Broken Barriers (Barriers Series Book 4) (31 page)

“Drew…wake up, sleepy head,” she whispers tenderly.

The scents of vanilla and pear overwhelm my senses, and suddenly hands snake around my body before warm lips place gentle kisses along my shoulder blade.

“Baby…c’mon. Wake up. It’s just another dream.”

A dream? God, not another one.

My heavy eyelids unscrew themselves and cautiously begin to open. The morning light barely breaks through the blinds. Winter’s frost is clearly helping block the light from fully entering the bedroom.

Wait. What the hell?

As my eyes scan the different room, it all begins to come to me. I settle on the stack of paperbacks on the nightstand next to the bed, and I realize I had that
dream
again.

“It’s about time you woke up. I hate waiting on Christmas morning. And, you know I hate when you call me by my middle name in your dreams, right?” Her soft laughter fills the cool air in the room.

The arm that was once around my waist pulls away, and I roll over to see her head lying on the pillow. A smile grows on my lips as my left hand reaches over to push the stray hairs away from her face. My wedding band shines with the morning rays of sunlight.

“Hey,” I say before placing a kiss on my new wife’s forehead. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Drew.” She snuggles closer to my body as I tuck her into my side. She shivers in my arms before I pull the gray flannel blankets over her barely-covered shoulders. “Brrrr,” she mumbles into my neck. My hand runs over her shortened brown hair. “So, do I dare ask what I was doing in your dream this time? Usually when I hear ‘Cole’ mentioned it’s never good. Reminds me of when I’d get scolded as a child by my dad and he’d yell ‘Courtney Cole.’” My deep laugh vibrates through my bare chest, making her laugh as well. “Drew…stop. It’s been a while since you’ve had that dream. What brought it on now?”

“Probably just thinking about where things with us were two years ago last night.” I sigh as I roll her onto her back. Memories flood my head as I remember how it all could have gone to shit if it wasn’t for my letter to her.

We sat in front of the fireplace enjoying a quiet Christmas Eve last night. Courtney couldn’t wait to give me her gift. That’s when I saw it on the last page. It was preserved in a scrapbook she had made of all our family events through the years.

My Dearest Courtney,

I know this isn’t the exact way I should tell you, and I know my timing sucks, but that’s how I am. I do things all wrong and never in the right order. I realize now my mistakes when it comes to you.

I never told you just how much I loved you when it mattered. The day you walked into my life, you turned it upside down. You were a force I couldn’t reckon with, ever. You held all the cards for me, and never once did I play the right hand with you.

Well, I’m playing it now, and I hope to hell it pays back in spades.

Courtney Page, I love you. I’ve loved you since the day in the hallway at my sister’s house.

I’ve loved you since the day I realized I couldn’t see your face or hear your voice each day.

I’ve loved you since the day you stayed with me on the beach in California watching the sunset.

I loved you even more when I knew I had to let you go after Sam’s wedding. The night at the lake house—it was just you and I and even then the words could not formulate on my tongue.

I didn’t want to let you go. I still don’t want to let you go. Please, don’t let my past wrong decisions be what make you alter a future I can only dream of with you.

Please, don’t marry him.

I know I’m not perfect. I never will be. I do things out of impulse and never think them through. But, if it hadn’t been for one impulse, I would have never kissed the woman who stole my heart in the midst of turmoil.

You have always had the power to settle me. You make my dreams come to life, and so help me, I want to wake up one day and know that MY fucking dreams came true for once.

I can only hope you love me like I think you do, and if I’m right, you’ll be waiting for me at the lake house when I get there during my leave in seven months.

If for some reason I’m wrong, then I will let you go, if that’s what makes you happy. It won’t be easy, but at least I’ll know you made the decision knowing the truth.

I love you, Courtney Cole Page, and I’ll think of your smiling face each night before I go to sleep and hear your voice each morning as I wake.

Until I see you again.

All my love,

Drew

She was there waiting for me when I came back to her last July. We had the most incredible two weeks before I had to ship back overseas, and I still dream about them. It’s funny how the mind twists things while you sleep, but I would take the mixed-up version of that summer over the deployment flashback any day of the week.

I never held anything back from her after that. We knew we were it for each other, and it turned out Adam wasn’t the right guy for her. Two weeks after I deployed, he accepted a new position with a major magazine company in Seattle. Courtney said her decision was an easy one. He loved his job; she loved her family more. They parted ways, and she knew then there was some subliminal force telling her that choosing me was the right choice. She never alluded to whether she wanted me instead, though. Court kept telling me that I’d have to wait and see. The minute I exited the plane in Boston during my mid-deployment leave, I borrowed Josh’s Jeep and rushed to the lake.

I smile at the memory.

“I’m sure since I’m lying here with you right now that things worked out pretty good for you.” Courtney grins up at me as I hover over her fragile body.

“Pretty good, huh?” My lips caress their way down her collarbone and over the tops of her swollen breasts. Her chest heaves with each kiss.

“Mmmhmm.”

My hand inches under the fabric of her cotton boy shorts. My fingers trace along her seams. The heat radiating off her is enough to drive me wild. I pull away, snapping the elastic of her panties against her core. Her hips writhe with wanton desire against my growing erection. “You are insatiable this morning, Mrs. Daley.” My lips linger over her slightly rounded belly as I place soft kisses over her stomach. “And you in there?” I speak softly to our unborn child. “You better cover your ears because Mommy is going to be screaming very bad things to Daddy in a few minutes.”

“Drew!” Court’s eyes grow wide as she laughs, resting her hand over her stomach. “Oh my God, now I’ve got to pee. See what you did.” She moves quickly out of bed and in the direction of the bathroom down the hall. I hear her tiptoeing all the way, mumbling something along the lines of “Shit, it’s cold. Goddamn, this house is freezing.”

I stare down at the pitched wood in my pajama bottoms. “Doesn’t look like we’re getting a Christmas present at the moment.”

The woman’s hormones are up and down. One minute she’s sweating and stripping off her flannels in bed, and the next she’s freezing. I don’t get pregnant women at all, but I love Courtney more with each inch that grows around her waist, because that’s my future growing inside her.

I pad my way out of the bedroom and down the hall as the sun rises over the snow-covered lake. Light filters through the Christmas tree next to the fireplace. I quickly toss a couple of logs onto the wrought iron grates and light a small piece of paper underneath to get the fire going.

I push myself over to the frosty windows and scan the peaceful scene outside. There are no boats passing through the bay this morning, or any time soon for that matter. The trees are free of their leaves except for the dark evergreen that scatter the winter landscape. It’s quiet, but that’s exactly how we want it. As I turn around to head into the kitchen to start the coffee, something catches my eye. A glimmer from across the lake. No less than twenty minutes ago, a house was sitting in that same spot with a woman named Cole.

It was all just a dream.

I shake my head in disbelief. No. My lips curl up into a smile.

It was a dream come true, and so much of it I can recall actually happening. The moments that Courtney and I shared those couple of weeks I was home. The friends she made while I was away. The ones I met for the first time. She made a lifetime up here not only for herself, but also for me because she knew this was where we’d find the greatest happiness. Buying the lake house from my parents was the easiest decision, next to marrying Courtney.

Moments later, I hear the toilet flush, and Courtney emerges from the bathroom, completely dressed in flannel pajamas. I cock one eyebrow at her after I notice she’s covered up now. Even her damn feet are covered in fluffy cheetah slippers.

She smiles devilishly at me as she heads to the fridge. “Don’t worry your pretty little head. You’ll still get your Christmas sexy time before you open your gifts.” I turn back to poke the fire, smiling to myself at how well she knows me.

One at a time, she pulls platters of breakfast pastries out of the fridge and places them onto the counter. I catch the faint sounds of her humming Christmas carols while she moves about. I narrow in on the blueberry muffins and make a beeline right for them before she can tell me no. Apparently, I’ve put on some winter fluff, or ‘sympathy weight’ as she refers to it. Either way, I’m not supposed to be eating all the delicious treats she’s made for our family and friends coming over later.

I hear a lone bell coming down the staircase before Courtney shuffles in that direction. “Morning, Porter,” she singsongs and bends to pat the head of her black and white cat she rescued from behind her café at the end of the summer.

Ha-ha…Cole Porter. Damn. I DO have some pretty crazy dreams sometimes.

I hear Courtney rummaging in the bedroom down the hall. Rather than going right for the pastries, I opt for the banana before turning on the coffee brewer. I wait for Courtney to return to the kitchen, until I hear a ruffling of paper and a door shutting.

“You all right down there?” I ask, my mouth half full of banana.

“Yeah. Just having some issues with this present,” she replies, and I then hear her swearing and groaning.

I take a few short steps past the dining table and glance at the framed pictures on the buffet. The picture from Sam’s wedding that held so much heartbreak now rests behind many wonderful memories. A picture of me proposing to Courtney in her café downtown just before I was set to return to duty. A simple wedding picture next to that from when I returned and we rushed up to the lake in the midst of a cold, snowy winter. We were married under a gazebo in front of Wolfe’s Tavern with snow falling as a backdrop. In the picture, Courtney is draped in my arms as I dipped her at the end of our first dance in front of our freezing family members. That didn’t make too many people happy—an outdoor ceremony held in the dead of winter. But, we are happy, and now, nearly a year later, we have a baby on the way.

I run my eyes further down the buffet to the picture of the entire family with me at my graduation from the Police Academy. The root cause of my less than stellar six-pack abs. That gym membership is working out wonderfully with my rotating shift schedule. Courtney goes more than I do these days, but since she can make her own hours at Trouvaille, she has no reason not to. The most exercise I get these days is helping with the wrestling program at the high school. Evidently, I don’t have all the moves I used to in college. Who knew?!

Next is a picture of the guys and me in my unit while in Afghanistan. My brothers-in-arms, Sergeant Everett Smith, Staff Sergeant Deroche, and Corporal Locke, stand with me in front of our MRAP Humvee. I don’t see them as much as I used to, but we still video chat at least once a month. Everyone is either married or having kids these days, so we’ll have to rely of Marine Corps reunions to catch up with each other.

A final frame rests at the end. It’s an empty rustic wooden frame with nothing but a piece of paper in Courtney’s writing inside it.

Soon, this frame will have a picture. A picture that will bring us more memories with each passing day. We will share a lifetime of love, happiness, and tears. But, at the end of each day, this picture will be the start of our family. Baby Ron or Baby Melanie will join our family soon and will make all our dreams come true.

A slight movement from the corner of my eye interrupts me, and I look up to see my wife—the woman who can heal my soul and bring me to my knees in a split second—standing there before me dressed in a black lace form-fitting piece of lingerie and nothing else but a shy smile. I take three long strides quickly across the room, tossing the banana peel onto the kitchen counter before reaching her.

Her eyes look shamed the moment I hover over her. “I bought it a week ago, and already it’s too tight around my belly.” She stares down and wraps her arms over her round stomach, trying to hide with embarrassment. I snatch her hands in mine and wrap them around my neck. Her head tips back as she looks up at me.

“You couldn’t look any sexier than you do right now.” I kiss her soft lips before pulling her hand with me back into the bedroom. “Plus, you don’t need to worry about any of that because that’s one Christmas gift that’s not going to be staying on long.”

She giggles with each step behind me, saying, “Baby, I am going to make this one Christmas you’ll never forget.”

As I hurry her to our bedroom, I smile as I glance over my shoulder and see the eyes of the woman I dream about almost every night. I fought for the woman I love, and she truly has made all my dreams come true.

The End.