“I didn’t think she’d go.”

  “That’s what makes you so toxic to her. You’ll never put her first and my sister deserves to be cherished. You took her for granted.”

  “You’re right. I did. But I realized…”

  “And she deserves better than you,” she interrupted him one last time. “I don’t want you to hurt her again. I won’t let you!”

  Chapter 19

  It was early in the morning when Elizabeth looked out her bedroom window to see Nathan’s car turning onto her street. Her heart began to pound in her chest. She was so torn. Since she had run away from him days earlier she had wanted nothing more than to see him again, no matter how much she wanted to deny it. But, at the same time, he was the last person that she wanted to see. She had not yet come to terms with all that their kiss had made her feel. She wasn’t entirely sure that she ever would.

  Her feelings about seeing him were irrelevant in that moment, though. The fact was that he was parking in front of her house at that very moment and she knew it would only be a matter of minutes before he was knocking at her door. With a sigh, she threw on an oversized sweater and jeans to replace her pajamas and headed out to meet him.

  She was able to get out the front door and onto the porch before he even made it up the steps.

  “I’m not ready to see you,” she began, not giving him the chance to say whatever he might have come to say.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He looked exhausted.

  She stared at the dark circles under his eyes and wondered when the last time he had slept was.

  “Why are you here?” She tried to push her concern for him and his lack of sleep out of her head. After all, he was the reason she had been spending many sleepless nights herself.

  “We need to talk,” he insisted, undeterred by her reluctance.

  “I don’t want to.” It wasn’t like her to act like that, but she didn’t know how else to protect her heart. Standing there with him, in the very spot where he had kissed her was overwhelming.

  “I know that but I think we have to.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted, seeing from the determination in his eyes that he wasn’t going to let it go until they had a conversation.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I guess.”

  “Thanks.” He followed her into the house. She led him to the kitchen so they would keep from waking her mother.

  “Go ahead and have a seat. Do you want some coffee?” she offered, hoping that it might relax them both.

  “Yes, please.” He watched as she made her way to the coffee pot and brewed it in silence. She didn’t return to sit beside him while it brewed. Instead she stood there, lost in her own thoughts as she watched it drip. Seeing her there, doing something as mundane as making coffee made Nathan’s heart ache. He couldn’t help but think of how it would have been if they had married, each morning seeing her standing in their own kitchen.

  “Here.” She slid the cup of steaming coffee to him when it had finished brewing.

  “Thanks.” He took a deep breath. “To be honest, I don’t really know where to start,” he said before taking a sip of coffee.

  “Maybe I should start then.” She sighed, knowing that he wasn’t the only one with something to get off his chest. “I’m sorry I ran away the other night. I reacted badly and I’m sorry.”

  “No, I should never have crossed the line. I’m sorry.”

  “I practically asked you to kiss me. You don’t have anything to apologize for.” She avoided to meet his eyes as she spoke. Instead, she stared into her cup of coffee and inhaled the scent, trying to remain calm.

  “Why did you run then?”

  “Because I let myself forget how long it’s been since you really felt that way about me.” It was painful to remember how it felt to be loved by him and know that he would never feel that way about her again.

  “Babe, I loved you so much,” he said, rounding the table and kneeling beside her chair so that she had no choice but to look at him as he confessed his feelings. “I still love you.”

  “Don’t say that.” She shook her head in disbelief. Even letting herself consider that it might be true hurt too much.

  “It’s true.” He reached out to caress her cheek as he spoke.

  “I can’t hear it. Please.” She felt as if the room around her were spinning.

  “You need to know that I have regretted losing you every day since I called off the wedding.” He stared into her eyes, trying to convey to her the depth of the loss he had felt.

  “No, no, no! I can’t listen to this.” She tried to stand up and walk away.

  “You have to. Please, Ellie.” He grabbed her hand so that she couldn’t escape him.

  “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because I ruined us and I need you to know that I regret it.” For years, he had pretended that she was his past. Having her back in his life had put it all into perspective, though. She had been the future he needed and he had let it slip away.

  “I already told you that I don’t believe that,” she said, remembering the conversation where she had agreed to try and be friends. It felt so long ago now.

  “It’s the truth. There hasn’t been a day that I haven’t woken up wishing you were lying there beside me as my wife. Think of the life we would have had together, married for almost a decade now,” he continued, his voice trailing off as he thought about how happy they could have been.

  Her thoughts drifted to the same place and the ache in her heart was more than she could stand. “Stop it!” She wasn’t entirely sure if she was talking to him or trying to get her own mind to stop imagining the life that could have been.

  “You were everything I wanted and I couldn’t see it then. I never thought I would lose you.” He brushed the hair away from her face.

  “What did you think would happen?”

  “I thought you loved me enough to wait for me.”

  “But you didn’t love me enough to marry me. You saw being married to me as a burden, as an obstacle.” That was the part that had hurt the most, coming to believe that he had never loved her the way she thought that he did.

  “I was so dumb and full of myself.” His self-loathing was evident in his voice and she wondered, for the first time, if maybe he really was sorry for the choices he had made.

  “I can’t argue with that.” A humorless laugh escaped her lips.

  “Nobody puts me in my place like you do.” He smiled sadly at her.

  “Is that why you threw me away?”

  “I never meant to.”

  “The past doesn’t matter. Why are we tearing ourselves apart like this over nothing?”

  “Our past isn’t nothing.” He took her hand again, squeezing it tightly. Even if he couldn’t get her to forgive him, their past would always be the defining relationship in his life. Her love had made him feel invincible when he was young, so invincible that he thought he could survive without her. The loss of her had given him a perspective on grief and loss that had made him a better doctor in the years since they parted.

  “It’s not the future either.”

  “Can love like ours ever die?” he asked, sure that he would love her until his last breath.

  “You’re the one who killed it.” Her words weren’t full of anger. There was only sadness there.

  “I’ll never stop trying to make it up to you.”

  “We both know where this is coming from.” She gently placed her hand on his arm.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You called off your wedding to what’s her name.”

  “Simone?” He wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.

  “And so now you’re idealizing our past. It’s not real and you want me to love you again so you can feel good,” she murmured, doing her best to keep her emotions in check.

  “That’s not it at all!”

  “I know you don’t mean to do it.” She felt that in her heart. He was a good man and he wouldn’t try to break her heart on purpose. He was just hurting and her returning to his life had been convenient.

  “That’s not why I want you to forgive me.” The sincerity in his eyes almost made her believe it. Elizabeth knew, though, that if she let herself trust him again, it would only break her heart in the end.

  “I can’t do this.” She jumped out of her chair to put distance between them.

  “Do what?”

  “Give in to my feelings again. I felt that love again when we kissed,” she admitted, the sweetness of the emotion toying with her heart even now.

  “I felt it too.” He closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her waist.

  “But it doesn’t tear you apart,” she cried, nearly sobbing.

  “Is that what our love is to you?” He released her abruptly as though the very thought burnt him.

  “That’s not all it is.” If it were nothing but pain, it would be easy to let him go. The joy and tenderness made that impossibly hard.

  “Then we can fix it,” he said excitedly, taking her words as a good sign.

  “No, you just miss being in love. You don’t actually love me again.”

  “No. I have no illusions about who you are. I know you. I know you better than anyone else ever will.” He wasn’t sure how to make her believe that his love for her was the truest thing he had ever felt.

  “Then can’t you see that you’re killing me right now? I can’t deal with this on top of everything with mom. I can’t.” She wished with all her might that it could be different.

  “I’m so sorry that I did this to you. But trust me, I did it to both of us.” He realized that she was in no place to continue the conversation. All he was doing was adding to her pain.

  “So am I.”

  “I’ll go now if that’s what you want,” he offered, although it pained him to walk away from her while she was so upset. He brushed away her tears with his thumb, feeling his own throat tighten.

  “That’s what I want.”

  As he left the house, she leaned against the door, breathing heavily. She closed her eyes and started to pray.

  Chapter 20

  It was almost a week later when Diane returned to Nathan’s office for one of her regular appointments. Though Elizabeth had continued to monitor all of her mother’s vitals and medications, these weekly check-ins were a necessary part of her recovery to ensure that her body was tolerating her treatments.

  “Diane, Kate.” Nathan nodded as he entered the room, sorely disappointed not to see Elizabeth there. He had been hoping that having her close by would quiet the frustration and sadness that had enveloped him since he left her kitchen.

  “Nathan.” Diane smiled at him warmly. Kate said nothing.

  “Your results look a little off so I’m going to order some more blood work,” he said as he opened the file and scanned the results again. He was afraid that she had developed an infection.

  “If you think that’s best.” Diane looked calm. It was clear to him that she trusted him deeply and he was so grateful for that.

  “Where is Elizabeth? I’d like to talk about this with her.” He knew that she would want to be updated on his suspicions, even if she was avoiding him.

  “Just focus on mom,” Kate snapped.

  “Kate, please.” Diane shot her daughter a disapproving look.

  “Is she coming?”

  “You should know,” Kate replied, unable to let go of her anger. “I told you to leave her alone.” She had been concerned when she came home from the studio to find Elizabeth crying at their kitchen table. Once her sister told her what happened, she was furious.

  “I just wanted to explain something to her,” he sought to justify doing the very thing Kate had told him not to do.

  “You wanted to explain so you could feel better.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Kate, that’s enough!” Diane attempted to stop her daughter.

  But Kate ignored her warning. “Yes, it is. You do nothing but hurt her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he began, not at all sure what else to say to her. She was right and he knew it.

  “Kate, maybe you should wait for me outside,” Diane interjected before he could say anything else.

  “With pleasure.” Kate kissed her mom on the cheek before walking quickly out of the room.

  “She’s very protective of us. You know it’s been just the three of us for a long time.” Diane reached over and patted his arm gently.

  “I really messed this all up, didn’t I?”

  “Your youth is the time to make mistakes. It gives you plenty of time to put things right.”

  “I think it might be too late,” he admitted, worrying that one day Diane would feel the same resentment for him that Kate did.

  “Are you dead?”

  “No.”

  “Is she?”

  “God forbid I ever live to see that day.” He shuddered at the thought.

  “Then it isn’t too late,” she said with a kind smile.

  “She won’t listen to me. How can I make her see that I love her?”

  “She’s spent a lot of time running from the heartache you gave her. Facing it will be hard for her but it’s the only way to build upon the past.”

  “I’ve really missed you, Diane.” She had been like a second mother to him from the moment he had met her and Nathan had missed her words of wisdom and encouragement for too long.

  “I’ve missed you too, my boy. You’ve grown into a wonderful man.”

  “I don’t know how to get her to forgive me.”

  “Be honest.”

  “She doesn’t want to listen.”

  “Well, that’s a hurdle we’ll have to get over.” She gave him an encouraging wink. “Do you love my daughter?”

  “I never stopped,” he answered without hesitation.

  “Do you think she loves you?”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’m sure she never stopped but I think she spent many sleepless nights convincing herself that she can’t love you.”

  “I need her to forgive me so she’ll believe me.”

  “I have faith in you, sweetie.”

  “Why?” he asked, unsure why she was willing to help him when he had hurt her daughter so deeply.

  “Because I know you’re a good man and you just got a little lost.”

  “I see that now.”

  “You have to understand Kate. She’s an artist. She’s passionate. She feels everything very intensely.” Kate had been that way since childhood. She took everything to heart. Wearing her heart on her sleeve made her love big but it also made her pain amplified.

  “I’ve heard her art’s wonderful,” he said, hoping to lighten the mood.

  “Elizabeth does like to brag about her.” Diane chuckled.

  “I’d love to see her work but she’d never show me.”

  “Well, lucky for you I like to brag about her too.” She reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope of photographs, all of Kate’s work. As he looked through them, he was amazed by her talent. They were all vibrant, with a dreamlike quality that amazed him.

  “These are remarkable.”

  “Yes, but those are a year or so old,” Diane explained, looking a bit disappointed.

  “Really?” He was not sure why her mood had shifted.

  “She won’t show me her newest stuff.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s about me,” she whispered as she lowered her eyes.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, she used to rush to show me everything. There’s only one reason why she wouldn’t. Art is how she deals with her emotions. I’ve given her a lot to deal with.” She looked guilt-stricken over her daughter’s pain.

  “I can’t believe she did all this.” He tried to draw her back into a happier topic.

  “She’s a talented girl.”

  Nathan kept flipping through the photographs of Kate’s paintings, enthralled by their beauty. The last one, though, took his breath away. There, staring back at him from the canvas was his own face. The background was dark and stormy, with bright, colorful circles floating in it that held memories he had shared with Kate.

  “Is this me?” he blurted out in utter shock. He’d been sure that Kate hadn’t even thought of him in years, until her mother’s illness forced him back into her life.

  “Is it?” Diane asked with feigned innocence.

  “That’s us, when I drove her to her middle school dance.” He smiled at the memory. Kate had insisted that it would not be cool if her mother or sister took her. She had wanted it to be him because that was what big brothers were for, as she had put it back then.

  “I guess it is.”

  “She painted this last year?”

  “Yes.”

  “We look so happy, but everything around us is such darkness.”

  “It is,” she said calmly.

  “So maybe not all her memories of me are tainted,” he mused, unable to deny what was before his eyes.

  “See? A place to start!”

  “Thanks, Diane.” He got up from his desk so that he could give her a hug.

  “You’re welcome, my boy.” She patted him on his back as Nathan’s face lit up with a smile full of hope.

  Chapter 21

  Elizabeth rushed into the hospital room, out of breath from running. Kate had called her in tears after the tests Nathan ordered did in fact show that their mother had developed a dangerous infection.

  “I got here as fast as I could.” She tried to catch her breath.

  “Thank God.” Kate wrapped her in a hug.

  “What’s going on?” Elizabeth had darted from the house the moment she got Kate’s call that their mother was being admitted. She didn’t even bother to listen to the details. She just ran to her car.

  “Nathan wanted to run more tests because the first round came back funny or something,” Kate said, unfamiliar with the medical terminology.

  “Okay.’ Elizabeth imagined the hundreds of scenarios that could lead to results like that.

 

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