by Nella Tyler
“I should have been there,” I said. “Can you ever forgive me for missing it?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said lightly, making me feel as though there was hope. “This brooch I’m wearing was their gift to me actually,” she continued pointing it out for me.
My silence must have tipped her off because she looked at me pointedly. “What?” she demanded.
I smiled. “Nothing,” I said. “It suits you beautifully.”
I turned my eyes to the road but I could feel her eyes boring into my face. “Chase?” she said softly.
“Yes?”
“This brooch was not actually from your parents, was it?”
“I…of course it was.”
“Chase,” she said firmly.
I smiled apologetically. “Given how we left things, I didn’t think you’d accept it if you knew it was from me,” I admitted at last. “And I wanted you to have something from me that day.”
Lauren glanced down at the brooch on her chest and examined it with new eyes. “Strange,” she said softly as though she were talking to herself.
“What’s strange?” I asked curiously.
She glanced towards me. “I wear this only on special occasions,” she said. “In a weird way, I’ve had a part of you with me this whole time through all the major events in my life.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“Me too,” Lauren replied, and I felt warm inside.
We pulled to a stop, and Lauren looked around, having lost track of where we were. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Bruder’s Burgers,” she said, catching sight of the sign.
“Remember driving down here on the third Friday of every month?”
“Of course I remember,” Lauren nodded. “Their burgers were the absolute best!”
“And you loved their banana milkshakes,” I reminded her.
She nodded as we got out of the car. “And that’s something, considering that—”
“You don’t even like bananas,” I finished the sentence for her.
She smiled and we walked in together. The best part about Bruder’s was that it was a little isolated, which meant it wasn’t usually packed with people. There were always a few, quiet corners for people who wanted to indulge in a simple evening together.
We ordered our old favorites and settled into a secluded little booth at the far section of the restaurant. “It’s nostalgic being back here,” Lauren said.
I looked around. “Hasn’t changed all that much, has it?”
“Why change a good thing?” she said with a shrug.
“I don’t see the jukebox, though,” I said turning my head. “Maybe they removed it.”
“Nope,” she shook her head. “They just moved it. It’s right over there.”
I got up out of my seat and went over to the jukebox with a quarter in hand. When I came back to our table, “Only Wanna Be With You” was playing.
“Hootie and the Blowfish,” Lauren sighed. “This song. Do you remember the night we came down here and played the song so many times that the waiter had to come over and tell us to give it a break?”
I laughed. “And you tried to bribe him?”
“It wasn’t a bribe…exactly,” Lauren said and then she laughed at herself. “I just wasn’t done listening to that song.”
We settled into the mood of the night and I could tell Lauren was relaxing. It gave me the courage to ask her questions about her life and it gave me confidence when she answered them without reserve.
“Are you still working on opening up a gym of your own?” I asked innocently.
Her eyes brightened instantly. “Someone’s investing in the business,” she told me. “So now I have enough capital to get this business off the ground.”
“That’s amazing, Lauren,” I said. “I’m so proud of you.”
“You know what? I’m proud of myself, too,” she said. “It hasn’t been easy with…everything.”
I knew she had been about to mention Cole, but she had changed her mind at the last minute. I didn’t press her on the subject. I wanted her to bring up her son when she was ready. I was willing to be as patient as it took.
We finished dinner and then I led Lauren back to the car. “Where are we headed now?” she asked with interest, and I was thrilled that she was enthusiastic.
“You’ll see,” I told her as we started driving.
We were halfway there when Lauren’s phone started ringing. She glanced at it as though she were about to put it on silent, but when she saw who was calling, she answered immediately.
“Mom?” she said. “Is everything all right?"
I heard soft talking on the other line, but I couldn’t hear distinct words.
“Oh,” Lauren said. “Of course, put him on.” There was some static on the other end as the phone changed hands and then I heard the sound of a little high voice. “Hi, sweetheart,” Lauren said in voice that was soft with love. “Grandma said you wanted to talk to me.”
I could only hear Lauren’s side of the conversation, but it was a clear indicator of her relationship with Cole. “Uh-huh…That’s great…Did you have fun? Chocolate cake with strawberry frosting…Wow! I won’t be late, honey…I’ll see you soon.”
She hung up and put her phone away. I could feel the tension wafting off of her, but I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going to pry. She could tell me whatever she wanted to in her own time.
“Was that milkshake as good as you remembered it being?” I asked, cutting the tension.
She smiled. “It was better,” she replied.
Fifteen minutes later, I parked and Lauren looked out the window and laughed. “The football field?”
“We had a lot of memories here,” I said. “I thought it would be nice to revisit it.”
We got out of the car and walked towards the field together. It was shrouded in darkness, but light was filtering in from the streetlights and surrounding buildings. I could see the bleachers off in the distance.
“Is it me or does it look smaller than I remember?”
“It’s not you,” Lauren said softly.
“It feels like another lifetime ago.”
“Do you ever regret leaving your football career behind?” she asked.
“Not for a second,” I said. “The military was always where I was meant to be. There’s only one thing about that particular choice that I regret, and I think you already know what that is.”
She smiled and it gave me the courage to reach out and take her hand. She didn’t resist me; instead she slipped her hand into mine readily and we walked across the field together.
“The bleachers,” she said absentmindedly as she looked over towards them with a memory in her eyes. I knew exactly what she was thinking of.
“Braden was playing,” I said. “We came to watch him play.”
“But we didn’t end up watching him at all,” Lauren laughed. “We spent the whole game under the bleachers.”
“We had our first kiss there,” I said fondly.
She nodded. “We were thirteen then…barely. Actually, I think I might still have been twelve. It feels like so long ago.”
“We grew up together, didn’t we?” I said turning away from the bleachers and towards Lauren. “I always assumed you would be a part of my life. I think that was why I ended up taking you for granted.”
Her eyes refused to meet mine. I took both her hands in mine and said her name softly. “Lauren.” Finally, she met my gaze and we could both tell that the moment was upon us. “I should never have left you behind. I should never have turned my back on you. I’ve regretted it every day for the past four years. I’m so sorry, Lauren. Please forgive me?”
She held my gaze for a long moment and I honestly felt as though my heart was going to jump right out of my chest. The loss of the past four years rose up to sit between us and I wondered if we could actually put it behind us and move forward.
She took a deep breath. “I need forgiveness, too,”
she said at last.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lauren
“You need forgiveness?” he asked.
It was a beautiful night. There was enough light that we could see each other clearly, but not enough to wipe out the winking stars in the sky. The air was cool but the breeze was warm, and it licked at my skirt and pulled gently at my hair. Chase was standing close to me, holding tightly to both my hands.
He looked incredibly handsome under the muted light. His dark hair and his eyes looked exactly the same color as he gazed down at me. I wanted so much to simply fall into his arms and allow them to comfort me, but I knew I couldn’t do it until I had made my confession.
It had been a perfect night so far and I’d realized how natural, how easy everything felt with Chase. We had a past together; we had a history that spanned nearly a decade of memories and there was no getting past that.
“Yes,” I nodded as my throat began to close up.
For the first time that night, I was truly scared. I was scared about how he would react. Would he stay there looking at me or would he drop my hands with hurt? It was in the last few moments, surrounded by memories of the two of us as young kids that I realized how wrong I had been to keep my secret all those years.
“I…I should have told you this…a long time ago,” I said choking over my words and coming to abrupt stops in the middle of my sentence. “I’m sorry…I…”
Chase pulled me closer to him cutting off my words as he stared down at me with new emotion in his eyes. “Lauren,” he said softly. “It’s okay.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, trying not to be distracted by how close our bodies were to each other. “I have to tell you this.”
“It’s about Cole, isn’t it?” Chase asked with hesitation.
I stopped short and looked up at him. “I…yes,” I nodded.
“He’s mine, isn’t he?”
I gulped back my tears and nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Lauren—”
“Please,” I said cutting him off. “I need to say this before I lose my nerve.”
He nodded, and I took a step back so that we were no longer linked together. He wasn’t touching me anymore and that freed up my mind to say the things that needed to be said.
“I found out I was pregnant right after Braden’s funeral,” I started. “And I didn’t tell you about it then because you were…so lost. You were so broken over Braden’s death that I didn’t want to confuse you with my pregnancy. I wanted you to focus on mourning him so that you could heal in your own time. I wanted to give you the space you needed.
“I was waiting for things to get better. I was waiting for you to come to me like you always did. I wanted you to need me, but Braden’s death pushed us apart...and the only thing you seemed to want was solitude.
“And then you came to me that day and told me you had enlisted and…it changed everything. After I knew you weren’t planning on taking me with you, something inside me broke.
“Whenever I imagined my future, it was always with you, Chase. So much so that I’d stopped thinking in terms of myself, whenever I thought about anything at all, I always thought in terms of us. So when I realized that you had changed the story on me…I guess I felt…lost, betrayed, and let down. I’m not trying to justify why I didn’t tell you. I’m just trying to make you understand where my headspace was at during that time.
“I thought I was protecting my baby by keeping the news from you. I thought I was sparing you the pain of choosing between two things you really wanted. But I realized recently that the only one I was trying to protect was myself. I wasn’t thinking of you or Cole. I was only thinking of my broken heart. I was mad at you for breaking it and this was the only revenge I could exact. It was wrong, it was unfair, and I should have seen it sooner, but….”
I trailed off a little, caught up by the emotion of my confession. It was hard to say certain things, but they needed to be said and once they were out, I realized I felt lighter. I felt free. I glanced at Chase’s eyes, wondering if I would see anger or hurt there, but there was a shadow across his face that cut off his expressions. It didn’t matter; I needed to tell him the truth. At the stage, I owed him that much.
“I want you to know how sorry I am for keeping this secret from you. I know that because of me, you missed out on the first four years of your son’s life and that is not something I think I could ever forgive. But…but….”
I struggled with the words as tears welled up in my eyes and I knew I couldn’t go on much longer. Before I could finish my sentence, Chase walked up to me and encircled me with his arms. I was taken aback by the unexpected intimacy of the contact, but I was also intensely grateful. I needed to be held; I needed to be held by this man.
We stood like that for a long time and when Chase finally pulled back, I could at last see what was in his eyes. There was some sadness there; there was loss, and perhaps an edge of hurt. But there was no anger. He reached up with his fingers and stroked my cheek gently.
“Thank you for telling me all that,” he said. “And thank you for asking for forgiveness. Now, it’s my turn.”
I had not expected those words from him, but I took a step back just like he had and allowed him to say whatever it is he needed to say. A part of me already knew what was in his head – he had made no secret of that in all those letters to me, but I understood that he needed to say the words out loud while I was standing there listening to them.
“After Braden’s death, I can’t honestly say I know what happened. I ignored all my natural instincts and walked down a dark path. Instead of coming to you, I turned my back on you, I lashed out at you, and I turned bitter. I know it must have seemed as though I was angry at you sometimes, but I think I was just disappointed in myself.
“I felt unworthy and useless. I felt as though I had no purpose in this life and that didn’t sit well with me. I mean, here I had this heroic brother who had died fighting for his country and what was I doing? I was playing a game for money and worrying about which series to binge watch on Saturday nights. I wanted something more, and I forgot the people in my life. I forgot you.
“I enlisted because I wanted to get rid of that nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach that was telling me I was worthless. And, a part of me felt like I needed to do it alone.
“I need you to know that I always wanted to be with you. That was never a question. I just didn’t want to take you with me and run the risk of losing you like I lost Braden. My mistake was in taking you for granted and believing that you would always be there waiting for me.
“I suppose a part of me hadn’t expected you to react the way you did. I thought you’d nod and allow me to do exactly what I wanted. That was usually how our relationship went. You gave me my way – you usually did. I never expected you to stand your ground and break up with me. Even after the fact, I never assumed the break up would hold. I always assumed we’d be back together in no time.
“It was only after I was in the Middle East surrounded by a barren, new reality that I realized what I had done. It was only then that I understood I had lost you. I want you to know I never stopped loving you. I never stopped wanting or needing you.
“It was only after I was overseas that I realized my life already had purpose. My life was purposeful because you were in it. You were, are, and will always be the only woman in my life. Will you forgive me for leaving you behind?”
His words released the last bit of anger and hurt that resided deep inside me. I’d been carrying it around for so long that I felt oddly naked now that I was free of those weighty emotions. “Yes,” I said softly. “I forgive you.”
Chase came forward and took my hand again. He kissed it passionately and then he turned those beautiful, brown eyes on me. “As I forgive you.”
It was a perfect moment, and nothing else needed to be said afterwards. We held hands and walked towards the bleachers. We sat down together and I rested my head on Chase’s shoulder.
There was an edge of nostalgia in the air, but there was the atmosphere of new beginnings that surrounded us, too. I felt as though I had finally come up for air for the first time in four years.
“There’s so much I want to know,” Chase said, kissing my head.
“Ask me anything,” I said willingly.
“You chose Braden’s name for our son,” he said, and it was amazing to hear him use the words “our son.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I know it seems odd,” I admitted. “But the truth was I wanted him to have something of yours. I wanted our son to have something that linked him to you and your family, something strong and brave and heroic. So I picked Braden’s name because he was all of those things. And because you loved him.”
Chase nodded as though he were absorbing my explanation. I ran my fingers across his callused palm, trying to familiarize myself with the new lines on his body and hands. “Were you lonely over there?” I asked.
“Very,” he nodded. “Always; the loneliness never went away, even when I was surrounded by friends. My loneliness and your absence went hand in hand.”
“Did you ever…meet anyone over there?” I asked before I lost my nerve.
He looked down at me and smiled. “I’ve never been with any other woman except you, Lauren,” he said fervently. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever slept with. You’re the only woman I’ve ever even kissed. And I’m proud of that fact.”
I smiled.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I went on a few dates about a year or so after Cole was born,” I admitted. “None of them went well. I never had a second date with any of them. In the end, I just gave up.”
“Why?”
“At the time, I told myself it was because I wasn’t ready yet and I needed to focus on being a mother,” I explained. “But the truth was that on some level, I always knew that no man would ever match up to you. I gave you my heart a long time ago…and I never really got it back. I don’t think I really even wanted it back.”