Chapter 37

"Okay, I've had enough of both of you."

Michelle turned around from where she had been studying the floral arrangement she was trying to do one handed. She'd been staying with her parents for the past six days. Going home and hiding, something she wouldn't usually do but her apartment had been overrun by news people. She couldn't walk out the door without getting trampled by them. They called at all hours, until finally she had turned the ringer off on her phone and let her voice mail fill up. The cornered her in the store so she quit going. They even waited at her mailbox, snapping pictures and running video until she finally couldn't handle it anymore.

Getting hounded at work was one thing. Getting it at her apartment was another.

So she had come home. When the news people tried to bother her, one of her parents took care of it. Her mother babied her, fixing her favorite foods, bringing her pillows. But she couldn't eat. She tried for their sake. But the food got caught in her throat. She spent her nights laying in bed thinking. Her mind wouldn't shut off. She spent her days wandering through the house like a ghost. She had no sense of purpose, nothing interested her.

Finally, a little while ago, her mother had put her to work fixing up the arrangement for the living room while she fixed dinner. It was busy work that actually didn't keep her mind busy. She still had been thinking more than anything else. Thinking and hurting. The pain had nothing to do with her injuries and all to do with her heart.

"What are you talking about?" she asked Stephanie.

"Guess what fun thing I got to do today?" Stephanie asked instead of answering.

"It's your day off, so I guess it wouldn't be work. Otherwise, I have no idea." She turned back to her flowers, picking up a long stemmed white rose to add to the motley collection in the vase. She was no good at this left handed. Who was she fooling, she was no good at this period.

"I took Nick home."

She spun back around. "But he's not ready to be out of the hospital."

"You tell him that. When I did, he almost punched my lights out." She sighed dramatically.

"He wouldn't hit a woman," Michelle informed her tartly.

"I meant that figuratively. He bit the head off of anyone and everyone in the hospital today. And would you like to know why, or did you figure this out?" Stephanie walked over to the table and picked up one of the beautiful flowers, smelling the scent of roses and lilacs. She pulled out a few of the flowers in the vase, rearranged and, before Michelle could blink, had a beautiful arrangement.

"Figures you'd be good at this too, you're good at everything else," she groused. "I don't know why he would do that."

"Because I told him about the sheriff talking to you. He thinks that you want the badge more than him." She picked up the vase and stood it back on the stand in the middle of all the picture frames where Michelle's mother always kept it.

"Maybe it's better that he thinks that."

She whirled around. "I've about had it with stupid people." Her patience snapped. "The night you were taken, that man was stabbed and shot. He managed to call for help, not for himself, but for you. When we got to his house, he was more dead than alive and all he could talk about was you. He was bleeding out and they had to about tie him down to keep him from getting up and coming after you. It would have killed him but he was going to do it anyway."

She picked up the green tissue paper the flowers had been in and beat it into a small ball. "Do you know what I would do for a man like that? A man who is decent and kind, who loves you more than he loves his own life? That man would let you tear out his heart if you needed it and you are willing to just walk away from him. Shit, he'd probably tear it out for you before you could ask for it." She threw the tissue paper ball in the fireplace, kicking up a small cloud of ashes. "You are a fool."

Michelle plopped down on the couch sucking in a deep breath as the jolt that ran through her arm caused pain. She knew all of what Stephanie was saying but hearing it said made it different.

"Michelle," Stephanie sat down next to her. "Jobs are a dime a dozen. As long as there are people, there will be crime and they will need cops. How often is a man like Nick going to come into your life?"

A small sob erupted from Michelle's throat. She was a fool. And being a fool might have taken away the one person who would have been her world.

"I'm an idiot."

"Yes," Stephanie said, and smiled. "You are." She got up and pulled Michelle up by her left hand. "Now that I know it, and you know it, how about we go and let Nick call you that too?"

They stopped and picked up food and his medicine. Then they headed out to his house. Michelle was so scared she was shaking.