by Susan Ward
Maybe it’s not going to be a happy ending like in Pretty Woman, two people rescuing each other. Oh crap, maybe it’s going to be the ending of The Way We Were, two people meeting one last time, knowing they love each other, knowing it will never work, and walking away.
The front door opens and I jump, startled from my thoughts. Shit, how long have I been sitting here? I quickly take note of things around me. It’s night and I can hear Alan moving around somewhere in the house. Why did he bypass the great room? I know he knows I’m here. I called him, for Christ’s sake, and he must have seen my car parked in the driveway.
More minutes tick by without an appearance from Alan. I listen to him doing whatever he’s doing. What the hell is he doing? Why doesn’t he just come in here? If he stretches my nerves much tauter I won’t have the courage to carry this through. To get the words out that I hope we both want to hear.
Crap, maybe he’s purposely delaying this inevitable face-to-face with me. He knows why I am here, it’s not what he wants, and he is giving me space, time, to back out.
Fuck, is that what he wants me to do? Oh God, what I’m doing is stupid. Maybe he’s right. I should keep my mouth closed, make up some lame excuse for being in his house and get the hell out of here.
I spring from the chair and go to the wall of glass, staring at the ocean. Everything inside me is running wild and frantic and loose. I’ve felt just on the verge of being out of control since I made the decision to leave Jack’s and come back to Alan. Until Alan returned it was a good feeling, the wildness in my flesh, the certainty that tonight would end with Alan. With us together, the way it should be. My future certain. My heart where it wants to be. Me back with him.
Back with Alan? Oh lame, Chrissie, that is so lame. He isn’t yours to come back to. What you are really doing is waylaying him unexpectedly in some random impulse to force a relationship into what you want it to be. Oh, this is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong…
I hear footsteps close, something drop on the tile, and I kill the voice of that little girl inside me who creates all my mess and is trying to urge me not to do this. Too late. I can’t run. And I can’t stop this. He knows I’m here. I need to face him and do this no matter how it turns out. It’s the only way I’ll ever know peace in my life again.
I whirl and Alan’s eyes lock on me. I pause, letting the thrill of him run through my flesh, letting it fortify me, reminding me that I am only initiating what we both want and why we want it.
My vision widens. A suitcase. He fucking packed before seeing me. He’s leaving. Oh no, this is not what I expected in my first minute with him.
I lift my gaze back to his, anxious and confused. I rein in my welling panic and somehow I manage to smile and say in a silly way, “I came back.”
Oh fuck, why did I say such a stupid thing? Please, Alan, laugh. I’m nervous as hell.
I realize that my gaze is fixed again on the suitcase in the entry hall and I lift my chin to find his eyes on me, his expression enigmatic.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. Shit, I can’t tell if he’s amused, annoyed or angry. I can hear the sharp sound of my own breathing in the intense quiet of the room.
“Yes, I can see that,” he says finally.
After what seems like forever, he steps into the great room and it’s not lost on me that he moves toward the bar and not my pitiful self hanging back at my spot near the wall of glass. I follow him with my gaze, trying to read him, but I can’t. But not kissing me, going to the bar first, fixing a drink—not good, Chrissie. Not good.
He drops ice into a glass.
“Are you going somewhere?” I ask quietly.
He doesn’t look at me. “New York. I’m in the mood for a change of scenery. Southern California gets tedious after a while. I don’t know how you live here full time.”
The edge in his voice makes my nerves pop and there are more mixed messages in those three little statements than I care to decode in a single day. Change of scenery? Tedious?
“It’s what I’m used to, I guess. It’s where I’m from, Alan,” I mutter in what sounds, even to me, like a rambling sort of way, but my internal mess since seeing the suitcase isn’t helping any.
He leaves the bar, tall scotch in hand, and settles on the arm of a chair in a posture I know too well. He takes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it.
He just sits there, staring, smoking and drinking, only this time I’m thankful for his deliberate pause because I need time to process what’s happening here. Time to process this unexpected wrinkle; Alan not seeming pleased that I’m here and putting down card one that he’s leaving.
I move from the wall of glass and sink into a chair across from him, close but a cautious distance away.
I stare at my fingers, trying to reconstruct the no longer organized speech in my head. It was all so clear when I left Hope Ranch. Now the words of my heart are scattered and most probably inappropriate since there isn’t a thing about Alan to suggest this is going to go at all like I hoped it would.
I can’t find the words in my head. I can’t assemble new ones. The sound of ice clinking against the glass drags my attention back and I look up to find him watching me quizzically as he takes a long drink of his scotch.
I struggle to maintain my composure. “I have some things I want to say to you, Alan, if you have time before you leave for New York to listen. It’s why I’m here. I didn’t want to say them on the phone.”
The minutes slip away without notice with him staring at me and me staring at him.
Alan leans forward to stomp out his cigarette in an ashtray. “Are you going to say the things you came here to say, Chrissie, or am I supposed to try to figure them out on my own?”
His voice makes me jump. Crap, I’ve made him angry. And the subtle change in his gaze makes my cheeks color profusely.
My breathing shallows. “Are you going to be mean or can you please just listen until I finish?”
His expression changes. Frustration and something else. “If you say something, I’ll listen. But you are not saying anything, Chrissie. You’re just sitting there, staring at me, tight-lipped like always. Is there a point to this, love? I’d really appreciate it if you got on with it.”
I stare at him, the harshness of his voice turning me numb. He rakes back his shoulder-length hair with an aggravated hand. I don’t know which direction to go—forward or to stop this while I still have a measure of my pride intact.
I study him. Then I start picking out details of him that I missed in the first round of this. The tense lines of his face. His inaccessible posture. My lids go wide. Oh shit, Alan isn’t angry. He’s as nervous as I am. He’s not angry. He’s nervous. And I’m frustrating him again. He doesn’t know what to make of me. What to do.
Some of the franticness in me wanes. I blurt out the first sentence that comes together in my head. “You’re the love of my life, Alan. I knew it in New York. I know it today. And I don’t think anything is going to change that. For either of us.”
I wait anxiously for a reaction. None. Nothing changes. Not his eyes. Not his expression. Not his posture.
After a minute or two of telling myself just to get it all out, I do a fast once-over of my mental checklist, assuring myself I haven’t forgot anything and I plunge onward.
“I want four things, Alan. That’s all I ask if you have an interest in trying to make a go of us again.”
I pause to take in a steadying dose of air and I can already tell this won’t sound aloud like it does in my head. His gaze sharpens. I almost stop.
“I’m moving into this house with Kaley,” I announce into the acutely tense air. “This is where I’ve decided to live if you want to live here, too. I won’t ever travel with you. Not ever. Don’t ask me to. To be with me, you have to be here. And when you’re home, you’re home. I expect you to be really here with me. And when you’re on the road, I don’t want to know what you do there. Not ever. If you can’t be discreet then don’
t do it.”
He arches a brow. Damn. That amused him, but he doesn’t speak which is a good thing or I’d lose my nerve to finish and I’m only a third of the way through the things I want to say to him. I search for the next item on my A thru C list.
“Don’t ever lie to me,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I will forgive you everything you do, but I do know I won’t ever forgive you for lying to me. Not ever. Not after my marriage to Neil. You have to promise me that. It’s the only way I can move forward with you.”
He looks like he’s about to say something, and then doesn’t. His jaw tightens and I can see I’ve struck a nerve in him and I didn’t want to.
I run my tongue along my dry lips. “Let’s keep this simple. When it’s good, it’s good. And when it’s bad, I’m gone. That’s what I want, Alan. I love you. And that’s never going to change. That’s what I wanted to say to you. That’s why I’m here. I love you.”
I sit breathy, my pulse drumming in my ears, and oddly relieved even with my internally messy running frantically through me because none of this went in the way I thought it would.
I breathe in. I breathe out, trying to steady myself. But I’ve said it. And that’s a good thing. For the first time in my life, I’ve said everything to Alan that I want to say—well, almost everything. I can’t do that one last thing. Not today.
He sets down his drink. I half expect him to come to me, do something to break this awkwardness and isolation between us, but he doesn’t move from the arm of the chair.
His eyes are scorching. “Are you finished?” he says softly.
I nod, lowering my gaze to my hands clasped tightly in my lap. The silence between us this time is brutal. Not at all encouraging.
“I can do that, Chrissie.” My face snaps up and I find those black eyes watching me, assessing every change of my expression. “I’m ready to do that. I want to do that. With you.”
I let out the air that’s been trapped in my lungs.
Alan rolls onto his feet and stands above me. “I have four things I would like to say to you since you’re in the mood for clearing the air today. If that’s OK?”
I nod again, even though something in his voice warns me I might not want to hear this.
“I have always been faithful to you when we were together. You can believe it or not believe it. I don’t give a fuck which. But don’t ever tell me again that I can do what I want to do so long as you don’t know it. I always do what I want. So to be clear, and leave no room for you to fucking misunderstand this: I want you.”
My heart stills. His voice this time is unmistakable. Icy. Clipped. Angry. Dread shoots through my limbs. And then a fragment breaks free. I want you. Bracing myself, I look at him.
His features are still taut. Angry. “Next, I have never lied to you, Chrissie. I will never lie to you. I have always told you the truth.”
My heart leaps in my chest in spite of the curtness of his words. I can feel the emotion inside him that he is unwilling to show me yet.
“Thirdly,” he says, inflectionless like he’s reading a grocery list, “there’s Kaley and I adore her, but I won’t ever want children of my own. Children are not part of my equation. This is not something that is ever going to change. Not ever, Chrissie. I love you, but I can’t give you that.”
I look away, my thoughts and Alan’s history colliding in my head as I battle the quick rising lump in my throat and the agony created by that last statement. I’ve never been really sure until this moment, not completely; Alan doesn’t know and is the only one who can’t see the truth when he looks at Kaley. A part of me is desperately relieved that I didn’t say everything I came here to say. A part of me, irrationally so, is furious with him. How can he not see it when he looks at her? And a part of me wants to hold Alan, blurt it all out, and figure a way through this last unresolved piece of our history.
The room grows heavy with silence, and I sit rigid, afraid to do anything that might tip the balance between us. It looks like he’s waiting for me to catch up with his words, for me to say something, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say or even if that is what he wants.
Typical Alan. I’m not exactly sure where his words leave us. Are we back together? Or does he want me to leave?
An anxious flutter moves across my senses as I frantically repeat each syllable he spoke in my head. Once. Twice. Then I stop and stare.
Unsure what to do, I wait expectantly. After too many moments of him not saying anything, I can’t stop myself any longer. “You said you have four things to say to me, Alan. That was only three.”
Those black eyes burn into me.
“Just stay and be good to me.”
EPILOGUE
CHRISSIE’S JOURNAL
The older I get the less I feel a part of my own story. I don’t think that is unique or strange for a woman in her forties. I hear it all the time from my girlfriends, how they slowly disappear and get lost in their marriages, their children or their careers. I don’t know if that is what’s happened to me. I don’t like to overly analyze it. I am quieter now and I savor the quiet in me.
I watch more sunrises and I stir the pot less. I’ve learned that things happen around me, because of me, and to me, and there is not much you can do or really have any true understanding of which kind of event each is. I breathe, I watch the sunrise, I love, and I cherish my tokens and my tears, kissing them both thankfully for they both are a part of me, bringing me here to where it is comfortable to be less a part of my own story.
As badly as I have done many parts of my life, it was never because I didn’t love. The old cookie tin in the closet holds both my love and my regrets.
I pull out my tokens and tears one by one and I stare at them, these pieces of meaningless nothing to others that are markers of the milestones of me.
I kept the photo of Alan and me for twenty-five years. It is the one of us that I keep with me always: Alan asleep beside me, leaning against my breast, at that quiet moment on the terrace during sunrise before he exploded into the universe, not just a star, but a non-waning supernova.
It is funny how a moment, the most significant moment of your life, can happen without you even being aware. At eighteen the photo made me cry. It was splashed across the tabloids with black tar innuendo and other photos, private violations that made me cry. It still makes me cry at forty-two, but the reasons are different. We looked so young. Alan, commanding in his universe, and yet lost and holding onto me. I was young, too, but I’m holding on to him. Somehow we made it through that complex and layered three weeks, but we were both so young.
There is another photo in my tin, cut from the newspaper from the day stories of the suicide ran in 1994. Kurt Cobain. The two photos are eerily similar: hair tumbling forward, the world at their feet and the air full of sorrow. I remember how shaky and sick I got when I first realized Kurt died at twenty-seven. If we are both alive after twenty-seven, Chrissie, we will both know what we are. I almost called Alan that day, but I didn’t.
Between the two pictures sits the silly half dollar from the bet Neil made me that night at Peppers. Neil was right, Kurt did change music forever, but I never paid my half of the bet.
It has been ten years since I buried Neil. I still miss him every day. There are many in my life who do not understand how I could love him, but I did and I still do to this day. We said it to each other simply that last day we lived as man and wife: you can’t help who you are in love with. We both had other loves, but it didn’t prevent us from loving in that human, connected way.
The objects tucked together make sense to me, but it is the picture of Alan that I look at the most. I knew the first time I left Alan that he was the love of my life. What I didn’t know that day is that the love of your life doesn’t always become the love throughout your life. Sometimes they are a thought, a private joy, a secret hurt, a ghost in passing, the ghost always at your side or a promise in the future.
Alan would become all those things fo
r me and I would never again love anyone else the way I love Alan.
It is good, very, very good that none of us can truly see the future. It is good for all of us that the future, no matter what we see, is really black. I could not see the future, a heartbreaking and frightening thing, at eighteen. I can’t see it at forty-two, now a comfortable and quiet thing.
I listen to my family return to the house, bags being dropped, children running the halls looking for me. This is my life, the core, the everything that is me. It is a perfect place for me to step back, enjoy living, and be less part of my own story.
It is peaceful to be in that place where the most significant parts of your life are not the parts you actively live on your own. They are the parts shared with you, the part of others you try to mend, the moments you are no part of and yet the catalyst for them to have been.
I sit back in the quiet and I let life, even my own, happen around me, where it is more comfortable.
~~The End~~
Continue the Parker Family Saga with the next generation, Kaley Stanton, in The Sand & Fog Series:
Broken Crown (Releasing Summer 2015)
The Girl of Sand & Fog (Releasing Fall 2015)
The Girl in the Space Between (Releasing Winter 2015)
For all my current and future releases visit my website: http://susanwardbooks.com
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Enjoy one of my current contemporary romance releases:
The Girl on the Half Shell
The Girl of Tokens and Tears
The Girl of Diamonds and Rust
The Signature