that Jonathan hadn’t hit anything vital.

It was the fall to the ground that knocked him out, leaving him with a nasty concussion that took six weeks to heal from.

Fortunately for Jim, he was in the hospital healing from surgery and the gunshot for half of it.

Unfortunately, considering the number of times I talked to Kip and Valerie during that period, I learned he was not the kind of man who enjoyed sitting around and doing nothing.

He'd become a friend of sorts, and he reached out, guilty and horrified he hadn’t caught Jonathan sneaking up on him and that I’d been in any sort of danger at all.

We talked, and I forgave him because there was nothing to forgive, and in the end, that act of forgiveness toward him led me to start forgiving myself too.

Well, that along with therapy.

A lot of therapy.

So much therapy I could have put a bed in my therapist’s office and moved in.

Jonathan wasn’t only arrested for attempted murder, but it turned out that during our marriage, he’d not only assaulted and manipulated his assistant, but many other women she had the job of scheduling time for with Jonathan.

This all came out when I was finally able to call Valerie.

She admitted she’d been keeping it from me, but it was Jonathan’s assistant who went to Kip and told him what had been going on after I was hospitalized the last time.

It was Lexi’s bravery that sent Kip and Valerie on a mission, and while there were now ten women who had come forward, all being abused or manipulated or assaulted by Jonathan, we assumed there was still more.

As soon as the sun rose the following Monday, I called a lawyer Kip trusted and filed for divorce.

By then, Jonathan was back in an Atlanta jail and was being held without bail until his trials could start.

He was fighting all the charges and since he was wealthy and his attorney was well-connected, they kept getting pushed back, which sucked for all of us involved.

He’d also fought the divorce tooth and nail and while I’d signed a prenuptial agreement, given the proof of his infidelity and assault—caveats I couldn’t believe he’d even put in the prenuptial agreement in the first place—I was set to soon become a very wealthy woman.

And all of it, every single penny was either earmarked to be donated to multiple domestic violence women’s shelters in the southeast region or put into creating my new dream.

Deer Creek’s Pregnancy Center would be open in the summer and would serve not only the woman in our county, but anyone who found themselves in situations where they were uncertain how to navigate.

I was currently working on hiring doctors, nurses, and counselors and we’d rely heavily on volunteers as well.

Our jobs were not to judge or convince or push women in any specific direction.

We were there to instruct and care for every woman who walked through our doors needing assistance.

We would also offer classes, whether that be pregnancy or birthing or the first year of a child’s life afterward, and if their choices veered toward the one I made, we provided appointments and transportation.

Looking back, I made the choice I did not purely out of naivety and stubbornness, but an alarming amount of fear.

And while I was healing from my guilt, I also recognized not every woman would, so I wanted to ensure our center was accepting of all choices, whether they’d be mine if I had to make them again or not.

I stepped back, squinting at the bright and freezing February afternoon sky, and the building in front of me that was now a shell of a closed down dentist’s office.

It would soon be all mine, and I squeezed the hand of the man standing next to me.

The man who hadn’t left my side.

The man who’d been there for me every step of the way in the last three months.

The man who held me while I cried after therapy, the man who was silent while I screamed and raged, and the man who joined me in now frequent laughter.

“It’s happening.”

I grinned up at Cole.

“You’re doing great.”

He grinned back at me. “But we didn’t finish our argument this morning.”

I rolled my eyes. It was a stupid argument, one that he was being stubborn about. “I need to get an apartment and do this on my own.”

I was still living in his downstairs bedroom. Some nights, Cole came down and joined me and held me. Other nights, I went up to his, but most of the nights, we slept alone. We hadn’t taken that step yet, and I still wasn’t ready.

My body hadn’t truly been mine in a healthy way in a very long time, and the thought of taking those next steps still made me tense with fear.

Cole continued to assure me it didn’t matter.

“And you’re not alone. You never have to do anything on your own again.”

I knew that, too. Not only had I grown in friendships with all the friends I used to have, but Marie and I reached a quick and cordial friendship. Cole had been right about the kind of woman she’d been because the night everything went down and Cole called her, she’d rushed to me and hugged me and told me she was thankful I was okay. She’d come over so Cole could tell her what happened, and then she’d stayed the night in Ella’s bed with her daughters. But the next morning, she’d acted like we’d known each other for years.

My parents and I were close, and I went over to their house every Sunday for potluck after church like I’d done every weekend of my life since I was born, even if I wasn’t ready to step back through the church doors. Kari brought her husband, Dan, and her daughters Missy and Elsie, and while she was right, Missy did look a lot like me, it was Elsie’s sweetness that stole my heart.

So yeah, I wasn’t alone. But I still couldn’t see why Cole got mad every time I talked to him about moving out or looking at apartments. “I just feel like where we’re headed, it’s best to wait. I don’t want to be living with you, with the girls, if we’re not married. It feels like so much change for them, too fast.”

The girls, for the most part, were perfect little angels, even with June’s rambunctiousness. She was the one that brought the joy to everyday living, but there were still moments where she wanted her dad and her mom together. Not her dad and her mom friends with me. I didn’t blame her. She was still so young, and I tried not to take it personally.

But it was her I was most worried about, who thought it would help the most if I left.

“Then we should do that,”

Cole said.

I flinched back at him and laughed. “What?”

He didn’t laugh back. He sank to one knee in the middle of the parking lot, in front of my soon-to-be pregnancy center, and held out his hand. And in that hand was a box. “I’ve waited since I was fifteen years old to ask you this question, Trina, but will you marry me? Will you let me love you for all the days we have yet to live?”

Tears burned my eyes, and they came so fast I couldn’t blink them back. “What?”

I shrieked, and my knees wobbled. “You’re crazy. Get up. We’re not doing this.”

Cole, steady and happy as always, shrugged. “What better way than to start our Valentine’s night out with an engagement ring on your finger and something to celebrate?”

“You’re insane!”

I cried and was still laughing. This was…this was mind-boggling.

It’d only been a few months. And sure, yeah, a lot had happened, but…

This was Cole.

“Marry me, Trina. Make me the happiest man in the world. Let me love you forever. Give me that honor.”

This was Cole, I thought again. He was it. He was everything.

“Yes.”

I finally nodded, still crying. Not so much laughing anymore, either. “Yes, I’ll marry you!”

He slipped the ring, a gorgeous, round diamond onto my finger and stood. He brought his hands to my cheeks, making me shriek from the iciness of them, but that coldness quickly turned to warmth, and then a slow-burning heat as he bought his lips to mine and kissed me.

Almost thirteen years ago, I’d left town certain I’d never return and while life had thrown a lot of darkness my way, it was always being with Cole when I shined the brightest, and I had no doubt, from this day forward, he’d do everything in his power to ensure our lives kept getting brighter and better.

Thank you for taking the time to read Love Me Gently.