Torn (19 page)

“Oh, shush. Go and have fun.”

She hung up before I could say anything else.

“Is everything all right?” he inquired, walking toward the edge of the couch. I’d been pacing while I was talking on the phone, my nerves on high alert from my conversation, but focusing back on Eli, a rush of a different kind came over me.

Suddenly, I felt flush, my heart beating so fast it almost scared me. He wasn’t helping any, either. While he looked tired and disheveled, he was sexy as hell. I’d always been extremely attracted to him, but looking at him standing before me, hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shirt rumpled and sections of his hair sticking up, I couldn’t help but think of him naked.

Then a thought crashed over me, dousing the excitement quickly building within me.

“Did you have sex with her?” I blurted, slapping my hand over my mouth to stop me from speaking another word.

A smug look settled on his face as he sat down. “Why do you care?”

Good question. Why
do
I care?

“I don’t. I was simply curious,” I lied. “Who is she? Your girlfriend?” His casualness stressed me out. The cockier he acted, the more on edge I became.

“I don’t do the girlfriend thing. Not since…” He stopped before finishing his sentence, his eyes challenging me and making me squirm even more.

“So, she’s just someone you’re sleeping with then?” I was pushing my luck and I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself. The need to know what she meant to him was eating me up.

“Yes. At least, she was. Not anymore.”
Short and to the point.

“Oh,” I whispered, taking a seat at the far end of the sofa. I didn’t think it wise to sit too close to him, especially when I knew our little back and forth was going to turn into the conversation I’d been dreading since I moved back home.

There was a time when we could be together in silence and it was comfortable. But not tonight. The tension lingering in the air was palpable, half of it sexual while the other half was a mixture of hurt and anger.

Fidgeting in my seat, I tried to give off the air of calm but failed miserably. “So…” I started. “Why did you ask me to come over tonight?” I damn well knew the reason, but I needed him to start talking because I was going insane with all the possibilities of where our evening could head.

The expression on his face hardened. He was preparing for a battle, and there was no way I was walking away unscathed.

Leaning forward, he cleared his throat and spoke, the thick rasp of his voice hypnotizing. “You know why I asked you here tonight. I want to know why you left me all those years ago. Why you never thought to call me afterwards, even years later. And why in the hell didn’t you tell me you had a child?
My
child?” He huffed before shifting in his seat, waiting for me to answer all of his questions. “Let’s start with those, shall we?” The more he spoke, the more I could see his demeanor change. He was angry, yes, but it was more than that.

Pain and regret danced beneath his façade. He tried to hide those emotions from me, but I saw them.

“Can I have that drink now?” I asked, knowing damn well I’d hit the point where I needed something to take the edge off.

Sighing, he gave me a simple nod before walking from the room, returning in no time at all.
Damn it! I need more time to collect my thoughts.
Handing me a glass of red wine, he brushed past me to take his seat again, his thigh touching my knee and sending a jolted tingle through me.

After taking a small sip, being conscious not to gulp down the entire glass, I placed my drink on the side table and turned back in his direction.
It’s now or never.
Giving him my full attention, I answered his first question.

“Why I left you all those years ago is complicated, Eli.” His lips parted to interrupt but I held my hand up, halting the words building in his throat. “Please. I need to get through this.” He understood and closed his mouth. “Looking back on the thought process of a nineteen-year-old girl is very frustrating, because I know I would handle things very differently now. You have to believe me. But I was scared and I thought I was doing what was best. For you. And for me, because I didn’t want you to resent me…had I stayed.”

“What the hell are you babbling about, Kalista?”
So much for allowing me to have my say.
“That’s not an answer. You’re skirting around my question.” His temper rose, but he held it back. Barely.

Before I could stop myself, I rambled, “I found out I was pregnant and decided it was best for me to leave.” When I saw he was going to interject again, I hurriedly added, “The baby would have ruined your well-planned-out future for us. The surprise of a life-altering circumstance would have stopped you from following your dreams, and in turn you would have resented me in the process. Maybe not at first, but over time…you would have.” Breaking eye contact, I hung my head in sorrow. “I left because I wanted you to be happy, Eli.” I felt him shift closer, the creak of the leather rustling through the air. “Back then, I thought I was doing the right thing. Why should both of us have to give up our dreams?”

Tears broke free and coursed down my cheeks. As quickly as I wiped one away, another followed, until finally I’d given up. I was upset, not only with myself but with the selfish decisions I’d made back then. There was nothing I could say to him except, “I’m sorry.”

Countless seconds of silence followed my confession. Finally, when I couldn’t take the torture any longer, I glanced up to see him staring at me.

Expressionless.

What the hell is running through his head?

Does he understand why I left?

Does he hate me more now that he finally got his answer?

Does my excuse make it worse or better?

“Eli?” My voice sounded foreign, even to me. “What are you thinking?”

Blowing out an exasperated breath, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Shaking his head, he said, “You want to know what I’m thinking?” He asked, before adding, “I’m thinking that’s the stupidest fucking answer you could have given me.” Tension filled his muscles and his leg started to bounce up and down, his tell-tale sign he was ready to explode. Thankfully, in the past, I’d only seen it a few times. His head jerked in my direction. “Are you seriously asking me to believe that…that pitiful excuse as to why you ripped my goddamn heart from my chest?”

His jaw ticked, causing the muscles of his jaw to jump. The light scruff he kept on his face did nothing to hide his physical reaction to my answer. All of a sudden, he jumped up from the couch and paced back and forth, a barrage of expletives flowing freely from his pursed lips.

“Please, tell me you’re kidding right now, Kalista,” he growled. “Because there is no way in hell I’m going to believe you threw away our future simply because you didn’t want to
hold me back
.”

I knew my answer, although truthful, wasn’t logical. But it
was
to me back then. Maybe I let the fear of becoming a young mother drive my insanity. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t go back in time to change it. I would if I could.

I had no response, which apparently was a mistake. Not knowing what else he expected me to say, I remained silent.

“Tell me the real reason!” he shouted. “I’ve waited fourteen fucking years to find out why,” he berated. “And you better tell me right the fuck now before I really lose my shit.” He stopped pacing, stalked toward me and stopped when his feet touched mine. He was physically close, but emotionally so far away.

“I told you the real answer,” I whispered.

“What?”

Doing my best to control my trembling lip, I repeated, “I told you the truth. I swear.” Craning my neck, I looked up at him as he towered over me. “I know it doesn’t make sense to you, Eli, but it made sense to me when I was nineteen. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

I couldn’t look away, even though the muscles in my neck started to ache because of the position of my head.

“Fuck!” he roared, stepping back and swiping the lamp from the table. The crash made me jump, but I never said anot
her word. I
’d apologized, but something told me it didn’t mean anything to him.

Tugging on his hair, he demanded again, this time in a gruffer voice, “Tell me the real reason. I have to know.” He was speaking to me, but his words were more rhetorical. He was in such a state of disbelief his brain wouldn’t let him compute my answer as the truth.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated for the third time that evening.

After he seemed to have calmed down a bit, he continued to pace in front of me, glancing at me as if he was seeing a stranger. And I guessed to a point, he was. “I’m going to ask you one more time to make sure I have this right.” He inhaled a deep breath. “You left me, hid my son from me his whole life, and never looked back because you thought one of us should be happy? One of us should follow the dreams we’d talked about? Do I have that right?” If he could have killed me with a simple glare, he would have.

“Yes.”

Without hesitation, he shouted, “You need to leave! Now!” His anger returned full force, and I didn’t want to stick around one more second, because in truth I had no idea what he would be capable of in his current state of rage.

I gathered my purse and keys and walked toward the front door, never once looking back for fear of what I would see.

Sobbing the entire way home, I had no idea how we were going to move forward. It was obvious from his reaction he would have accepted any other reason than the one I gave him.

But I couldn’t lie.

Not anymore.

ELI

“B
ut you don’t understand, Mom,” I argued, defending my stance on the debacle that was my life. “Her reason for leaving is utter bullshit.” Kicking the chair next to me, I repeated, “Just bullshit.”

Vivian Warner wasn’t a woman who tolerated a raised voice for very long, but the compassion in her eyes told me she felt my pain. She’d seen me spiral into a depression for months after Kalista had left, barely leaving my room but for something to eat and to shower. When her sympathy for me had crossed over to concern, she gave me a good talking to, reminding me my life had to go on, and that I would go off to college and meet new people. I hadn’t wanted to hear anything she had to say, but the woman was relentless. My brothers stepped in with her persuasion, taking me out with them, watching over me as I worked out my despair with some hard-ass alcohol.

Eventually, the hurt which suffocated me loosened its grip little by little until I was able to push her from my mind, only thinking about her every few days until it was every few months, then eventually…every few years.

After enough time had passed, I was able to open myself up enough to engage in controlled relationships with women, ‘controlled’ being the operative word. I said who, I said when and I said for how long.

Lately, I felt as if my life was spiraling away from me. I’d ended things with Beth, found myself being consumed with thoughts of Kalista, hoping for our relationship to return to what it was all those years back.

But I knew it could never be.

I didn’t trust her, but worse than that, I didn’t trust myself when I was around her. She didn’t know it, but a simple glance in my direction and I was fighting myself from dropping to my knees and begging her to love me again.

Pathetic, I know.

Never before had a woman fucked me over so much I didn’t know which way was up. I’d worked very hard over the years to detach myself emotionally, even from my family to a point, because I never wanted to experience her level of betrayal ever again.
      

Placing a cup of coffee on the table, my mother sat in the chair across from me. Raising her own mug to her lips, she took a sip before speaking. “Honey, I know you’re hurt. And because I know how vulnerable you are right now, I won’t give you a hard time for not telling me sooner about my newest grandson, but you have to find a way to move past this. You can’t go back to the way you were before.” She took another sip. “I simply won’t allow it.” She half-smiled before pushing a plate of fresh-baked muffins toward me.

Food was the last thing on my mind, my rampant emotions playing havoc on my mind, body and fucking soul.

My mother looked a little pensive before she spoke again, and I couldn’t understand why. At least not until she uttered the words which stabbed me in the heart. “While I will never condone the decision Kalista made back then, I can see why she feared your reaction…had you found out about the pregnancy.”

Her words floored me so much she rendered me speechless for an entire minute, during which I tried to understand what she could have possibly meant, but there was only one explanation. “I would have never been upset with her for being pregnant. How could you even think that?” The fact my own mother was taking her side against me was extremely hurtful, calling all of my insecurities and emotional trauma back to the forefront, when I’d been somewhat successful in pushing everything away for so damn long.

“No, honey, that’s not what I meant. I know you would have been happy at the news, but I can understand her reservation in telling you. All you ever talked about was how much planning out your entire life made things so much easier. When I tried to tell you that life is messy, destiny stepping in and sometimes directing people to take a different path, you would laugh and dismiss me as if I had no idea what I was talking about.”