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Now is always the time

(John says what is on his heart.  Is it too little too late? Or is now the perfect time?)

Chapter 12

Sitting up comfortably in the bed he waits until he has her full attention and then makes a clarifying point.

"First, let me say that I am not heavily medicated.  What I have to say is not due to any grogginess from the medications.  Evangeline, I know that it's been a long time since we've talked and I want you to know right off that I have missed our talks. You were always able to give me another perspective on what I was thinking and I can't tell you how much that meant to me. We've both said it before that what went wrong between us when we were together was my fault and I agree.  I've apologized so many times that I've lost count and anyway it doesn't change what happened.  But I don't want to live in the past anymore.  That's what I did when we were together.  I compared everything to my past with Caitlin.  I never gave my present a chance.  So I have to let go of my past, in order to live in the present.  It took me some time to get to that point but I did and you probably don't know it but I did it long before your attack.  

I took a long hard look at my life and realized that I was standing still, stuck in the mud, not making any progress and I knew that I did not want to stay that way.  I eliminated from my life those things that held me back from moving forward.  Believe it or not I also took an assessment of how I viewed the ‘adult beverage'.  I was using it as a crutch when things didn't go my way so I also cut back on that.  Work I also used as another crutch not to face up to the things that I needed to change in my life.  Losing myself in work didn't make my problems disappear.  They were still there at shift's end.  One by one I faced those things that held me down.  I let go of the weight of the guilt that I felt as a result of Caitlin's death.  Having solved my dad's murder case was the start of enabling me to let go of the guilt that I felt about Caitlin's death.  All through this cleansing process one thought was constant in my mind.  ‘I wish that I could tell Evangeline that I finally made a breakthrough.' But I couldn't do that and that hurt more than I want to admit.

Letting go of Natalie was a difficult task, not because I wanted to stay, but because I had wasted so much of her time trying to make a go of a relationship that was going nowhere.  Finally I did what I had to do, whether she believed me when I said it, it doesn't matter, but I did tell her that I did not love her enough to have a forever life with her.  That was not a possibility for me with her.  I once read somewhere, I don't remember where but someone once said, ‘Live right now and just be yourself.  It's doesn't matter if it's good for someone else'. 

So I'm being myself right now.  After we broke up and I saw you with Cristian or Todd, it hurt.  I know it sounds selfish but if I couldn't have you I didn't want you with someone else even though I was with someone else.  That was wrong and I realized that.  I got over it and you want to know how.  I said to myself that even if we're not together at least you are still alive.  I had comfort in knowing that you were still living and breathing.  So imagine how I felt when the One Pure People group attacked you and the others.  I went ballistic.  Talk about someone out for blood, I was that person.  Working with the FBI to solve that case was all I did day and night.  It didn't matter how long it took I was determined to get those b******s that did that.  So when we caught everyone and they were convicted you would have thought I would celebrate but I didn't.  You were in a coma and I felt lost without you.  Even though you were breathing you weren't really living and that was not all right with me.  So many times I visited you and just talked with you even though you could not respond but I felt better just being with you.

When you recovered I waited for you to reach out to me but you didn't and I didn't reach out to you because I didn't want to do anything to upset you.  I don't know why I expected you to reach out to me when before you went into the coma we weren't really talking to each other.  

I've gone a long way around to come to this point.  I love you Evangeline.  I really do.  When you were hurt it felt like someone put a burning coal in my chest where my heart should have been and then kept pressing on it constantly.  When you survived the coma the hurt eased but there remains a void in my heart.  L-O-V-E.  I know what love is now.  I know whom I love. I want so much but what I want the most is a life with you. I want to marry you.  I want to have children with you.  I want to grow old with you. 

And before you think that this is ‘out of the blue', it is not.  I can tell you the exact moment that I fell in love with you and realized that I waited too late to tell you.  It was the day that you came to my office and broke up with me.  I knew that if I told you then that I loved you that you would not believe me.  The second time that I fell in love with you was after the verdict in Todd's trial and we were in the courtroom and we talked.  You talked about crying on my shoulder the day before and that ‘it made you think about everything you had lost and you had way too much on your plate right then to add anymore'.  Yes I have fallen in love with you more than once but each time I was too late.  Please don't let me be too late now."