continued from Chapter One
Andy lengthened her stride, grinding the crisp blanket of leaves and underbrush beneath her feet as she cruised through the forest. With each step, she increased her pace, no longer giving any thought to what she'd left behind. She was making good time and although she might occasionally wonder about the end goal, she was still so focused on the exhilaration of the journey itself that she hadn't given it more than a cursory thought.
"The King is dead. Long live the King."
Sam, Andy and Oliver tapped their glasses together and knocked back the shots. As Andy swallowed hers, she steeled herself for the inevitable burn that would follow, wincing as the warm liquid singed her throat.
With a decisive thud, Sam deposited his empty shot glass on the table, announcing that he would "be right back." He planted his hands on the tabletop and pushed himself up out of his chair, leaning over to kiss Andy before loping off in the direction of the restrooms. As she watched him cross the bar and disappear behind the bathroom door, Andy simmered happily beneath a warm, pink glow.
Grinning broadly, she swung her attention back to the table, and her eyes landed squarely on the mirthful gaze of Oliver. "So . . . you and Sam," he observed, slowly sipping his beer with a look of smug satisfaction. "That seems to be going well."
"It is," she agreed, covering her face with her hands in an attempt to hide the smile she couldn't suppress. "Very well." Sounding too dreamy even for her own ears, Andy shook her head and laughed.
"You know, I've always been able to appreciate the virtues of a well-deserved 'I told you so.'"
She dropped her hands back to the table and rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . if we'd only gotten our acts together sooner, right?"
"Nope. I didn't say that. You two worked your way back around to each other when it was right for you. Life has a plan for us, McNally. Maybe the time apart was always part of that plan."
"Hmph," Andy grunted, taking a drink as she eyed him over the rim of her glass. "You're turning into quite the philosopher."
Chuckling to himself, he said, "It doesn't take a philosopher to see when something is right. It's just good to see you both so happy."
"Thanks, Oliver." Andy squeezed his arm lightly. "It's like we're finally in this place where we were always supposed to be, and now that we're here, I can't help but wonder why we resisted it for so long. I mean, it feels incredible."
"I assume you're talking about me," Sam said as he slid back into his seat. The second he landed in his chair, Andy felt the heaviness of his hand on her leg, and she immediately slid her hand beneath the table to rest it on top of his.
"We were just talking about how life has a plan for all of us," Oliver said.
Sam nodded in understanding, waving his free hand around dismissively. "Yeah, McNally believes in all that stuff."
"What stuff?" she laughed.
"Destiny . . . the Universe's plan . . . sparkles and fairy dust . . . ." He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a dramatic show of forbearance.
"I'm actually surprised to hear you say that, Sammy," Oliver chided him. "I've never seen you this happy."
"That's because I've never been this happy," Sam admitted easily, tipping his glass toward Andy in a silent salute to his own well-being. "Still doesn't mean I'm a believer in fairy dust."
"Well you should be, Brother," Oliver insisted, "because you look like you've been hit with a bucket of it."
"Seems like I'd remember a thing like that," Sam responded dryly, appearing mildly discomposed by the turn the conversation had taken. Shaking his head, he grumbled, "Oliver, I thought we were here to celebrate your demotion."
"We are, we are," Oliver assured him. "What do you think, McNally? Is the Universe ready for me to get back out on the streets?"
The trip had been going so well that Andy barely noticed the fog until it was too late to navigate around it. Its thick, billowy tendrils slithered around her ankles, gradually tightening their coil around her. As the mist descended, deftly curling its fingers around branches and tree trunks alike, it seemed to choke all sound from the forest, leaving behind only an unnatural stillness. Andy slowly spun around, reaching the unnerving conclusion that all she could see in any direction was a heavy, grey mist. With no visual cues other than the fog itself, she suddenly felt disoriented and afraid. Her lips trembled involuntarily. Each breath came out raspier than its predecessor. As the fog squeezed her like a fist, she began to panic in earnest. Suddenly and with very little warning, she was trapped.
Then, just as the first tears stung her eyes, she heard a solitary whistling sound from the east, and she whipped her head in that direction. When a white dove emerged from the fog and landed on a nearby branch, Andy let loose a small, relieved smile. With each soft coo, the dove's breast expanded and contracted, creating a soothing rhythm that calmed her uneasy spirits.
Suddenly, the bird took to the air and circled above her expectantly until finally, Andy took several crucial steps forward. The dove seemed to approve, spilling forth an affirmative warble before setting off through the forest. Andy followed closely, and as it led her through the dips and sways of the forest, the dove somehow managed to steer around whatever perils lurked beyond the mist. The fog was still thick and the forest was dense, but she no longer felt alone on her journey.
When her career started to unravel, Andy very quickly saw that Sam was there and that as bad as it got, he had no plans to go anywhere else. Quite often, she would take a break from her angry, indignant musings just to appreciate the significance of his presence in her life at all. A year before and he wouldn't have been there. That thought alone made his existence in her world so much sweeter.
So when she told him, "You get me through the night," there was no part of her that didn't feel the truth of what she'd just said with absolute conviction and certainty. At a time when she desperately needed something good in her life, he was a flash of gold in an otherwise dull reality. With each passing day, she relied on him just a tiny bit more, and what she was learning was that he was uniquely equipped to be that person for her. Depending on Sam wasn't a new concept—just more like the renewal of an old one. He loved her and he was there, encouraging her, supporting her and giving her pretty much anything she needed.
At no time was that more apparent than after Duncan's hearing. She'd felt so betrayed by Oliver and even though she knew Sam didn't entirely agree with her reasoning, he stood back and let her work through it on her own. And after her "clear the air" talk with Oliver, she found him waiting for her outside in his truck, just like he'd said he would be.
"Hey," she sighed, hoisting herself up into the passenger seat. Andy settled her bag at her feet and busied herself with her seat belt.
When she finally looked over at him, he was staring at her expectantly. "Everything go okay?"
"Yeah," she reflected with a thin laugh. "He actually said I was the best part of his day—by a long shot."
"Must've had a pretty terrible day," Sam noted, dropping the truck into reverse and steering them out of the lot.
"No kidding." She let her head fall back against the seat. "I actually think he used the term 'super crappy.'"
Sam reached across the truck and lightly massaged the muscles in her neck with one hand. As she felt some of her tension evaporate, Andy closed her eyes and muttered an appreciative, "Mmmmm. That's nice."
"You wanna head over to the Penny for a drink?" he asked uncertainly.
"Nope." Feeling sluggish, she slowly opened her eyes and looked at him. "I don't feel like dealing with people tonight. All I want is to go home and soak in a nice, hot tub with lots and lots of bubbles." Visualizing the warm, soapy water, she closed her eyes again and adopted a serene expression.
"Do you want me to drop you off at your place?"
"Drop me off?" she asked, looking over at him as she lifted her head off of the seat. "Why would you do that?"
"You said you don't want to deal with people," he reminded her, flicking his eyes to hers before returning his gaze to the street.
"Sam, you're not people," she groaned, leaning back against his hand again.
"I'm not?"
"No. You're not," she laughed. "When I said 'I don't want to deal with people,' you were specifically excluded from that group." Andy let her head roll to the side, aiming a pointed stare in his direction.
She could tell he was holding back a smile as he asked, "So . . . where are we going then? Your place or mine?"
"The answer to that question depends on whether you have a bottle of bubble bath in your bathroom cabinet."
"I . . . ." he began in a noncommittal tone. He removed his hand from her neck and scratched the back of his own thoughtfully.
"Actually," she said abruptly, wagging a finger at him, "don't answer that."
"Why not?" Sam let out a choked laugh as he looked at her in confusion.
"Well, I've never taken a bubble bath at your house," she explained, "so if you have bubble bath, it's not mine, and I certainly don't want to think about how it got there."
"Maybe I just like to take bubble baths," he suggested.
"No, you don't," she insisted, shooting him an impatient look as she forced away all images of Marlo Cruz and any other old girlfriends who might have spent time in Sam's bathroom. "Let's just go to my place, okay?"
"Your decision." He flipped the turn signal, indicating that he planned to turn right at the next intersection. "But for the record, I don't have any bubble bath at my house, McNally."
"Good to know," she mumbled. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly as she relaxed against the head rest and closed her eyes again.
Finally, the fog lifted. The dove gave Andy an encouraging nod and they parted ways. She smiled gratefully as it flew away, then turned her attention back to the task at hand. With renewed confidence, she plowed ahead eagerly, instinctively feeling that her trip through the forest was nearing an end. Not long after the dove left her, however, Andy stumbled upon an uneven, washed-out patch of earth. The ground was littered with thick, knotted roots, undoubtedly resulting from many years of erosion and neglect, and the damage extended as far as she could see in any direction. Her shoulders sagged in exhaustion, but she continued on. Navigating through the deeply-veined stretch of ground tested her resolve as she tripped and skidded from one eroded divot to the next, hoping to avoid any serious injuries that might delay her journey. Summoning her resolve, she forged ahead, but as the roots began to get thicker and more treacherous, Andy's confidence started to wane. And it was right then, when she needed it most, that she saw a small patch of daylight filtering through the trees up ahead. It was tiny and fairly insignificant, but it gave her a point of reference at a time when she was desperate for some encouragement. Aiming for that light, she pushed herself harder, knowing that she was getting closer to the forest edge and whatever was waiting for her there.
Andy slowly pulled away from the curb outside of Ted McDonald's mother's house, tightening her knuckles around the steering wheel as she gritted her teeth and reminded herself to be gentle with Sam's truck. After all, he had trusted her to drive it home the night before—had actually insisted because he knew he'd be working late—and she wanted him to feel good about his decision. So it was with a great degree of self restraint that she smoothly drove through the maze of squad cars and foot traffic littering the street when all she really wanted to do was hammer down the accelerator and get as far away from Marlo and her insipid coffee as possible.
As Andy drove toward the station, she was a bubbling, boiling, brooding mess. How had everything become so complicated in just one day? Marlo was back. Yuck. Marlo had brought Sam his morning coffee. Double yuck.
Of course, the coffee-wielding ex-girlfriend was only the most recent in an unfortunate set of speed bumps that had been thrown at her and Sam in the span of twenty-four hours. The first had been the key. Since refusing it, Andy had questioned her decision almost nonstop. He'd caught her off-guard and she'd acted rashly, letting her emotions persuade her into making what was quite possibly, a terrible decision. By far, the emotion that had been the driving force behind her refusal was fear. She was afraid of making a misstep and watching everything between them crumble for a second time. The idea of a key changing hands set off an alarm in Andy's head. And it wasn't just any alarm. It was an ear-splitting concoction of clanging bells and shrill whistles, drowning out all but the most persistent thoughts and impulses. Above all, Andy's instincts were reminding her that something given was something that could be taken away, which is exactly what had happened the first time.
She knew Sam must have realized where her mind was because he hadn't seemed overly concerned when she didn't accept the key. Afterwards, they'd seemed fine. They were fine, Andy told herself, refusing to allow that the tiny issue of an unaccepted key could be the catalyst for Sam taking a renewed interest in Marlo. The idea was completely ridiculous, and Andy tried not to think otherwise as she drove toward 15 to get ready for her shift.
When she got to the station, she found welcome distractions in the form of a crying Chloe and Oliver's Ted McDonald update during Parade. So, for a time, she was able to forget about keys, ex-girlfriends and anything else that had the potential to send her thoughts into a tailspin.
After Parade, Andy wandered up to the Detectives' office, wanting to check in with Traci about the progress of the investigation. If she had a second underlying motive for the visit, she certainly wasn't willing to admit it, even to herself.
"Hey," Traci greeted her, looking up from several files spread out on the desk in front of her.
"How's the search going?" Andy asked as she hopped up onto the end of Sam's desk and looked over at her friend.
"Duncan's coming in to go over his statement in a little while. In the meantime, I'm reviewing these old files, hoping to turn over something to clue us in about McDonald's next target or where we might find the guy."
"Any word from Sam?" Andy asked, trying to evoke a casual vibe.
"Yeah. He's on his way back," Traci said slowly. "Everything okay with you two?"
"Sure. Everything's great," she said sarcastically. "Well, that is, of course, if the definition of 'great' is actually 'confusing and kind of messed up.'"
"What happened?"
Andy rubbed her forehead in frustration. "Ugh. I stopped in at the scene this morning to drop off a coffee for Sam. He worked all night, you know, so I figured he could use it."
"Being the dutiful girlfriend," Traci said with an approving nod.
"Yeah, well, when I got there he already had a fresh cup from Marlo."
"She brought him coffee?" Traci asked, screwing up her face.
"She did," Andy confirmed. "And I know it doesn't sound like a huge deal, Trace, but you should've heard her. She seemed so smug and proud of herself. Almost territorial."
"What did Sam say?"
"Not much he could say. He already had Marlo's stupid coffee in his hands."
"Did you expect him to decline it?" Traci asked.
"No. Yes. I don't know what I expected . . . ."
"Did you let him know that it bothered you?"
"Yeah," Andy laughed bitterly. "He knew. He says having her back here won't kill our honeymoon phase, but I just can't get past this feeling that having her around is gonna cause problems."
"Only if you let it," Traci pointed out. "And this doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Maybe it'll force you to double down and think seriously about where the two of you want to go."
"What do you mean?" Andy asked, furrowing her brow.
Her question went unanswered, though, as Traci silenced her with a look, mouthing, "Shh. Here he comes."
Andy whipped her head around and saw Sam through the windows. He took the stairs two at a time, locking eyes with her through the glass as he approached the office.
Rounding the corner, his gaze bounced from Andy to Traci and back again. "McNally, you got a minute?" he asked in a deliberate tone.
"Sure," she sighed, rolling her shoulders uneasily as she slid off the desk.
Ushering Andy toward the door, Sam said, "Nash, we'll be back in a few minutes."
"Take your time," Traci assured him easily, immediately refocusing her attention on the files in front of her.
Sam stopped briefly in the doorway and looked back at Traci. "Diaz is going through a box of McDonald's personal effects, and Marlo's on her way back with some other evidence we picked up at the scene."
"Got it," she said, waving him away.
"Where are we going?" Andy asked as they walked down the stairs.
"Somewhere quiet." With one hand pressed lightly against her back, he steered her toward the interrogation rooms. When they reached Observation One, he opened the door and stuck his head inside. "Empty," he declared, swinging it open all the way and motioning for Andy to go in ahead of him.
"Sam, what's going on?" she asked, leaning against the glass with her arms folded across her chest.
In response, he slid a chair away from the wall and dropped down into it, planting his hands firmly on his knees as he looked over at her. "Don't you think we should talk about what happened this morning?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Andy said with a disinterested shrug. She felt irritable and edgy and she wasn't about to make things easy for him.
"This morning, Ted McDonald's mother's house, Marlo . . . ." he prompted her in a bored tone.
Suddenly becoming more animated, Andy stiffly said, "Oh, you mean, when I showed up at the crime scene with coffee and your ex very pointedly announced to me that she'd already gotten you some?"
"It was just coffee," Sam said. "It didn't mean anything."
"Are you sure?" Andy asked defensively.
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure," he said, sounding agitated. "How can you even ask me that?"
Andy dropped her eyes to the ground, not wanting Sam to see how affected she'd been by Marlo's return. She'd spent the better part of the prior year watching him with Marlo, and the experience had left her feeling deeply insecure.
"Andy, what is this really about?"
"Look," she said with a sigh, raising her eyes to his again. "Having her back here hit a nerve, okay? It's just that, well, after you got shot, she disappeared and it was really easy to pretend like she never existed. But now, she's here again, so . . . ." Andy shrugged, expecting him to fill in the rest with what she wasn't saying.
"It bothers you that she's back," he said evenly.
"Yes, it bothers me," she flung at him. "How could it not? I watched you with her for months. You were literally building a relationship with someone else—a relationship that I wanted when we were together."
Sam rubbed a hand across his jaw wearily. "Andy, none of that was real. It's always, always been you. Even when we weren't together."
"It didn't seem like that last year."
"Well, it's true."
"Do you wanna know what I saw?" Andy charged ahead, not giving him time to answer the question. She didn't care how he responded because she wanted him to know. "To me, it seemed like you were really happy with Marlo."
"I wasn't," he said emphatically. "No more than I was with any other woman I've dated who wasn't you."
"Sam, you did all of these things with her. Stuff that we never did together. And I had to watch it all happening."
"I watched you with Collins," he reminded her.
"You don't really think that's the same thing, do you? Nick and I dated for like three weeks. You were with Marlo for months. You went on trips. You did real couple things together. Things that you never did with me," she insisted, flinging her arms out as she became more emotional.
"I didn't love Marlo," he uttered in a carefully-controlled tone, biting off the words as they exited his lips.
"Then why were you with her?" she demanded.
"Because I'm an idiot," he shouted. He ground his elbows into his knees and dropped his head into his hands. "What else do you want me to say? Everything was so messed up. You left. I wasn't sure when or if you'd ever be back. And I didn't know you still felt the same way."
"How could you not know? You don't just turn off feelings like that," she said angrily. "Well, maybe you do."
"That's not fair. And also not true," he responded loudly, suddenly standing up and shoving the chair away with one hand. For several seconds, it teetered on two legs before landing on its side with a heavy thud.
"Maybe not," she conceded stubbornly, realizing she may have pushed him too far, "but it's how I feel."
"Do you want to know how I feel?" he asked. When she didn't answer, he continued, "I feel like no matter what, if you care about someone, if you love them, you don't take off just because you've had enough of a situation. You stay and push through the hard stuff. You don't just run away."
"Sure," Andy agreed bitterly, trying to keep the tears at bay. "And if you really love someone, no matter how bad things get, you don't systematically tear them down and make them feel like they never meant anything to you. How much should one person have to take before it becomes too much?"
Silence greeted her last remark. He stared blankly at her, finally admitting in a quiet tone, "I never wanted to make you feel that way. Nothing felt right after Jerry died, and I could give you a million reasons why I pushed you away, but none of them make any sense now. The bottom line is, I made a huge mistake. I realized it and tried to fix it, but you left anyway."
"Okay," she responded on an exhale, holding up her hands, palms out, in what she intended to be a calming gesture. "I get that you expected me to stick around and somehow try to make things work between us. I really do understand that. And maybe I should have. I don't know. What I really need you to understand is that by the time you finally tried to fix things between us, the damage had already been done. I felt like I'd been flattened, crushed, whatever . . . . After you broke up with me, you made it clear that you didn't want me around, and I finally started to accept that we were finished. I literally had to force myself to come to terms with that. How was I supposed to know you'd change your mind? Sam, you took everything that we were and threw it back in my face, and I was supposed to just know that it would all be okay in the end?"
"I screwed up," he told her. "And I spent more than a year hating myself. Thinking about what I could've done differently. How I could've been better. Been more of what you needed me to be."
She started to speak and he cut her off with a stern look. "Just listen. I know I hurt you. I get that. But no matter what I said or did at the time, I never stopped loving you."
"Me either," she agreed, letting out a heavy sigh. "When I left, I was just trying to protect myself. I wanted to feel whole again, and I thought the way to do that was to be somewhere else. If I'd stayed, I'm not even sure if I would've been able to be there for you after all that happened. A part of me wishes I'd tried, though, because in the end, leaving and having to come back only made everything so much harder."
"If you had asked me to wait—told me you needed time—I would've done it. No question," he assured her.
Andy expelled a long breath. "I know."
"Do you?"
"I think so. At least, now I do." Andy looked at Sam and noticed that he looked as raw and drained as she felt. "I won't leave you again," she said quietly. "I mean it. I'm not going anywhere this time. Do you worry about that?"
He flexed his jaw before finally admitting, "Sometimes. Just like you worry that you'll end up getting hurt again."
"Either we're the worst people in the world or we're just complete morons," she observed wryly.
"Morons," he confirmed, nodding his head slowly. "Definitely morons."
"Sam, what's gonna happen to us? Do you think we can get past this?"
"I do." His answer was automatic, and she had to wonder at his certainty. "If we keep moving forward, eventually we'll put enough distance between then and now, and it won't matter so much."
"It's probably going to involve a lot more discussions like this one," she reflected, teasing him with a smile and an arched eyebrow.
"I don't doubt it," he agreed, laughing deeply as he opened the door and held it for her. "Let's table it for now, though. We need to get back out there and work on finding this guy."
"Agreed."
As they walked back down the hall together, he reached over and pulled her up against him, and that felt pretty good to Andy. She was glad that he felt comfortable enough to do it and that he didn't seem to care who saw them. So she decided to stay focused on that reassurance and use it to carry her through her afternoon.
Up ahead, the small scrap of light became brighter and brighter, bleeding through the leaves on the trees ringing the forest edge. Eagerly, Andy began throwing out her arms in front of her, parting the tree branches as she pushed forward toward that light. Finally, she was able to see it clearly in the distance, and she knew if she could just keep going—push herself just a tiny bit further—she'd make it.
Sam had been crying. Andy quickly realized that he'd thought she was dead, and in his face she saw panic, anxiety and above all else, intense fear. Having experienced that same fear firsthand, Andy knew it well. It was the fear of losing something so integral to your existence that you might never feel whole again without it. For her, that thing was Sam. And right there in the Evidence Room as he dropped down beside her, the relief she saw on his face told her that he felt the same way about her.
After Ford shot Sam, Andy remembered telling Dov that if Sam died, she felt like she would, too. The notion that someone else cared about her in that same way—so much that he'd be lost if she ceased to exist—stirred something deep within Andy and forced her to acknowledge how much she actually meant to Sam. With that acknowledgement came the twin truth that she didn't have to be alone in life. She had someone with her for the journey, someone who was as invested in her as she was in him. As she sat beside him on the floor with her ears ringing and her pulse pounding, she told herself she'd be a complete idiot not to put her faith in Sam and what they could be together. From the far reaches of Andy's soul she heard a tiny, whispered reminder that giving someone else that much power over her was risky. In the past, she might have given an ear to such a plea, but this time, she brazenly ignored it, quickly squelching the fear that would normally arise from such a prompting.
Sam helped Andy to her feet, wrapping a strong arm around her waist as they limped out of the charred remains of the Evidence Room. Right then, Andy could see their future with such clarity that its force almost knocked her down, and she decided to put her confidence in the two of them and what they could become.
When she stumbled across some debris on the floor, Sam tightened his hold on her. "McNally, you have to lean on me," he reminded her. "Otherwise, you'll fall."
"I'm too heavy."
"You're not too heavy."
"Fine," she grunted as she let herself sag against him. "But don't get mad if I take you down with me."
He laughed to himself before assuring her, "That's not gonna happen, but if it does, I'm okay with it. At least we'll go down together."
Standing near the forest edge, Andy stared at the striking display in front of her. With its richness and opulence, the view was almost too overpowering to process all at once. Ahead of her was a lush sweep of land filled with roaring waterfalls, grassy meadows and towering mountains. Mossy outcroppings and shady thickets sprang up from fields of fragrant blossoms that gently swayed in the warm breeze. Amidst tall, leafy plants, rocky rivers cut through the landscape, creating an uneven display of jagged lines across the varied terrain. Every aspect of the magnificent vista ahead seemed unique and exciting.
As Andy's eyes swept across the incredible spectacle, she no longer felt afraid. With so many incredible adventures and so much beauty waiting for her, she was anxious to move forward and experience it all firsthand. So, smiling to herself, she took one step forward and then another, not bothering to turn around and look at the forest behind her. That journey had come to an end, allowing her to finally focus on what lay ahead: The beginning.