He didn’t think. He just ran, sprinting past the curtained-off treatment areas and through the automatic doors leading to the waiting room. It was filled with people. Worried moms holding young children on their laps. Tired men who looked like they’d been sitting in the hard plastic chairs for most of their lives. Older people who knew enough about hospitals to bring their knitting with them. Then he spotted her halfway between the water fountain and the exit.
“Mika, wait,” he yelled, drawing everyone’s attention his way—not that they could miss him in a silver knight costume split up the back. He felt like an ass, but he only cared about one person in this room: Mika. “I was wrong.”
She shook her head. “No one imagined Josh—”
“Not about the case. About you. About us. About the future we could have together.” He ignored the giggles and whispering from the crowd and focused on Mika, the woman he couldn’t let
walk out that door. “For the past year, I’ve been running away from anyone and anything that mattered to me because I couldn’t face losing everything all over again—until I met you. I fought it so hard, but I can’t keep my distance from you. I thought I had to push you away to save you. That had been so easy to do with everything and everyone else, but I couldn’t—can’t—do that with you. Love doesn’t work that way. You said back at the park that I saved your life, but really you saved me. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to show you how much I love you. You are my heaven.”
“We need to stop hurting ourselves for past sins,” she whispered, her quiet words easily carrying across the suddenly silent waiting room.
The ache in her voice tore him to shreds. “I know and I’m trying. With your help, I believe I can—we can.” Any more words failed him as soon as he saw the tears shining in her eyes, and he promised himself right then and there that these would be the last tears she ever shed because of him.
“Carlos—”
“No.” He held up his hand. “Let me finish. Please.”
He weaved his way through the chairs to her side. She’d ditched the white wig and Silver Queen costume and stood in oversize hospital scrubs the nurses must have given her to replace her torn clothing. A weary exhaustion permeated the air around her, but there was something else, too. Hope.
He reached out and pulled her into his arms, marveling at how their bodies fit perfectly together.
She looked up at him and the world stopped spinning. There was only the two of them, and it always would be, and that was more than enough. “The stakes are pretty high here.”
“But so is the reward, mi cielo.” Love. Family. Forever. It was everything he’d lost hope of ever having until Mika had come into his life.
He brushed his lips across hers. “Now tell me you love me, too.”
“You’re pushy,” she teased.
“No, I’m a guy whose ass is hanging out of a silver knight’s costume in front of an entire room full of strangers because I knew if you made it out those doors I might never see you again.”
She raised herself up on her tiptoes, her body sliding up his and igniting all sorts of thoughts that a man in a paper gown shouldn’t be having. “And that would be bad?” she asked, her lips just inches from his.
“That would be hell on earth.”
He’d been through that already; he’d never turn his back on his heaven again. Neither of them was perfect, but they were perfect together.
“I love you,” she said.
It was all he needed to hear. It was all he ever needed to hear. He kissed her with every bit of love he had in him as the waiting room erupted into whoops and hollers of appreciation.
Epilogue
“Dress to please yourself.”
—Iris Apfel
Six months later…
Carlos blocked the glare of the setting sun with one hand and hustled across the street toward the neon sign reading: Feeny’s Bar. He was late meeting Mika, but with any luck she’d already ordered him a beer and saved him a seat.
A couple of neighborhood guys walked out just as he reached for the door. They gave Carlos’s plain black T-shirt and jeans a quick once-over.
“Watch out,” one of the men said. “Nothing but a bunch of weirdos in there tonight.”
“It’s okay.” Carlos grinned. “I’m one of the weirdos.”
He laughed at the man’s shocked expression and walked inside the dimly lit bar. Feeny’s was packed with knights and elves, trolls and ogres, knights and warrior princesses. Ever since Mika’s Silver Queen court had discovered the hole-in-the-wall bar, the place was packed every Sunday night with costumed clientele. Knowing a good thing when he saw it, the owner had special ordered mead from a local brewery for the post-LARPing crowd. But Carlos wasn’t interested in any of the mead-guzzling crowd. He was on the hunt for a silver queen.