by Simply BWWM
He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
She furrowed her brow. “You go back in there, and you marry that lady, and you have the family that you wanted so badly with her. She’s back, Nick. She obviously wants you, she loves you, and she is pregnant with your baby. What is there to know?”
“But… what about us?” he asked her, searching her eyes.
Swallowing as many of her tears as she could, Chanel shook her head slowly and gazed at her lover. “Nick, don’t you get it? There is no more us. There is nothing at all between us, and there can’t ever be anything between us again. This is it. This is the end for us. You have a family in there, a wife and a baby on the way. That’s your future. That’s your life now. I’m just… someone who happened to meet you in between. We shared an incredible love for a short while, and we are always going to have that.
I’m always going to cherish the time that we’ve had together and the amazing love between us; that’s not going to go away. I’ll always love you, Nick, but Monica is in there, and she loves you too, and she is your fiancé and is carrying your baby. You have a family now, the family that you wanted with her, and you and I are at our end. We had such a great love, and a great time, and I will always cherish it, but this is the end of it.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “No! No… Chanel, no…” he trailed off, knowing that she was right. Leaning his forehead against hers, he spoke in a soft voice. “I have never loved anyone like I love you. I have never known passion as I did with you, and I know you’re right. I know that this has to be the end and that there’s nothing that we can do about it, but I want you to know how much you mean to me. You mean everything to me, and you are never going to know just how much I have loved you. If she wasn’t here, I would never let you go, but this… this change… I can’t…” He caught himself as he began to weep, tears at the edges of his eyelashes.
“I know,” Chanel whispered. “I know you can’t. You have responsibilities. Perhaps you’ll be happy with her, and you’ll find the love you used to have with her once again. But… I have to go. She’s waiting for you. So, kiss me goodbye, and I’ll get in the car and go, and you and I won’t ever see each other again. Though, you’ll have the painting, and I will ask you this: Whenever you look at that painting, think of me. Think of the time we had and the powerful love that we shared. You are the love of my life, and I will always think of you, but please… think of me when you see that painting, and don’t forget me.”
He shook his head and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. “I’m never going to forget you. God, I love you so much.” He held her against his chest and tears spilled down both of their cheeks.
“I have to go,” she whispered, lifting her head from his chest and looking up at him. “I can’t stay here. When I leave, that has to be it for us. I don’t want you to ever contact me again, and I won’t contact you. We’ll make it a clean break. It will be easier for both of us that way. Kiss me, my love.”
He couldn’t speak anymore. His heart was too broken to find any words that could express it. Instead, he leaned his head down and kissed her long, slow, and tenderly, and their salt tears mingled in their mouths as they held fast to each other one last time.
Finally, she let him go and touched her fingertips to her mouth. “I love you, always,” she whispered, and he nodded and touched his fingertips to his lips as well.
“I love you always,” he repeated, and she got into the car and closed the door behind her. Andrew waved at the driver in the front seat, and the limousine pulled away from the mansion, leaving Andrew and Nick standing in the driveway and Monica standing at the window, watching the car leave.
When the car was gone, Nick turned and slowly walked back into the house, almost like a machine, and his heart refused to accept that the love of his life had just left him through no fault of her own. He blocked out all of the emotion that he could and tried to focus his mind on the fact that Monica was back, and that they were going to have a baby.
He walked back into the parlor, and she was standing where she had been, in the middle of the floor. She smiled at him and walked to him with her arms held out. When she reached him, she took his hands into hers.
“Nicky, I know that it was wrong of me to leave before, but please try to understand how afraid I was of a lifetime commitment to you. It’s such a long time… forever. But I’ve realized just how much I love you, how much I want you, and I promise that I will make it up to you for leaving.” She lifted her hands to his face and held it there, gazing into his sky-blue eyes.
“We are going to have a family, and I want to do that with you, just like you dreamed of for us. Now it’s happening, and I can’t wait for it.” She grinned at him and moved to kiss him again, but he was prepared that time, and he turned his head away and pulled her hands from his face.
“This is going to take some time,” he said quietly, pushing his hands down into his jacket pockets. The box from Tiffany’s rolled into his hand, and his heart hurt more than it had a moment before.
Monica came to him and laid her head on his shoulder as she stood behind him. “That’s all right, my love. We have all of our lives now.”
***
Chanel went home blinded with her tears and somehow found her way up to her door, declining help from the chauffeur. When the door was closed behind her, she collapsed on the floor beside it and cried until she fell asleep.
She didn’t wake up for hours, and when she did finally open her eyes again, the first light of morning was breaking over the horizon and filtering through the window. She could barely open her eyes to see it; they were so swollen from crying the night before.
Slowly, she pushed herself up from the floor and walked step by step to the sofa where she collapsed again. Turning away from the window, she buried her face in the pillow on the sofa and wept again until sleep took her once more.
It was late afternoon when she opened her eyes, woken by an insistent knocking on her door. Someone was calling out her name, a man. She focused on the voice. It was Chris.
Relief washed through her and she called out to him, telling him to come in. He did, and he rushed straight to her, lowering himself to the sofa and wrapping her in his arms.
“Oh honey! What in the world is going on? I’ve been texting you since last night and I called, and I haven’t gotten a single answer from you. You always answer. God I was worried you were dead or in the hospital or something!” He leaned back then, releasing her from his embrace, and he finally got the first good look at her that he had had since he rushed in through the door.
“Oh, my god! You look terrible. What’s going on?” he asked worriedly, holding her head in his hands and comforting her.
She couldn’t find the words to tell him at first. It was impossible. There was no way that things could have gone from perfect to pure hell in one single second, but they had, and her world had ended, or nearly ended, and she was beyond devastation.
Blinking and speaking slowly, she tried to focus her thoughts. “Monica came back.”
Chris stared at her in confusion. “Who? Who is Monica? What are you talking about?”
“Monica…” Chanel made herself say the words. “Nick’s fiancé. She came back, and she’s pregnant. He’s with her. He’s staying with her and starting his family. We said goodbye and broke up. It’s over.”
“Oh no… oh Chanel honey, oh god. I’m so, so sorry my darling.” Chris held her close against his heart and cradled her for a long while, finally letting her go. He stood up and looked closely at her.
“I’m just going to run down the street, and then I’ll be right back. You stay here, don’t go anywhere.” He held his hand up in the air as if he was setting an invisible barrier around her, and then he dashed out of the door and closed it behind him.
Chanel felt an ironic laugh leave her chest. “Don’t go anywhere. Right. Where am I going to go? The love of my life has just gone off with another wom
an. Where am I going to go that’s a world away from him and his fiancé? Where could I possibly go that would be a million miles from him?”
She shook her head and began to push herself up off of the sofa, but then she stopped and froze in motion for a moment as her eyes opened wide and her heart began to beat faster. The idea formed in her head, and the words came out of her mouth as a quiet whisper.
“Santa Fe.” She felt as if a fire had been lit inside of her, small and weak, but it was something, and it was there. “I could go to Santa Fe…” she gasped, sitting back down again and looking over at her phone on the table beside her.
Feeling as if it was a threadbare lifeline, she reached for her cell phone and swiped her finger over the screen. It came to life and she saw why Chris was so worried. She had twelve texts from him and four phone calls missed. There was nothing from Nick. She knew that there wouldn’t be, but it hurt to look at the phone and not see anything from him at all.
Scrolling through her contacts, she found the name, Diana Harris. With her heart beating hard in her chest, she touched the phone number and prayed for the universe to hear her plea. The phone at the other end of the line began to ring. Once, twice, three times, and it was answered.
“Hello?” It was the same sweet, sunny voice that Chanel had heard before.
“Diana! Diana, this is Chanel Barry. I’m sorry to call unexpectedly like this.” She felt bad about it, especially after she had decided never to go there and take Diana up on her offer.
“Oh, no problem at all! I’m always glad to take a call from you! What can I help you with?” Diana’s pleasant, peaceful disposition came through the phone, and it felt like a healing balm to Chanel.
She took a deep breath and hoped that it would work. It had to work. It might be the only thing that would work. “Diana, I was wondering if that position would still be open for me to come out to your ranch and teach a class, the six-week class or eight weeks or however long you want me there. Is it still possible for me to do that?” She almost crossed her fingers that it would work out.
Diana sounded completely elated. “Yes! Oh goodness, we’d be so glad to have you here! Yes, please come out anytime. When do you think you might want to come out?” she asked, sounding like she had just woken up to a new red wagon on Christmas morning.
Chanel held her breath in her chest. “Would tomorrow morning be too soon?” she asked, trying to sound as if her whole world hadn’t crashed to pieces.
Diana gasped in surprise. “Well! That is fast! And that’s just fine. If you want to come out tomorrow morning, you’re more than welcome to. It will give you a couple of weeks to settle in and get comfortable, and we can work on a syllabus for your class. I know that once I send out an email notification that you’re teaching it, it will fill up fast, so we’ll put a cap of twenty-five students on it and give you a two-week lead, and then your class will begin. Does that sound all right to you?”
It felt to Chanel like she had been suffocating and someone had planted an oxygen mask on her face, like Diana had planted an oxygen mask on her face and saved her life. “Yes! Yes, that sounds perfect. I’ll start packing right away. Thank you so much.”
“Great! I’ll buy the plane ticket and send you the information. Will it be a round trip ticket or one way for now?” Diana asked, with a wise tone in her kind voice.
Chanel swallowed hard. There was no reason for her to stay in Boston, not for a long time. Chris would go see her no matter where she was, and New Mexico was a world away from Boston and Nick. “One way, please.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Thank you for doing this!” Diana spoke gently and with a smile in her voice.
“Thank you, Diana, so very much.” Chanel ended the call and sent a text to Diana, giving her the email address for the plane ticket.
Five minutes later, Chris came hurrying through the door with grocery bags in his hands. “Okay! I’ve got chocolate ice cream and red wine that should last us for days. I’m going to get you through this,” he vowed. He looked around and saw that Chanel wasn’t on the sofa. He called out her name with a tone of panic in his voice.
“Chanel!”
“I’m in here,” she replied, and he rushed to her bedroom just down the hall.
“Oh, thank god you’re still here. I thought you left.” He sighed with relief, until he saw her suitcase opened up on the bed.
“I am leaving,” she replied evenly. “I can’t stay here, at least not for a long time; it hurts too much. So, I called Diana Harris at that artist’s retreat in Santa Fe, and I’m going to go teach a summer intensive class there, six weeks, or maybe even longer than that. You’re welcome to come out and see me anytime you like.”
Chris stared at the suitcase and then looked up at her thoughtfully. “As much as I hate to say it, I think that’s a really good choice for you. I don’t want to see you go, but I think it would be very healing for you to go to Santa Fe right now and surround yourself with art and positive people. That’s a smart move.”
“I think so too,” she agreed as she put some clothes into her suitcase.
He looked down at it sadly. “When are you leaving?”
“In the morning,” she answered quietly. “I’m sorry, Chris. I know it’s soon.”
He shook his head and held up the bags in his hands. “Don’t you worry about that; it’s what’s best for you, and I fully support that. In the meantime, we are going to be fat and happy here tonight, and I am going to spend all of your remaining time here in Bean Town with you. Then I’ll take you to the airport in the morning and see you off, probably hung over if I do my job right tonight.”
She felt the corners of her mouth rise slightly in what might have been a smile. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
He set the bags down and went to her, hugging her tightly. “I’m so lucky to have you too, no matter where you are.”
He helped her pack her suitcases, and when they were set by the door, the two of them sat on the sofa and watched old movies, shared pints of ice cream and boxes of chocolates, and drank red wine until they fell asleep.
In the morning, he woke her up, and she showered and dressed. Then he drove her to Logan Airport and set her suitcases on the curb beside her in front of the terminal. Looking at her with tremendous love, he wiped at tears in his eyes and then wrapped her up in his arms, giving her a long, warm hug.
“I love you, and I miss you already,” he said quietly to her.
“I love you and I miss you already too. Come out and see me. I’ll have a cactus ready and waiting for you.” She kissed his cheeks and waved to him as she walked into the airport, leaving for a new life.
Chapter9
Chanel watched out of the window of the airplane as the landscape changed dramatically from rolling green hills to wide golden plains, then to rugged peaks of mountain tops covered with snow at the tips, and then again to an expanse of far reaching flat lands and canyons. She saw nearly the whole country at her feet, thirty-six thousand feet below her.
With every mile that passed away and every minute that went with it, she told herself that the distance she was putting between Nick and her was going to help; it was going to heal her. It was going to make her life whole again somehow, even though it didn’t feel that way at all in her heart.
It was astounding to her that a month before then she had been blissfully unaware of him, that her life had been her own, that she had been happy and contented with every part of her life, except that she had occasionally been lonely from time to time, and missed the touch of a lover. But those moments would pass, and for the most part, she was truly happy with her life.
Then came a simple email with a simple question. Would she be interested in doing a commissioned piece for a local businessman for the rate of one million dollars? Yes. Yes, she had been interested in it, of course. How could she pass up money like that for something as easy as a portrait? She had never imagined that her life could change so drastically, that she cou
ld fall in love so quickly with someone, or that she could feel need and desire and total happiness with someone she had just met, yet who it felt to her that she had known for much, much longer than mere weeks.
It had been such a shock to see him standing there with Monica in the parlor, as Monica leaned up and kissed him. She had seen her do it, from talking to him one second, so close with her hands on his chest to planting her lips on his in the next. She had been totally shocked. When Nick had looked up at her and seen her, she had seen the heartbreak in his eyes, and her own heart had broken right along with his when the words were spoken aloud.
“I’m pregnant.”
Chanel’s whole world had come crashing down, and she’d felt as if some kind of black hole had opened up beneath her, swallowing her up in it slowly, ripping her apart agonizingly as it pulled her down into its wretched spiral.