Everything he’s been through, things I’ll never know or understand, hits me like a ton of bricks, threatening to make my knees give out from under me. I’m standing here feeling sorry for myself when this man literally went through hell and came back from the dead.
He’s here. He’s alive.
No matter how tightly I clamp my hand over my mouth, I can’t keep the muffled sob from escaping and his head whips in my direction. His deep brown eyes lock on to mine and his hand slowly drops from the side of the horse as he turns to face me fully.
I want to run to him.
I want to run away and hide.
“Legs,” he whispers softly.
So softly I almost don’t hear it over the thunderous beating of my heart, but my eyes are locked on to his lips and I see his mouth form the words, the nickname making me wince and die a little bit more inside.
“Are you real?” He speaks softly, his eyes widening in wonder as he takes a tentative step toward me.
I’ve wished for this moment, every day for six years, and now I just want to close my eyes and disappear. I don’t want him to see me like this. I don’t want him to know anything about the woman I am now. I want to click my heels together like Dorothy and go back to the way it was before. I want to close my eyes and go back to a time when everything was easy and perfect and I was worthy of the amazement shining in his eyes as he stares at me and takes another step toward me. I don’t care about the pain he caused me, I don’t care about the heart that he broke, I don’t care about all the reasons why, I just want to hold on to him and never let go.
As much as I want to run in the opposite direction, I can’t do it no matter how hard I try. Being in the same room with him has always made me feel like we were magnets, unable to deny the pull and unable to do anything but slam together as soon as we were close enough. My feet move before I even realize they’ve remembered how. We move toward each other, our eyes never breaking their hold, both of us picking up the pace at the same time until we’re running, unable to stop the magnetic tug now that we’re this close. Now that we both know this is real, it’s not a dream, and we’re both really here, together.
Our bodies collide, my arms flying around his neck, his arms wrapping securely around my waist, both of us clinging to the other like at any minute something will try and rip us apart. He smells like soap and fresh hay and I breathe him in as I bury my face in the side of his neck, letting the smell take me back six years ago when everything was easy and perfect and amazing. His arms tighten around me, so tight I can barely breathe, but I don’t even care. I don’t need to breathe when he’s my oxygen and everything I need to live.
“Fucking hell, Legs,” he whispers brokenly as I squeeze my eyes closed to keep the tears at bay.
He nuzzles his face into my hair and breathes deep, cursing again under his breath.
“Peaches. Fucking peaches…goddammit, I missed this.”
I’m dying.
I’m suffocating.
I’ll never survive this.
“Am I dreaming? Fuck, tell me I’m not dreaming,” he mutters. “You feel so warm and so real and so perfect.”
I sob against the skin of his neck, the tears falling so fast and so hard that I don’t know how I’ll ever get them to stop. I take a deep breath, one last smell of his clean skin. I hug him tighter, one last touch of his warm body against mine, one last second of feeling his heart beating with mine. I take it all in and shove it into the compartment in my brain reserved just for him, where I can take it out whenever I want and remember this moment. This one moment where I could pretend, for just a few seconds, that this could be my life. Wrapped up in this man who went through hell and found his way back to me.
My arms slide from around his neck and I press my palms to his chest, pushing against it gently until he finally loosens his hold and lets me move back. I feel the loss of his warmth immediately, my skin pebbling with goose bumps, and I tell myself this is how it has to be. I remind myself that I can live through the cold as long as he’s okay.
I can’t handle the questioning look in his eyes when I take another step back from the comfort of his arms, still suspended in the air, held out for me and just waiting for me to fit back inside them. Swiping the tears from my cheeks, I lift my chin and put the mask back in place before crossing my arms in front of me.
“Legs?” he whispers in confusion, taking a step toward me to try and close the distance I’ve created.
My hand comes up between us and he stops immediately.
“Please, don’t call me that.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw when I speak, firmly and with authority, all signs of the relieved and weepy woman from moments ago long gone.
“I know this is crazy and you probably have a thousand questions. I shouldn’t have just shown up here like this, but I didn’t think you’d be here,” he says, his arms finally dropping to his sides when he realizes I’m not going back into them.
“Of course I’d be here. I live here.”
His mouth drops open in shock and he slides one of his hands through his short hair, something he always used to do when I said or did something that pissed him off.
I’m sorry, oh, God I’m so sorry.
“What the fuck do mean you live here? You mean you’re just visiting, right? You live in New York, like you planned, and you’re just here for a visit. Tell me you’re just here for a visit, Legs.”
I let out a frustrated breath, my fingernails digging into the skin of my arms to stop myself from screaming.
“Don’t call me that!” I shout angrily, hating myself for yelling at him, but unable to stop the hurt and animosity I feel whenever I so much as think of that name. Hearing it from his lips, after all this time, will break me in two. If I hear it one more time, I will crumple into a ball on this floor and never be able to get up again.
I take another deep, calming breath, looking at a spot over his shoulder. I can’t look at him and do this. I can’t see the eyes I’ve dreamed about, the mouth I’ve wished to kiss more times than I can count, and the face my hands are dying to touch and do what I have to do without breaking down.
“I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry,” he speaks softly. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve thought of this moment every day for six fucking years, and now that you’re here, standing in front of me, I don’t know what the fuck to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I cut him off. “And you don’t have to apologize for anything. I’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad you made it back to your family. Your sister must be so relieved to have you home.”
He tries again to move toward me, and I take another step back.
“Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on,” he urges, dipping his head down to try and get me to look at him. “What happened to New York? Are you just taking some time off? Did you knock their socks off and they couldn’t handle how bad you made everyone look?”
He laughs softly at his own joke and I dig my nails harder into my skin.
“New York didn’t happen, okay? It was just a stupid dream. I work for my mother as her assistant,” I tell him quickly, hoping he’ll drop it and let me leave with a tiny shred of dignity.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he mumbles irritably, one hand flying through his short, spiky hair again. “You were supposed to get away from here. The only reason I left was so you could get away from here and away from her. The only thing that kept me going all of these fucking years was knowing you were out there, living your dream and happy. What the fuck happened, Shelby?”
And I thought hearing him call me by my nickname cut like a knife. My name flying out of his mouth in anger and disappointment hurts a hell of a lot worse.
I’m sorry, oh, God I’m so sorry.
“Life happened, Eli!” I shout. “You weren’t here and life happened! Things got messy and dreams got broken and I moved on!”
“You didn’t move on, you fucking gave up! You had everything ri
ght there for the taking and you gave up because of HER! The minute I leave, you turn into one of her little sheep! How the fuck could you just give up, Shelby? Goddammit, how could you throw it all away?”
I move farther away from him, each step hurting worse than the one before when all I want to do is tell him. Tell him everything, show him everything, and make him see I had no choice, but I can’t, because he’s right. I gave up. I threw my life away and I gave up because I didn’t care about anything but him. My happiness meant nothing if his name was being dragged through the mud and his sister’s life was ruined because my mother couldn’t handle not being in control of everything around her, including me.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I tell him through clenched teeth. “You’ve been gone for six years and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that happened to you, but I’m not sorry for the choices I’ve made. I have a good and happy life now and I’ve moved on.”
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me. I’m not happy, I hate this life that I’m barely living.
“Bullshit. You didn’t move on. You stayed in the exact same fucking place, never moving forward because you were too goddamn scared to take that leap. The only way I managed to stay alive in that fucking hellhole for five years was knowing you jumped, when all along, you stayed here and turned into her.”
I’m dying.
I'm suffocating.
I’m sorry.
I say the last two words out loud, so quietly I’m not even sure he hears them, before I turn and walk away from him. I wait until my back is to him before I let the tears start to fall again. I hear him calling my name, but he doesn’t come after me.
He lets me go, just like he did six years ago.
It’s what I deserve. He lived through hell hoping he’d come back to the same woman he left behind, maybe to apologize, probably to make amends for how he left me, but that’s impossible.
That woman died a long time ago, along with her dreams, and it was all for him. Everything was always for Eli, and seeing him alive, knowing he’ll be okay as long as he stays away from me, reminds me that I made the right decision. Knowing his sister is happily married with a family of her own without my mother tainting their life in any way reminds me that I would make the same decisions all over again, even if it kills everything inside me.
Chapter 6
Eli
Are you okay?”
I try not to let my irritation show when my sister asks me the same question for the tenth time today as I grab a bottled water from the fridge and take a seat next to her at the kitchen table.
Going for a five-mile run through her development this morning was meant to clear my head. All it did was give me too much quiet time to think about what happened last night. For a few seconds, I had Shelby in my arms. Just like I’d dreamed about for six brutal years. Clinging to me like her life depended on it, her body so warm and perfect pressed against mine, her breath puffing along the skin of my neck and her heart beating against my chest…until suddenly, she was gone. Replaced with a stoic, hard woman who didn’t want anything to do with me. I’d like to say I didn’t even recognize her, but I did. One look at her with her chin raised and all the tears dried up like they’d never been there in the first place, staring at me like I wasn’t even good enough to shine her shoes…I damn sure recognized that woman because she looked exactly like her mother and made me think about the last conversation I had with that bitch of a woman six years ago.
“You need to get out of my daughter’s life and you need to get out now. If you want Shelby to fulfill her silly dreams of being a dancer and your sister to finish college and have a secure future, you will leave and never look back.”
“I’m fine, Kat,” I sigh, taking a drink of my water and pushing that damn conversation out of my mind. “Just working through some stuff.”
She reaches across the table, resting her hand on top of mine as I nervously spin the bottle cap around the wooden top.
“Daniel saw you threw those candles away when he took the garbage out before work,” she whispers softly. “Were they the wrong smell?”
I close my eyes and sigh, not wanting to talk about this with her, but feeling a huge amount of guilt that I haven’t shared anything with her since I’ve been home, no matter how hard she’s tried to pull it out of me. She never knew about Shelby and me back then, and there’s no way I want to burden her with it now. Telling her to buy those damn candles so I could fall asleep to the smell of peaches was an asinine decision on my part. It was one I quickly fixed after what went down last night at the stables, by tossing the stupid glass containers filled with pale orange wax so hard into the cans out by their garage that they shattered all over the bottom of the empty container.
“Don’t worry about the candles, Kat. They’re the least of our worries.”
Moving my hand out from under hers, I grab the letter that came in the mail earlier and pull the piece of paper with the United States Marine Corps insignia stamped at the top closer to me. I knew it would happen. I knew they’d be sending a letter like this; I just didn’t expect it to be so soon.
“You had another bad dream last night,” she tries again.
I wince, turning my head away from her so I don’t have to see the sadness in her eyes. I can’t handle the expression of pity on her face whenever she looks at me. I love my sister, and I thank God that I’m getting a second chance to be here with her, especially when I never thought I’d see her again, but I can’t stand her feeling sorry for me. I can’t have her worrying about me all the time when she has a family to take care of. After what happened last night, I woke up screaming louder than I ever have, once again bringing Kat flying into my room to take care of me, when she had other priorities that should come first.
“I’m sorry. I’m gonna find my own place as soon as I can.”
Kat lets out an irritated huff. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. I’m worried about you, Eli.”
My eyes lift from the paper and I try to soften my features. I don’t want to hurt her, but that’s all I seem to be doing lately. My baby sister has done well for herself and here I show up, threatening to ruin it all. I did what I could while we were growing up to shield her from the shittiness of having two parents who never really got the hang of parenting, did their own thing, and put their children at the bottom of their list of importance. I helped her with her homework, packed her lunch, and made sure she had something good to eat for breakfast and dinner, threatened any boy who came sniffing around for a date, shielded her from the drunken fights our parents always had by taking her out for ice cream, helped her pick out a dress for her first dance, and always made sure I was there for her when she had questions or needed advice. When our parents took their selfishness and excessive partying too far and got themselves killed, I worked my ass off to make sure she never suffered. To make sure she always had what she needed and never forgot how much she was loved. She moved on from me and found herself a good man in her husband, Daniel Evans. One who I can tell just by being in the same room with them for five minutes would give up his life to make sure her and their daughter were safe. I hate that I wasn’t here to see this happen, to see her turn into such an amazing woman, wife, and mother. I hate that so much of our time was stolen from us, and I hate that I have to be the one to knock her back down again.
Kat would never tell me how hard it was on her when she thought I’d been killed. She’d never admit how much it broke her and how difficult it’d been for her to keep moving forward and get on with her life without me in it, because she wouldn’t want to hurt me. Daniel, on the other hand, had no issue with sitting me down over a beer after Kat had gone to bed a few nights ago and laying it all out on the line for me. He didn’t treat me like I was a piece of glass, ready to shatter if I heard something upsetting, and that made me like him even more. He was protective of his wife and he worried about how strong she was trying to be for me, when he was there with he
r five years ago, holding her up and letting her cry on his shoulder when she’d thought she lost me. Making her get out of bed every day, shower, and face the world. Telling her I would kick her ass if I knew she was wasting her life, spending every day crying over me.
Daniel Evans is the exact opposite of me, and I thought for sure when I first met him, I’d hate him. With his slicked-back, perfectly styled, short blond hair, expensive three-piece suits, and evidence of his fancy college background hung in frames in the hallway among family photos. He might dress like a spoiled rich boy, he might do business with all the spoiled rich folks in this county that I despise, but he worked hard to get where he’s at. He gave my baby sister a nice home in a private, gated community with a sprawling, manicured lawn, and he treated her like a princess—all the things I dreamed of for her when we were growing up.
Yeah, I liked Daniel Evans.
I liked him even more when I confided in him about the report I received anonymously in the mail and how I confronted Georgia Eubanks with it right before she shipped me out of the country, and Daniel became protective of my sister once again. He wanted me to make absolutely certain I had all of the facts before I told Kat. He wanted me to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that everything I was suspecting was true, before I gave this heavy burden to her. He wouldn’t let anything, even her brother who was back from the dead, hurt her or upset her in any way. You gotta respect a man for that, even though I know she’s going to kick my ass for keeping it from her for so long.
“I don’t want you worrying about me, Kat. I’ll be fine. It’s gonna take some time, but I’ll be fine. I hate that this letter is going to make things hard for you guys,” I explain, tossing the paper across the table angrily. “It’s bad enough you have to put up with me; now you gotta put up with this shit.”