“Did you see that?” I ask.
“I think so,” Sam says.
I wait for something else to happen, but it doesn’t. I go back to scrolling and the silence settles back in. A few more moments pass, and the flash of movement happens again. It’s unnerving. This time, I don’t look back down at my computer. It’s putting me on edge, and the sound of my phone ringing a second later makes my heart pound in my chest.
“Did you see me?” Xavier asks.
“What is going on?” I ask.
“Did you see me?” he asks again.
“If you were the creepy thing that went by the window, then yes, I saw you,” I say.
“Which window?” he asks.
I realize the movement only came from the window to the left, and not the one on the far side of the cabinet in the kitchen.
“The one in the living room,” I tell him.
“You didn’t see any other movement?” he asks.
“Should I have?” I asked.
“Come outside,” he says.
The call ends and I look at Sam. “He wants us to go outside again.”
“It’s getting late, Emma,” he says. “We shouldn’t be out there.”
“You know if we don’t go, he’s going to keep Dean out there while he runs in circles around the cabin,” I note.
“Yeah, I do know that,” Sam chuckles. “You’re lucky I love you, you know that?”
I lift one eyebrow at him. “Oh, is that right? I’m lucky?”
He holds his arms out to the side like he’s putting himself on display. “Come on. Look at all this. And you’ve signed up for life. A constant stream of it.”
“Well,” I say with a hint of a laugh. “I preordered the subscription. Let’s go before he calls again.”
Sam and I haven’t started talking about a wedding. I’m not even wearing a ring. In fact, after waking up in the hospital, there were a few days when I was fuzzy on the whole engagement front. I thought I remembered asking him, but I couldn’t be completely sure. I definitely didn’t remember whether Sam answered or not.
Maybe it wasn’t the best moment or circumstances to start making life-changing decisions. But I don’t want to wait anymore. Sam is my home, the place I feel safest. He makes me happy and knows me like no one else ever has. It’s always been the two of us. From the time we were too young to know what it meant, we were bound to each other.
I left him once because I thought it was the right thing to do. For both of us. Not because I didn’t think we should be together, or that we wouldn’t be happy together. I left because I knew he would give me a life so secure and content and happy there would be no need to think about anything else.
If I had stayed with him then, I never would have become an FBI agent. I wouldn’t have been able to bring myself to walk away from him and put myself in the kind of danger I’ve been in. I would have just wanted to be with him.
In that way, I did exactly what I needed to do. I made sure I could solve cases and chase down criminals so they could be held accountable for what they had done. But now I’m not going to choose anymore. I’m ready to be exactly where I want to be. With Sam.
Those are all the kinds of things I should have said to him. Maybe in a better situation than lying in his arms, half-conscious, bleeding from a gunshot wound. If I had, it probably would have been easier for me to know the outcome. When I woke up at the hospital, he was beside me. But it wasn’t entirely clear if we were engaged or not.
At this point, I know he heard me, and he does want to marry me. But I don’t have a ring. We don’t have a wedding date. We haven’t talked about what Bellamy thinks of as critically vital things such as theme colors and napkin styles. But I know he loves me and one day we will be married. For right now, I’m going to be happy with that.
We get outside and find Dean standing in the middle of the open area in front of the cabin. I don’t see Xavier.
“Where is he?” I ask. “Did you lose him again?”
“I’m here,” Xavier calls, popping out from beside the house.
I press my hand to my heart and turn to him. “What are you doing?”
“Watch this.” He runs around the other side of the cabin. “You didn’t see me here.” He disappears for a few seconds, then shows up on the other side of the cabin. “This is where you did.” He does another lap. “Didn’t see me.” Next window. “Saw me.” A third lap. “Not here.” Next window. “But here.”
“Okay,” I say, holding up my hands before he could go around for a fourth time. “I’m getting dizzy.”
“Maybe your inner-ear fluids are disrupted.”
“Or maybe you are running around in circles,” I fire back.
“Yes,” he says, seeming to snap out of the contemplation of my ears and back to whatever was originally going through his head. “You were pretending to look at your notes, right? Just like the first night you were here.”
“Yes.”
“And you noticed where I went by the window.”
“Yes.
“But you didn’t see anything that night?” he asks.
“No.”
Xavier looks around for a few seconds, then nods. “Okay.”
He starts for the front door to the cabin.
“Wait,” I say. “That’s it?”
“Should there be more?” he asks, pausing on the porch and turning around to look at me.
I open my hands out to my sides. “Don’t you think you should give us a little hint about what that was all about?”
“I told you,” he shrugs. “That’s where you could see me going by the cabin. Which means if anybody else was going by that side of the cabin, you would be able to see
