Touching Down(92)

Grant’s face started to go red. “Undefeated? You could do better.”

Charlie and I shook our heads.

“You never had an undefeated season, Dad,” Charlie added with an elevated eyebrow which made Grant grumble and me silently laugh.

“Mr. and Mrs. Turner?” Thomas, the general contractor we’d hired to see this project through from start to finish, cut through the crowd toward us. “If you’d like to have the honor, we’re ready whenever you are.”

He slid the barricade open a couple of feet to pass through. Grant grabbed my hand in one of his and Charlie’s in the other as he led us through the barricade.

“Would Carson like to join us?” I asked Charlie as Grant started to close the barricade behind us.

Grant’s nostrils flared, but when Charlie waved Carson over, Grant reluctantly opened the barricade to let him pass. I gave Cruz a quick kiss on the cheek before following Thomas over to a box with a handle coming out of the top. Running from the box was a handful of wires.

“You’ve double-checked the building?” Grant asked Thomas as we approached.

“We’ve quadruple-checked, Mr. Turner. You and your wife were the last people inside.”

Charlie glanced at me, knowing I’d been equally looking forward to and dreading this day. She didn’t know the particulars of my life in The Clink, but she knew the tenor of it.

“Blow the sucker up, Mom.” She gave me a quick squeeze before stepping back toward Carson, keeping a smart distance between him and Grant.

Thomas indicated the handle attached to the box and stepped aside. “Mrs. Turner. Ready when you are.”

I found myself staring at that handle—the instrument that would bring a whole building to the ground. The very building that had seemed impossibly large and imposing as a child was the one I was about to bring down as a woman.

Looking around me, I realized that from that building, beauty had been created too. The man beside me after all of these years, the daughter we’d brought into this world, the life we’d created together.

“Come on, Mom! The sooner this comes down, the sooner the new one can go up.” Charlie, my perpetual cheerleader, gave me a nod of encouragement. My perfect daughter who looked like her father but had half of my DNA.

The good half of my DNA. Charlie had decided to get tested shortly after her eighteenth birthday, and her results had come back negative for HD. I’d never felt relief and gratitude like I had that day. Despite the miracle of life I’d been given, I didn’t want my daughter to have to depend on a miracle for her survival.

I wanted her to be the miracle.

And she was.

Grant was the miracle. The life we’d created was. Time. Every new memory and moment was a miracle. Life was the miracle. Cured or not, I’d found my miracle—them.

“Grant?” I looked back at him. “Together?”

A smile spread across his face as he moved toward me. His hand found mine as we stepped up to the box.

“Together,” he said, laying our joined hands on the handle.

“Get them started on the countdown, Charlie,” I said.

Charlie spun around, tugging Carson with her, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “TEN!” The crowd had caught on by the time she’d hollered, “NINE!”

Grant and I looked at each other, and as those last few seconds counted down, I saw the eyes of the boy in the man I loved. I saw the look on his face after he’d burst through that door. I remembered the way his hand had felt in mine as he led me away. I remembered the way his blood had looked running from his battle wounds.

I remembered the way I’d never known peace until I’d fallen asleep with his arms around me. I remembered the way he’d looked into my eyes the first time we’d made love. I remembered the things he’d whispered in my ear.

I pulled all of those memories from that building as the final “ONE!” rung around the crowd. The rest I left to die inside.

Grant’s eyes held mine, his head giving a slight nod as our hands pressed down on the handle, time slowing right before the ground started to quake.

Coming behind me, Grant wound his arms around me, tucking his chin over my head as we watched the complex quiver a few times, right before the whole thing came crashing down, one level at a time.

I didn’t think I blinked once, not until the last of the building had collapsed, leaving a cloud of dust where a tower had just been.

As my silence continued long after the cheering had started to dim from the crowd, Grant nuzzled me. “Ryan?”

“I’m okay.” I let go of the breath I’d been holding. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah, so wow.” Charlie came up beside us, Carson in tow as she blinked at the rubble. “And when are you planning on opening the door to May’s House?”