Category: Flash Fiction

“This is taking forever.”

The words stirred her from her dark, little cocoon.

She didn’t want to wake up, she wanted to stay here, safe and warm, she was tired, she needed more sleep before she could venture out.

A loud sigh echoed above her and hands jostled her. the movement sent immediate and searing pain through her body and she groaned, opening her eyes to find that everything was fuzzy.

“Finally,” someone said and a figure loomed above her. Her vision was still blurry and she couldn’t make out the identity but the figure was large, a man.

Was it Dean?

No, Tayla pushed that thought away as soon as it came to her, this man didn’t sound like Dean and he didn’t feel like him.

Snippets of memories began to flip through her mind so quickly it made her dizzy. Being at work. Seeing Dean. Learning several of her patients were dead. Being accused of the crimes. Feeling sick. The hospital. Dean’s house. His confession. Their kiss. Gunshots. Pain. Blood. Darkness.

Tayla blinked and her vision cleared, the man leaning over her came into focus and her heart practically jumped out of her body.

She knew him.

He’d been a patient of hers.

His hame was Jason Lester and he had had a mental breakdown and killed his family. Wife, little boy, twin daughters, and baby son. She had been instrumental in having him committed, so what was he doing out?

He was the killer, he had to be.

And now he was here, he’d shot her and Dean.

Dean.

Where was he?

“Lets go,” he said, reaching for her.

Go?

She didn’t want to go anywhere with him.

She tried to move, see where Dean was. When she lifted her head she could see him slumped over at an awkward angle just a few yards away. She wanted to go to him, check if he was still alive, but more than that she didn’t want Jason to hurt him.

“Leave Dean alone, please,” she begged as he grabbed her roughly around the wrist and dragged her to her feet.

“I should kill him,” Jason growled.

“No, please, I’ll go with you, I won’t fight you, but please, just leave him here.” Jason had fired at the house, no doubt several people had already called 911, if Jason left Dean alone he should be found soon.

“You better not be lying,” he muttered as he half pulled, half dragged her out of the house.

Tayla cast a last look at Dean’s limp form. She wasn’t lying, she would never risk his life, he’d been through enough. She’d go with Jason and Dean would be safe, she just had to pray he figured out who had taken her and where before Jason got bored toying with her and killed her.

Bullets ripped through the front windows.

Glass shattered everywhere.

Pain sliced through his arm.

Tayla gasped and slumped forward and he knew she had been hit too.

Dean snatched her up, grunting through the pain, and ran through the house into the kitchen.

He sank down against the wall, then landed hard on his knees. Laying Tayla down he shuffled, still on his knees, to grab the dishcloth, before moving as quickly as he could back to Tayla.

She lay still. Eyes close, face pale, blood flowing from a wound just below her left shoulder.

Dean pressed the towel firmly against the bullet wound, then pressed his hand to his own wound.

Blood seeped between the fingers of both his hands.

He and Tayla were both hurt badly.

The world started to go a little gray around the edges.

Where was his gun?

Bullets had stopped pelting the house which meant that the shooter could be coming after them but for the life of him he couldn’t remember where he had put his weapon when he and Tayla walked inside.

Pain crescendoed inside him. Tayla was so quiet, so still, he wanted to help her but the gray in his vision was turning to black and he had a free-falling kind of feeling that said he was about to pass out.

Footsteps.

He heard footsteps.

Someone was coming.

Dean tried to get to his feet but his movements were suddenly clumsy and uncoordinated.

Flinging his body protectively over Tayla’s, more than anything he didn’t want anything to happen to her. Not now. Not when he had a chance to get her back in his life.

The person was getting closer but he was powerless to do anything to protect the only woman he had ever loved.

A shadow falling over him was the last thing he remembered before he fell off the cliff and tumbled into unconsciousness.

A decade worth of hurt and confusion and anger melted away the second her lips touched his.

Tayla had thought she’d hated Dean for what he had done to her up until the second he had told her that devastating story.

Did she still wish he had played things differently, told her what had happened, or even have someone else tell her? Yes she did. But it was what it was and she understood why he had run and why he hadn’t come back to explain.

The kiss ended and he looked down at her, confusion in those pretty blue eyes of his. She pressed her hand to his heart, found a pounding rhythm overwhelming him, like he thought his heart was in her tiny hands.

“Its okay, Dean,” she told him, resting her forehead against his chest. “Its okay.”

“You forgive me?” He sounded like he couldn’t dare to let himself believe it.

“Of course.”

“But …”

“Shh,” she touched her fingertips to his lips. “No buts. Does my brother know? My parents? How did I never hear about this?”

“I didn’t want you to know, I asked your brother not to tell you. I was-am-so guilt-ridden about it, I couldn’t function for a long time afterwards. Your husband,” Dean’s fingertips ran through her hair as his other arm wrapped around her waist and held her snug against his body, “He was good to you?”

“He was perfect.”

“You loved him.”

“I still do, I’ll always love him. But,” she added when she felt him stiffen, “that doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving you. You hurt me, deeply, but my love for you never disappeared.” Tayla drew in a deep breath, just hours ago she had been telling her best friend that it was too soon to move on, fulling intending to spend the rest of her life alone, but now things had changed, now that she knew the truth. “Were you serious? When you said you wanted to get me back?”

A sad smile lit his face. “Yes. I tried to let you go, thinking if I gave up the person I loved most in the world it would make up for what I did, but it didn’t, it couldn’t. I want you back, I just don’t know if I stand a chance of getting you back. Do I?”

Tayla didn’t even need to think about it. She wouldn’t change what had happened because if she did she would never have met Max and she loved him so much. But she loved Dean too, and losing Max had taught her that tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. She could continue to be angry and hurt about what Dean had done or she could accept he had done it out of fear, and pain, and guilt and grab this second chance life had gifted her.

“Yes,” she said, dragging him down to kiss him again.

For a few minutes she had forgotten that someone tried to kill her, she had forgotten everything except having Dean back. Desperate to make up for lost time her fingers fumbled with his belt buckle, his hands tugging on the hem of her sweater, and then the night erupted into gunfire.

He was in trouble.

Dean hadn’t meant to declare that he intended to win Tayla back but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised that they were true. He wanted to explain to her why he’d left, why he hadn’t come back, make her understand that it had nothing to do with her or what they had shared.

But before he could do that he had to find the person who wanted Tayla dead.

No.

Not just dead. He wanted her to suffer first.

As he parked the car in his driveway and walked around to open her door for her Tayla fidgeted nervously. On their way to his apartment they hadn’t spoken a word. In fact they’d hardly said anything to each other since his unplanned declaration.

Dean led her up the path to his ground floor apartment, and tentatively reached for her hand. As soon as his fingers curled around hers she quickly snatched it back. He had to tell her. He had to explain, if he didn’t he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate and if he was distracted then Tayla could die.

“Its not what you’re thinking,” he told her as he locked the door behind him and gestured to the couch, he may as well get this over with as quickly as he could.

“What isn’t?” Tayla eyed him suspiciously as she took a seat. She hadn’t been happy with the idea of coming here, and he’d kind of strong armed her into it.

“The night that we made love, the reason I left, its not what you’re thinking.”

Her eyes went shuttered, and she tried to act nonchalant. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

He could do this the easy way or the hard way, prolong it or just jump in and rip off the band aid. “That night I was supposed to pick up my cousin from the airport. She was only sixteen, but you were so beautiful, swimming in the lake, and all night all I could think about was that you were a woman now, no longer just Brad’s little sister. I took you home and we spent the best night of my life together, but while we were making love my cousin accepted a ride from a man who’d been on her flight. He raped her and dumped her body at the side of the road. She was found quickly, and when I got the call I …” he trailed off aware that Tayla knew what he’d done.

He’d run.

He’d left her without an explanation because he was consumed with guilt.

That familiar shaft of pain sliced through him. While he’d been making love to the woman he loved his little cousin had been raped and strangled.

How did you get over something like that?

She was dead because of him.

He didn’t deserve Tayla then and he didn’t deserve her now.

“Look, Tayla, I know that I hurt you, and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, or a second chance, I know I said I want to win you back and I do, but if you can’t forgive me then I understand. I’ll find who wants to hurt you and I’ll let you go. I just wanted you to know.” He stared at Tayla who was sitting on the couch staring back at him, an inscrutable expression on her face.

He got it. She couldn’t forgive him she just didn’t want to say the words out loud.

Dean turned around, he couldn’t look at her face any longer, couldn’t look at what he had lost when guilt had made him run. He was almost to the kitchen when small hands clamped around his arms, stilling him.

Tayla turned him around, then she reached up and gently took his face between her hands, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him.

This couldn’t be happening.

Tayla would almost rather that Dean thought she was a killer than to know that someone had killed four of her patients and then tried to come after her.

Someone wanted her dead.

Or worse.

Maybe they just wanted her.

Dean was pacing up and down the room and he had that ‘he didn’t know how he would convince her, but she had no choice but to go home with him’ look on his face.

Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, and she had no idea of falling for Dean’s charms a second time.

“Tayla, this guy is dangerous, and he’s made it clear that he’s spent enough time playing around and now he’s ready to come for you.” Dean stalked over to the bed and dropped down into a chair, “I won’t let him hurt you.”

He said it so forcefully that she actually believed him.

“As soon as you get out of here you’re coming home with me,” Dean said it like it was a foregone conclusion.

A small smile crept up her face despite the gravity of the situation she was facing, she had always been able to read exactly what he was thinking. Until he’d left her anyway.

“Something funny about this?” he demanded.

“No, its just that, all of this, its so much, and it just doesn’t feel real, and I feel like I got hit by a truck, and this is all just overwhelming.” Tears began to flow down her cheeks, and she tried to hold back a sob.

Dean watched her for a long moment and then he folded her into his arms.

Just like that everything felt better.

How did he still possess the ability to make her feel safe after everything he had done.

His lips touched the top of her head, and his hands stroked the length of her spine, soothing her, and the steady beating of his heart reassured her that he would find a way to fix this.

He would, wouldn’t he?

Dean would fix this, it was who he was, and then her life could go back to normal. Only now her heart wanted Dean to be part of that life. Her head knew it was a bad idea, that it was just setting herself up for heartbreak, but being around him again it stirred up all those feelings that she had buried so deeply.

She’d only ever loved two men, one was dead, and one was cradling her against his chest, if not even knowing that she was the target of a serial killer was enough to distract her from the unresolved feelings she had for Dean then nothing was.

“I don’t think me staying with you is a good idea,” she whispered against Dean’s chest, unwilling to leave the safety of his arms just yet.

“Its not up for discussion, honey, you’re coming home with me, I’m going to find the man who wants to hurt you and then I’m going to win you back.” With that he sat her up, let those ice blue eyes of his bore into her, letting his words sink in, and then he stalked out of the room, leaving her staring after him more confused than ever.