The Way We Were : A second chance romance (Take Me Home Series Book 2)

by SJ Cavaletti

  I opened the door and noticed the cord was long so I grabbed the phone and before Liz could protest, pulled it out and shoved it against her ear. Her mouth at first, wide open in surprise, then slowly she mouthed a silent, “What do I say?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know. I stopped talking to God when he took Liz from me. I knew better than to ask why.

  I couldn’t hear the voice speaking on the other side, but Liz answered it. “Yes. Uh, hello…” she looked at me and bit her lip, “God?”

  She took in something on the other end. “Sure. Yes, I suppose I have something to ask…”

  For a spilt second I thought she might actually ask something significant, but then, she said, “This is my first experience at Uyu. And it’s a very surreal place. What kind of advice would you give me for enjoying this to the max?”

  Her eyes caught mine and a flicker of sass and cynicism danced in them. Just a game. She answered a question from the other end with, “Yes.”

  And then, as some words entered her ear through the wire, her sarcasm washed away, replaced with a stare into my eyes that I wanted to hang on to forever. It was the same look she gave me when she woke up in the morning after our engagement and realized we were going to be together forever.

  Something like peace. Or the look someone has when they know everything is as it should be.

  But then, a blast of wind knocked the look off her and stole it from us both. Liz’s hair blew wildly, and my eyes stung. I coughed as dust burned my lungs. I snatched the phone from her hand and replaced it on the receiver, not wasting a second.

  A dust storm was coming. A whiteout. I knew one was on the way as we drove out. The haze. Any sign of wind at all in this place… it was about to kick off. And the suffocating dust took no prisoners. It came when it wanted and left when it wanted. Liz didn’t even have goggles. I needed to get her back in the chariot.

  Like a firefighter in a burning building I snapped into action, taking Liz into my arms, jumping on to the chariot platform with a gazelle like, adrenaline filled leap I didn’t know I had in me. The storm thickened fast and I could hardly even see the chariot in front of me, but instinctively I found the edges, nudged us around the driver’s seat and into the crescent of the carriage wall.

  I crouched down, with Liz now on my lap, my back to the desert, her back against the chariot wall. The best I could hope was that the carriage would shield us from the storm.

  Liz coughed and shoved her face into my shoulder, on my chest, and I imagined her eyes tight and shut. The particles of dust were everywhere, there was no escaping them. I shifted my goggles from my forehead over my eyes as I lifted my hand from around Liz’s butt to pull up the scarf I wore for this very occasion. I pulled a loose end of my scarf down toward Liz’s face.

  “Use the scarf if you need it. Don’t talk.”

  She pulled the thin fabric over her mouth and shoved her lips back onto my neck. Her body was stiff in my arms. She was scared. It was scary. Suffocating like scuba diving when it got dark and deep. I pulled her in tighter and ran my hand along the small of her back, comforting her, letting her know I had her. The storm raged on, nothing but grayish-white fog around us. But my touch calmed her and suddenly, she let out the inhale she’d been holding on to as if it was the last oxygen she’d ever know.

  The warmth of that breath surged right through the thin fabric and hit my collarbone. The moist particles a relief to my skin in these dry elements. Her air made me come alive. In a moment I never thought possible. My dick jerked with the same sexual excitement it felt at the thought of bondage. I shouldn’t, but I want to.

  Liz breathed harder into my chest and suddenly, her hand came up, she pulled aside the scarf and let her lips make contact with my skin. Her nose caressed my neck, she breathed harder and the wetness and warmth and woman I loved only made me want one thing. And by the way her lips rested on me, like they always had, with a sense of ownership and belonging, I knew she wanted it, too.

  My hand slid up her back, underneath her thin vest, meeting nothing but skin and the thin ties and cord of her bikini. It found the nape of her neck, I pulled her in, closer.

  My dick surged again and just when I thought we might be the only two people in the history of nomads and Bedouins to get down in a dust storm, the wind died down, the ubiquitous cloud parted and Liz and I were there, in broad daylight, as if the parents had just turned on the lights.

  She kept her head buried for a moment; I didn’t want her to move it, but slowly, her chin came up and face to face, our noses so close I could feel her breath warm my upper lip.

  “That was… terrifying,” she whispered.

  “You ok?” I asked. My lips brushed hers.

  Liz took in a deep breath and pulled away. Still on my lap, but now with her back rested against the wall of the carriage and enough space between us to see each other’s faces.

  “Thanks for saving me,” she said, both coy and meaning it.

  She smoothed her windswept hair behind her ears and looked down to see my hand on the top of her thigh. My thumb appeared to be ready to creep toward her pussy. I pulled my hand back down her thigh, but still let it enjoy her velvety skin. This might be my last chance.

  But by the look in her eyes, maybe not.

  Did I want to abandon all sense and kiss her now? You better believe it. But at almost forty years old, my brain could actually work at the same time as my dick. We needed to talk.

  I had to ask.

  I had to go there.

  I had to start this, to end this.

  “Liz, why did we ever break up?”

  27

  Liz

  Present Day

  Uyu

  * * *

  Sitting on El’s lap in the middle of the desert, it all felt so right again. His hand on my thigh… I didn’t know if it was phantom sensation or the rare intermittent feelings my legs allowed me to have once in a while.

  “I can feel your hand,” I said, ignoring his question.

  He stroked my leg up and down. “You can?”

  I closed my eyes, willing myself to feel that touch again but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Not anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  A beat of silence and for a moment I thought he might drop it. Not ask again but then…

  “Are you going to answer my question? Why did you break up with me?”

  I knew closure depended on the truth coming out. On us illuminating the reason and seeing it for what it was. But I was scared. Scared to admit the feelings I’d had. The horrible, ugly, raw honest thoughts I’d had in the middle of the night.

  Every night.

  The ones that were like little demons that told me the only relief was to run away. The thoughts that could destroy El and were less harmful in the form of mystery.

  “El, I had to come to terms with this new life. And I, I wasn’t right. I was depressed and traumatized. I didn’t want to bring that on you…”

  “Bullshit.” The words came out just short of venomous and the change in his demeanor was so sudden I almost jerked.

  “Why did we break up, Liz?” He asked. “Because all this shit… the shit you’re about to say? We’ve done it. We did it a long time ago and you left anyway because there was nothing I could do about it. You made sure to make it all about you. Trying to save me from the real reason.”

  El grew agitated, his hands flapped into the air like a flag in a storm.

  “So are you going to say it? Tell me? Actually give me the truth? Because I am over living in the dark…”

  “It is…” I said, sheepishly, not believing myself, the courage to face this all not rising to a level great enough. “That is the reason. It wasn’t about you, El it was about me…”

  “No, Liz. No!” His voice raised with fearless courage, ready to face it all in a way I never had been. “I’m not buying it. You know I loved you, found you sexy. You know I would have waited and encouraged you through the changes, the depression, the
trauma until you were ready…”

  “Elias. Don’t…”

  “Why don’t you just say it? We’ve come this far?” He grabbed me by the waist and gave me a shake, and it was scary and exhilarating at the same time. His passion. His intensity. “Why won’t you just tell me the real reason you left me behind? US behind?”

  I wanted to turn away, but he was too close to me. I didn’t have my chair. I couldn’t leave. A prisoner to both him and my condition.

  I didn’t want to say any more. It felt like we had mended here. Repaired. Found some sort of closure and were working again as, friends… even on our way to something more. New. Different. My mind played tug of war.

  “El, what do you want me to say?”

  “The truth!”

  “Stop it.”

  “I won’t until you say it.”

  “El…” My heart thumped hard on my ribcage. This was all too much. An anger started boiling inside me. Muscle memory feeling all those same trapped feelings. Those haunting words that visited me every night in the year after my accident.

  “Liz…” He pleaded.

  Finally, I broke. I took his hand off my leg and thrashed it off of me. “What do you want me to say, El? Huh? You can’t tell me you want to hear it.”

  “I do. I want the truth!”

  “You can’t handle it,” I was hot now. Feeling forced and yet wanting to finally relieve myself of this secret I held on to.

  “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot handle. I’m still alive after losing you. I can survive anything.”

  “Oh can you? Can you, El?” I belittled him. And I meant to.

  And even though the intention of belittling is to put someone in their place and silence them, it always has the opposite reaction.

  He rose to the challenge.

  “All I’m saying is what I can’t handle is you telling people that you broke it off to save me! Save me from your depression… What a crock of shit! We could have had a perfectly amazing life together. You KNOW I don’t need you to be anything other than you. But stop this charade of you breaking up with me so I could have some life you think I deserved. Who the fuck are you? Some martyr? Give me a break. We both know…”

  Now he insulted me. And nobody insults me. I reached the breaking point. My voice echoed like an animalistic howl from the deepest depth of hidden chambers. I was loud. Louder than I’d ever spoken to anyone before.

  “What do you want from me, El? You want me to fucking destroy you? You want me to tell you I fucking blamed you? Because I did! I did blame you. And I couldn’t get over it.”

  He pulled back, not hurt, but surprised by the force of the truth we both kept buried for so long.

  My voice was still loud. Louder than it needed to be. More forceful than it needed to be. More desperate than I thought it would be if this moment ever came.

  “El, I used to lie awake at night. For months and months I would wind myself up. My mind would tick away missing the future I had planned for so long before all of this happened. And I’d think, if only I hadn’t been on the ATV!”

  I shouted like a wild person, almost insane. My voice wasn’t my own.

  “If only we had all gone together up the hill, I’d think! If only we hadn’t gone to Sedona! If only El hadn’t crashed into me!”

  I couldn’t stop the momentum…

  “If only I never met him!”

  The words came out from a deeper place of pain than I knew even existed. I never wanted to say those words. And now I had. I drew in a sharp quick breath and held it.

  El’s face wasn’t what I had expected to see. I don’t know why but I had always thought he might fight back. Convince me that my blame was unwarranted. The way I had tried to convince myself time and time again. It was an accident. I knew that on a logical level only my subconscious mind never gave in. And I didn’t think El would either.

  He stared at me, speechless at first. Color drained from his gorgeous, olive skin, replaced by a sad, sallow color. And the puppy dog eyes. Like brown saucers, they bored into me. Only this time, he didn’t do it on purpose.

  He shuffled himself back, my butt making a soft thud off his legs and onto the platform. His torso collapsed and his head found a hiding spot between his knees.

  I breathed again, not having to see his face. But I still found no words. And neither did he. We just sat there. In the middle of the Nevada desert, like two lone cacti.

  His back and the sides of his ribcage drew in deep breaths of air. His head still down he pulled his hands up and placed them on the back of his head and his fingers massaged his scalp through his thick dark hair. His hands drew down and he rubbed the back of his neck as if soothing out some knots.

  I had to say something. But all that came out was, “Elias?”

  He took a big, long breath in, preparing to speak but he still didn’t look at me when he said from between his knees, “I knew it.”

  My eyes stung. Tears filled them, pinching.

  He looked up at me, his cheeks flushed, “I knew it. I knew it all anyway. I knew you blamed me.”

  I blinked and tears drained down my cheeks. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to blame you. I tried not to. I tried for a year…”

  “I know.”

  “It was like fighting demons.”

  “I know.”

  “It was torture, El. I thought if I left, we could both move on from this completely unsolvable paradox between us. I couldn’t stop blaming you, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  I hoisted myself closer to him again, needing to be near him. I shuffled alongside him, face to face, our hips nearly touching. He put an arm on the other side of my legs and leaned his body slightly over mine so our faces were only inches away from one another. There was no looking back. No looking anywhere but exactly where we should have looked all along.

  At the truth.

  Neither of us said a word. I had said all there was to say on my end. I felt almost empty now but relieved, too. Like years of pressure finally popped. Still, I wished there was something more I could do to soothe.

  Finally, El broke the silence. “Liz?”

  “Mmmhm.”

  “I’ve had years to think about this. Years. My Mom, you know my Mom knows my pain? You know what kind of person she is…”

  I had missed his Mom and family almost as much as I had missed him. She was an empath and had the warmest heart.

  “She gave me some art,” he said, shifting the tone.

  “One of her paintings?”

  “No. It was a Klimt. Freya’s Tears. You know his style?”

  I couldn’t believe we were talking about art now but I knew El. This was going somewhere.

  “Sure. He did the kiss one?”

  “Yeah. You know him… Anyway, she gave the art to me after you left. Maybe four months after? I was in North Carolina for her birthday. She knew I was broken and she told me to visit you. Not text. Not call. She told me to show up on your doorstep.”

  I loved that woman. And a big part of me wished he would have listened.

  “So what was the picture about?” I asked instead of telling him that we might still be together if he’d listened.

  “Yeah, so the picture. She… I don’t think she wanted to open my wounds again. I told her that I was doing better even though it wasn’t true. Just trying to make her not worry. Her only choice was to believe it. But she obviously didn’t because she gave me this picture. It’s a woman’s face and she’s crying golden tears.”

  El’s emotion, thinking about his Mom who I had adored and had given me so much love over the years. I couldn’t help but feel the burn of tears again. Tears of my own. But I didn’t cry. Just squeezed my forehead together.

  “She told me that she loved it because it represented sharing yourself with full vulnerability.”

  “That’s beautiful,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “Yeah, it is. I still have it. I put it in my entrance and look at it every time I come ho
me. And I think about what else she said when she gave it to me. She said, ‘we never heal until we forgive.’”

  No truer words could have ever been spoken. But would El ever be able to look past me leaving him? He blamed me for the pain I caused, too.

  His body calmed. Not an inch of doubt in it. Confident as the winning side of a battlefield he asked me. A question I never would have expected.

  “Will you forgive me, Liz?”

  “What do you mean, El? It wasn’t your fault. That’s why I said this is all so difficult…”

  “Shhh.”

  He stared at me, brown eyes wide and serious. Glistening behind a wall of tears that would not break.

  He took my hand. “I’ll ask again. Will you forgive me?”

  Unprepared, my heart raced. My mind raced. And my spirit could hardly keep up with them.

  “Forgive me for running into you that day.”

  He squeezed my hand, his glossy eyes bright with purpose. “Forgive me for taking you to Sedona.”

  He squeezed again, harder than he probably meant to. “Forgive me for changing your life without your permission.”

  A tear rolled down his cheek. “Forgive me for what I did.”

  I sniffed in. My nose and the backs of my eyes filled with floods of tears. When I blinked they ran down my cheeks betraying years of guilt, blame and questions I hid behind them.

  I never wanted to hurt, El. “El, it isn’t your… “

  “Lizzie there are only two answers to that question.” He stared at me, with a burning intensity and strength in every one of those tears. “Yes. Or no. I didn’t ask if it was my fault. I didn’t ask us to make sense of this. I asked for your forgiveness. Yes? Or no?”

  Vertigo. My head spun, re-playing every memory El and I had ever shared. Kissing in the elevator at Miami General. Pool bars. Feeding each other strawberries and spilling champagne on New Year’s Eve. Him proposing… And I wanted it all back.

  Even Sedona.

  Because taking it all it meant we were here right now. Because in my entire thirty-four years, I had never, even the moment I said I’d marry him, felt so in love with someone and so truly, madly, deeply loved by another. This moment pierced into me and made me feel more real than I’d ever been before.