Find A Way Or Make One (24 page)

But the most important reason that I can’t marry you is that even though I love you Christien, I am not in love with you, and I won’t take away your chance to find true love.”

Almost instantly I am spun around, and Christien looks more devastated than I have ever seen anyone look. With a tear rolling down each cheek, he softly asks me; “Why? Why can’t you be with me? You were with Toby; you didn’t seem to find anything wrong with taking away his chance for true love.”

“Christien, I have told you this before. Toby was my best friend, and only my best friend up until six months before he died. We decided to try being a couple so that Seamus would have a more traditional home life. But even that was wrong. I know that now.”

“What about him?” Christien asks.
There are some things we just know.
The sun rises in the East, and is going to set in the West. The moon goes round the Earth and
I know Wyatt is standing behind me when that question is asked. That is how strong I feel and felt his presence. I slowly turn around and lock eyes with Wyatt. The emotional intensity in his gaze is more that I have ever seen, and at that moment I know that I will love him forever; but sometimes love isn’t enough. I have to walk away from him; now!

Before I make it two steps toward the exit, Wyatt grabs me around waist and pulls me close to him. “Kye,
please. There is so much I have to say to you that I don’t even know where to begin. All I know is that I can’t get it all out if I have to waste time chasing you down. Please, just give me five minutes, five minutes and if you want me to I will leave and never bother you again.”

I slowly turn back around. If five minutes will get him to leave me alone, fine. “Ok, five minutes.”

Wyatt grabbed both my hands and pulled me as close as he could without our bodies touching. Out of the corner of my eye I see Christien slowly turn and walk down the hall to leave. I feel for him, I truly do, but I know he doesn’t love me the way he thinks he does. He just has to give himself a chance to really fall in love.

When Wyatt starts talking, all thoughts of anyone else leave my mind in a cloud of dust. As I look into his silver eyes, I can honestly feel each word he says in my soul. “Kye, since the day I met you, I have been in love with you. The deep, hopeless kind of love that
leaves you incomplete without the person you love. Just like an amputee victim, I have felt you with me even when you weren’t there. Kye, I am so, so, so sorry I hurt you. If I could take it back I would, but I can’t. All I can do is swear to you that I will never doubt who you are as a person again, and I will never intentionally hurt you again either.”

“Why did you do it in the first place?”

Wyatt bows his head for so long I don’t think he is ever going to answer. When he finally does, I am shocked to see tears in his eyes. “Kye, the honest reason is that I was scared. Seven years ago I
fucked up. I was asked to find the daughter of a Middle Eastern informant that had gone AWOL. I didn’t have a lot of information to go on, but General Mathers thought that the girl you saw me with was her. I was trying to get the necessary information to verify that she was the informant’s daughter
without
sleeping with her so that I could identify her scar. I am guessing that you had the scar covered by your tattoo and you dad didn’t know about the tattoo?”

I slowly nod my head. “About eight months before the mess with Christien, a bunch of us went out and got tattoos. Some of the European tabloids had taken to calling us the Royal Rat Pack, and one night we all decided to embrace it by getting crowns with the initials RRP hidden inside the crowns. The guys all got
big manly crowns on their arms, but I got a little dainty princess crown to cover my scar. Daddy
Samee did always call me
Prenses,
the Turkish word for princess, so it all just fit.”

Wyatt nodded his head. “I get that. I always thought that tattoo was beautiful, Darlin’ Princess.
Funny, I just didn’t realize how much that name was just right for you.
”

Looking at him tentatively smiling down at me makes me want to melt. It takes everything I have to not fall into his arms. I need something to make me stay away from him. With that in mind I go on a fishing expedition. “Fine, let’s agree for arguments sake that the only thing between you and Blond Slut #1 was an assignment. Why did you say what you did to hurt me so badly?”

Wyatt takes one hand through his hair, but the other one still hold mine like it is his only life line.
“I panicked, simple as that. I almost had the information I needed to say that she was his, well you, and I wanted it done and dusted. I came by your apartment the next day, but you were already gone. I have beaten myself up about it for the past seven years. But to be brutally honest, because I want us to always be honest with each other, for a long time I kind of blamed you too. I blamed you for not sticking around long enough for me to fix things between us.”

That pisses me off. “How in the hell could
you blame me for leaving
after
you said I was a “good lay” but that I probably wouldn’t fit in with your friends and family back home?” By the end of the question I have jerked my hand away from him and have turned my back to him.

Wyatt walks up to me and is so close I can feel his breathing on my neck. “Darlin’ Princess I shouldn’t have blamed you, even unconsciously, but now I know that was the only way that I could think that you would forgive me if
you shouldered some of the blame, it made it easier to think that we had a chance of getting back together, of you forgiving me. Then when
I found out that you had two sons, I was completely devastated. Those sons should have been mine
, and it was my fault they weren’t.
Mine
! Do you know how that killed me? The only way that I could survive that guilt was to vilify you. Make you undeserving of the love I have always had for you.”

Taking a deep breath, Wyatt turned me around and stared at my tear stained face with his own tears quietly falling. “Please Kye; I know that I have fucked up more than any man has a right to fuck up, but please give me a chance. Give me a chance to shower you and our children; the three we already have and anymore we are blessed
with, with the love that only you have ever been able to rouse in me.”

As I stand there, looking in the silver depths of the eyes that have always and will always haunt my dreams, I know that he loves me. Always has and always will. But even as I bask in the love I know he has for me, the fear of being thrown back into the darkness of the abyss I have lived in for the past seven years without his love is too much to take.
If I can find the courage to take a chance taking one more chance, everything I have ever wanted is mine for the taking.

I’m a coward.

“I can’t.” As soon as I say those words, I turn around and run.

***

I look in the mirror hanging over the sink where I got the water to repeatedly splash my face and realize I don’t even recognize the scared shell of a woman staring back at me.

“Not so easy was it; walking away from the person that doesn’t just hold your soul, but is your soul? I instinctively flinch, because I hadn’t heard my mother walk in the hotel restroom.

Looking in her eyes, I lay it all out there. “No Mom, it wasn’t easy. But at least I can survive it. I wouldn’t be able to if he took his love away from me again.”

“How do you know that he would walk away?”

I quickly look up into my mom’s eyes. In them I see
the understanding that she has always shown me. After Toby got me away from Travis; after I had found out about Christien and had to disappear for awhile; after I agreed to help Toby raise Seamus; after Toby had died and I had taken in two more sons. Daddy
Samee
has always given me love, support, and the courage to be who I needed to be; while my mom has always given me love, support, and understanding. Without either one of them I wouldn’t have made it through my life.
Finally I attempt to answer her. “Mom, seven and a half years ago he cut me from his life in the cruelest way imaginable. He let me find him with another woman and told me that while I had been a good lay but wouldn’t “fit in” with his life back home. The only reason I survived was because of the DEA and Toby and Seamus. Now, after listening to him call me a whore and a child molester, after seeing him with that woman, I am supposed to believe him when he says he loves me and always has? What happens when he wakes up one morning, laughs in my face and says it was all just a joke? That he doesn’t love me and could never love me?”

I have barely finished my sentence when
I hear high heeled shoes walk further into the restroom. “Honey, you have to know my baby would never do that. He has loved you more deeply these past seven years than you can possibly imagine. “

As I look at the woman, the similarities with Wyatt are eerily similar. She is a tall statuesque woman with dark brown hair with a very few strands of gray. With her shapely body, high cheekbones and startling silver eyes, I knew that Wyatt Master’s mother has broken plenty of hearts herself in her heyday. Probably still does for that matter.

“Mrs. Masters, with all due respect, you haven’t lived my life, so you can’t begin to imagine the pain and suffering your son has heaped on me.”

She smiles sadly at me. “No I can’t. And even though he has told me everything, including how he feels, I don’t know you, or your feelings.”

My mother takes a step closer to me. “Honey, when your Dad told you that you had to be strong and protect yourself, he didn’t mean for you to become too strong for love. He wants you to have the house, the cars, the husband of your dreams and a family.”

“Bu...”

“No buts, just answer this simple question; if you walked out of here tonight without giving him a chance, would you walk out with or without your heart and soul?
And remember, you have
someone else you have to think about now as well.”
With that she looked pointedly at my belly.

***

As I run down the hallway to the valet parking area, I can’t help but to be thankful for both mothers. They are right. Without Wyatt in my life, I will just
existing. I have to take a chance, and
that doesn’t make me weak. I realize now that the only true weakness is turning your back on love.

As I reach the loading area, I arrive just in time to see a black limousine pull out of the parking area into the light.
As I
stand there staring at the limo, even after it disappears, I can’t help but feel like Wyatt had given up on me, and I finally understood how he felt when he found out I had left; even though I know him leaving is ultimately my fault, it still hurts that he didn’t care enough to try again.

As I stare off into the night, my mind full of entangled thoughts and ideas of how to fix everything between us, I don’t hear Wyatt behind me until he asks, “What do you want?”
I turn around because he
sounds mad, but when I look in his eyes I see that he isn’t mad, he is just hurt.

I take a deep breath and tell him. “I haven’t had possession of my heart since that day in the rain when we met. I don’t want my heart back,
it’s yours. Just let me be yours too.”

I look up into his eyes for so long that the swirling emotions in his sliver gaze make me dizzy. Just when my heart starts to slowly drop from my chest to my feet, Wyatt mouth slowly lifts into a tender smile. As he pulls me to him, I hear his whispered prayer of thanks, “Thank you God,” just before his lips meet mine.

Time seemed to stand still as we kissed. When our lips finally parted, my brain was beyond mush. Wyatt tenderly cupped my face with both hands. “I love you so much Kye, and want so much to be a family with you and
all three
of your sons and any other children we might have down the line.”

I could feel my mouth form a smile so big that I was afraid my face would break. “I love you Wyatt, and while I never thought that I could love you any more than I do, your acceptance of my sons just caused me to love you even more.
I hope that you are serious about wanting
to build a family.”

“Of course Kye. I want you and the boys to be mine. I know that I will have my work cut out getting them to accept me, especially Tiarnan, but I love them already simply because you love them, and maybe one day they will see me as a father. And when you are ready, I hope we can add more children to our family.”

I can’t help but roll my eyes as a happy laugh escapes. “That is the best news I have ever heard, but I hope you are not planning on waiting to increase the size of our family.” As I finish that sentence, I slowly pull one of Wyatt’s hands down from my face and gently place it on my stomach.

At first Wyatt was confused. As comprehension slowly dawned on him, I saw hope and doubt creep over his face until he finally was able to ask, “Really?” in a choked voice.

It is my turn to cup his face with my hands. “Yes, really. We will have a new son or daughter in roughly six months.” Suddenly Wyatt has me raised up in his arms and is twirling around and around.

When he finally stops, he lowers me until I am standing on the floor and stares into my eyes. He starts to lower his head, but right before his lips reach mine I hear him say, “You know what you said earlier? It is true for you too. Just when I think you can’t make me love you anymore, you do.”

One Year Later

"Someone once said that being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections; and that is what we did and do every day.”

Wyatt

Wyatt

“Daddy, why are Mommy and Shameface
crying? And why did we have to bring flowers here today.” God, I love all my children, but Cian is the one that always makes me want to crack up, and sometimes he doesn’t even have to put any effort in it. About a month and a half ago
, Cian walked in on Kye telling me it was a shame that Cale and Charity couldn’t work out whatever was between them, and picked up on the word shame. “Hey Mommy, Daddy, that word sound a lot like Seamus. Seamus, Shame face. Seamus the
Shameface!” Since then he has been calling Seamus “Shameface” every chance he gets.