From Now Until Infinity (2) (25 page)

Next, my mom and Amy leave together. My mom gives me a hug and a reluctant smile. “I love you, Caroline. You’re a smart, beautiful girl. I know that you’ll do what’s right.”

Julie kisses me goodbye and makes me promise to start spelling my name correctly. Chelsea refuses to leave until Colin and I promise to invite her to Dallas and introduce her to hot football players. I don’t mention that she’s thirty-two, and that she’s too old for most of the guys on Colin’s team.

The last to leave are Rachael and Aiden. Aiden promises to give Rachael a ride back to her hotel. I secretly hope that that it’s code for, “I’m going to go get reacquainted with your best friend.” Rachael and I promise to talk tomorrow.

After my final guest has braved their way through the line of cameras outside my town home, Colin looks at me and asks while he yawns, “Ready for bed?”

I’m mentally and physically spent. I need to figure out where my head’s at. Frankly, I also need to find out what Colin’s thinking. The idea of the two of us doing a national television interview together is terrifying especially after what Colin revealed in New Orleans about trying so hard to keep his private life private. I’m worried about Colin. Maybe Mark’s right. Maybe I am more of a problem for Colin than good for him. Maybe his life was better before we bumped into each other in Los Angeles. Mark’s right about one thing. We’ve certainly created our fair share of drama.

Chapter Fifteen

I’M DROWNING. I can’t breathe.
Oh God! Make it stop.
I gasp trying to fill my lungs with the oxygen that they’re demanding. I sit up straight in bed. I’m raising my arms trying to get air into my lungs. It’s not helping. All I can think about is breathing. I need air. I need it now, or I’m going to pass out. My heart is attempting to beat its way out of chest.

Colin’s terrified. He’s not touching me, and he’s yelling something. I can’t understand him. All I can think about is trying to take in a gulp of air. I stand up and race into my bathroom, turning on the cold water faucet, and begin splashing water on my face.

I know instinctively that this is a panic attack. I’m a doctor so I know that I can’t die from it. However, they’re scary as hell. I haven’t had one since before I moved back to Houston. I keep reassuring myself that I’m okay. Slowly my lungs begin to take in the precious air that they crave, and I can feel my heart rate decreasing.

Colin is standing behind me but not close enough to touch me. He has a look of horror on his face. “I did this to you, didn’t I?”

I want to reassure him that I’m okay, and my panic attack wasn’t caused by me being forced to choose between my father/career and Colin. But I can’t. Colin needs to understand just how traumatic this is for me. When we were together before, I sugar coated my emotions so I could be perfect for him. I hid my feeling from him. I will not live like that again.

I look at myself in the mirror. Haggard would be a polite way to describe my appearance. My face is ghost white and tear streaked from my panic attack. My eyes are hollow. My caramel colored hair is a tangled mess. I begin to shake. I know that it’s because I’m coming down from the adrenaline high, but it’s also because my sweat soaked skin is now making me chilled.

I ignore Colin’s question because we both know it’s rhetorical. I walk into my closet and grab my thickest and softest bathrobe. Just wrapping it around me helps to soothe my raw nerves and makes me feel safer.

When I walk out of my closet, Colin is leaning against the sink counter. “When is the last time that you had a full blown panic attack?” His voice is soft but demanding.

“The day after I heard that you were getting married,” I reply as even toned as possible.

I watch his eyes crease and his beautiful face fall. He begins walking towards me, but I put out my hand to stop him. “We need to talk.”

He drops his head and replies in a defeated voice, “I know.” I hate defeated Colin.

I have no idea what time it is, but it’s still very dark outside so I can only assume that it’s sometime after two o’clock in the morning. I don’t want to do this in my master bathroom, but it almost seems appropriate. The last time Colin and I had this deep of a conversation was in his master bathroom in the fortress in the sky.

In his same defeated voice with his head hung, he asks barely above a whisper, “Are you leaving me, Charlie?”

I’m as honest as I can be with him even though it’s breaking my heart. “I’m not sure.” I whisper. “I was hoping that we could spend the next year getting to know each other again and take our relationship slowly, but as always with us, we can’t seem to find the slow lane. It’s either warp speed or nothing.”

“Can I hold you while we talk?” He asks so quietly that it breaks my heart. I briefly wonder if anyone else has seen Colin like this. The boy always seems to have his swagger in public and on the football field. Do Mark and Aiden know how vulnerable he can be? Does his assistant Jenny see him like this? More questions that I don’t have the answers to.

I nod my head yes, and I’m beyond relieved when he takes my hand and leads me back to the bed that he thinks is too small for us yet we only manage to sleep holding each other. He turns on the bedside table lamp and dims it so we have just enough light to see each other.

I slip my robe off now that my heart rate has returned to normal. I’m no longer trembling. Colin leans against the headboard and pulls me in between his long sculpted thighs. I lay back against his chest, and his long arms wrap around me. We’re beautifully naked tangled with each other.

I’m thankful that I don’t have to see his face for this. I love him so much that just knowing that the defeated look is in his eyes is making this so much harder for me.

I begin. “You and your public relations team proposed the idea of us going on national television and talking about our relationship. This means that you’ll also have to answer personal questions about Sasha’s article, and well, frankly, things that I probably don’t even know about. I’m not comfortable with asking you to do that Colin. Plus, I don’t feel like we have a secure enough future to put our relationship out there like that.” There! I said it.

He tightens his long arms around me. “You know me, Charlie. I’m still Colin. The one who would walk through hell for you. The one who loves you and never stopped loving you. God dammit, Charlie! I’m willing to put myself out there and finally give the media the profile piece that they want. What else do you need to know?” He no longer sounds defeated, but I wish there was more passion in his voice. What I sense more is anger that I’d even suggest that our future isn’t predetermined.

I place my hand on his thigh and begin to gently stroke it. I need him to stay calm for me. “Yes. I know all of that. However, I don’t know about what happened after we broke up. I need details, Colin. I need to know what you’re exposing to the world. I don’t want to be blindsided, and I don’t want you to be hurt.” Then, without revealing Mark’s name, “I’ve heard that you almost died. I need to know the truth Colin. I need to know about your near death experience and about your first marriage.”

I pause for a beat and follow up with, “Allison Katz is going to ask you about your first marriage. You know that, right?”

He pushes me forward just enough to crawl out from behind me. I watch him begin his godforsaken pacing in front of my bed. He runs his fingers repeatedly through his hair. I lean back against the headboard and watch him. I cannot comfort him. If he wants me like he says he does, he’s going to have to give me the answers that I need. I need to know exactly what I’m asking Colin to do for me.

Colin stops pacing and turns towards me. “What happens if I refuse to share that with you?”

His face is so anguished that I almost break. But, I don’t. This is self-preservation. At this point, it will kill me to walk away, but I think that I can still survive. If I give up my medical practice, my relationship with my father and lose Colin in the end, I will not pull through. I know that I cannot recover from that.

“Then I walk away and refuse to ever have contact with you again,” I reply evenly.

He screams at me, “Why.Does.It.Fucking.Matter!” The veins in his neck are bulging as he shouts at me, and his olive complexion is red. Then, he leans down so we’re green eyes to lavender. In a whispered voice he says again, this time more of a question than a statement, “Why does it fucking matter? If I’m willing to put myself out there then why does it fucking matter about my first marriage and what happened after we broke up?”

He sits down on my reupholstered red, crushed velvet chair where we made love for the first time so many years ago. There’s enough light from the street lamps streaming through my blinds to cast Colin in soft light. He looks like a tragic hero from the black and white movie days.
God, I love him.
I mentally compel him to give me what I need. To open up to me.

I stay very calm and attempt to explain it to him in terms that he will understand. “Put yourself in my shoes. Imagine that you suddenly found out that you were going to be the starting quarterback for Houston instead of Dallas.”

He spits, “I would be fucking ecstatic because I’d be with you.”

I ignore him and continue. “You’d have to sell your home. Say goodbye to all of your teammates that have become your friends. Your family. You now have to get used to a new city, coaches, players, football play book, operations, fans, and stadium. You’d no longer have a true home field advantage because the new place wouldn’t really be your home. Then, you find out that you were tricked into coming to Houston. Instead of being the starting quarterback, you’re now the punter. It’s not a position that you’re comfortable with. Yes. You’re still technically playing football, but it’s a different position. Then, you’re forced to do press interviews and talk about how great it is to now be the punter. Your situation gets worse though because now you’re competing with others for the punter position. It’s not the position that you want to play, but at least it’s still football. What happens to you if someone takes the punter position away from you? You are now left in a strange city. No job. No friends. And your passion, your dream has been taken away from you.”

I see him begin to get it. I pray that he truly does because I can’t explain how I’m feeling any better. “Colin, that’s what you’re asking me to do. You’re asking me to change cities and jobs. I’m very willing to consider moving to Dallas and starting my career over for you. I’ll move positions from quarterback to punter. However, I have to know all the facts before I can make that choice. I have to know that I am not competing against anyone or anything else for you. I have to know that exposing our relationship to the world is the right move for both of us, and you aren’t going to resent me for it.”

“I’ll marry you right now if that’s what you want. If that’s the reassurance that you need, we can be on a plane to Vegas in a couple of hours,” he tells me. I’ve heard this before. He said it repeatedly when we were together for round one. His proposals are hollow.

My poor Colin doesn’t get it. “I’m not saying this to be mean or hurtful, but your track record with marriage doesn’t give me the reassurance that I need. You professed to love me and everyday asked me to marry you, and then you turned around a married someone that you didn’t love or care about. At this point, I see marriage as a manipulation tool and nothing more. If you want to give me the reassurance that I need, then I need to know what happened after we broke up that was so bad that you quit doing interviews about anything but football.”

I’ve wounded him… deeply. I wish to God that my words didn’t hurt him so much, but I can’t and I will not take them back. I can’t give up everything for someone who will not let me in.

He’s furious. Colin McKinney doesn’t do ugly truths or harsh realities well. He also doesn’t appreciate having his past thrown in his face any more than my father does. He’s more like my father than I ever realized. He jumps to his feet. “What about you, Caroline? You aren’t innocent. You didn’t sit around fucking your BOB for the last eight years,” he spits at me.

“You’re right Colin. I’ve told you everything that there is to know. I dated someone for a couple of years. I didn’t feel about him the way that I should have. He cheated on me and I gladly let him walk out on me,” I state.

He’s furious and pure anger glistens in his green eyes. “Letting guys leave you, Caroline, seems to be your specialty.”

If he’d slapped me across the face with all of his strength, it would have hurt less. I actually flinch from his words. I sit there stunned for a moment. His reaction tells me that he’s just as stunned as me that he said it.

He immediately begins to apologize, but his words ring hollow. “I think it would be best if we cooled off before we finished this conversation,” I mutter.

Then, I add, “However, if you don’t plan on telling me what happened after we broke up and about the marriage then you can pack your stuff and leave. I’m going to go for a run to calm down. Because I don’t want to take security with me, I’m going to the office to run on a treadmill. I’ll give you a couple of hours to think about what you want.”

With that, I go into my closet and put on my running gear. When I walk back into my bedroom Colin’s sitting on the formerly red velvet chair. We don’t acknowledge each other as I leave, and he doesn’t stop me.

I brush the security off when I walk outside. It’s 3:45 in the morning. I want to be alone and drive my own car. I need just an ounce of normalcy in my life. Alone and driving are going to have to be it.

I’m so relieved when I slide my key card into the elevator at my office building and my key still works. Brief panic filled stomach that my dad may have had security lock me out of the practice.

I set the treadmill on a break neck pace and begin to run. It dawns on me that I haven’t cried. Not a tear. Is it that I’m all cried out from yesterday? Possibly. After a couple of miles, I realize that I’m truly at peace with my decision. Colin can offer me marriage proposals until he’s blue in the face. Those come easily for him. What I need is his honesty. I need him to open up to me in every aspect of his life. He needs to tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly. I cannot let him open himself up to the media without knowing what I’m agreeing to.