“We need to talk.”

  “Okay, come on in then.” She stepped back inside and motioned for him to follow her into the living room.

  “I’m not here about your mom, Liz,” he said, taking a seat in the old rocking chair Elizabeth’s mother loved so much. He rubbed his forehead as if he were trying to draw the strength to tell her something.

  “I’m confused.”

  “I get that.”

  “Care to tell me why you’re here?”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  “Or maybe why you ran out of here on the day mom came home from the hospital?” She decided to throw caution to the wind and get an answer to the question that had been plaguing her since that night.

  “Actually, that’s why I’m here.” Nathan sighed, locking his eyes with hers.

  “Really?” Elizabeth couldn’t hide the surprised tone of her voice.

  Nathan was relieved to see confusion in her eyes rather than anger. He was sure that William would have run right to her and told her everything they had argued about.

  “I’ve been doing it all wrong since the second you got back.” Ever since his fight with William, Nathan had been lost in his thoughts. He had to agree with his friend. He was in no place to offer Elizabeth and Kate any kind of emotional support. As a doctor, that was not something he usually worried about with his patients’ families. He worked to keep his emotions from entering those relationships because they only provided a distraction as he treated their loved ones for cancer.

  Kate and Elizabeth were not just the daughters of a patient, though. They were people who meant the world to him, people that he loved. He needed to connect emotionally so that they would know he was there for them as more than just their mother’s doctor. Nathan needed to open up so that they would know that he was there as a friend as well.

  Elizabeth remained silent, her gaze wandering across his handsome face.

  “Like I said the other day, I don’t know how to act around you.”

  The same feelings echoed within her heart as she watched him struggle to explain himself to her. “I know what you mean.”

  “It’s like my mind knows that it’s been years since we were together but being around you makes me feel like it was yesterday.”

  Elizabeth needed him to know that he was not alone in his struggle. “It’s not any easier for me.”

  “I meant it when I said I want to be friends.”

  “So did I,” Elizabeth agreed, hesitating before she continued. “I’m not sure it’s possible but I would like it.”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “It might be, but there’s a lot of history between us.”

  “I believe we should try.”

  “Okay. After everything you’re doing for my mom, trying is the least I can do.” In her heart, she knew that it would be a struggle, but it dawned on her that settling into a friendship with Nathan might be just what she needed to find closure and put their romantic past truly behind her.

  “You won’t regret it.” He grinned, relief flooding his eyes.

  “Let’s hope,” she said, trying not to sound too skeptical.

  “There’s something else I wanted to tell you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I never had a chance to apologize for the way I ended things between us. I kept thinking about that day…”

  Elizabeth didn’t let him finish his thought, though.

  “No,” she said bluntly.

  “What?” He was shocked. Nathan had assumed that he would need to make amends for their past to move toward the future.

  “We’re not having that conversation.”

  “I just want you to know.”

  “I don’t want to know,” she whispered, her eyes swimming with old sadness.

  “How can we be friends if you haven’t forgiven me?”

  “I forgave you a long time ago.”

  “We need to talk about this.” Nathan couldn’t see that it was not Elizabeth who needed forgiveness between them. It was him. He had craved it since the moment he watched her turn and walk away from him after he broke her heart.

  “No, we don’t.” Elizabeth frowned, shaking her head in frustration.

  “Ellie….”

  “Don’t call me that,” she snapped, disrupting his train of thought.

  “Don’t friends have nicknames for each other?” It bothered him that she still wasn’t comfortable with him calling her his old nickname for her.

  “Not that nickname, not with you,” she said as tears threatened to fall.

  “See, you don’t forgive me.” He hadn’t seen her cry when he broke off their engagement. She had made it out of the room without letting them fall. This was the first time that he had fully witnessed the pain he had caused her.

  “Forgiving and forgetting are two different things.” She wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “I want us to start over and be friends, real friends. I’ve missed you.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “I’m glad you’ve missed me. I’ve missed you too. You were the most important person in my life once,” she said, forcing the tears back as she gave him the best smile she could manage.

  “You have to let me apologize.”

  “No, I don’t. I don’t have to listen to you apologize for something that you aren’t really sorry for.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “No, you made your choice then. You have everything you wanted now. It worked out the way you planned. You don’t regret it,” she snapped, frustrated that he wouldn’t let it go.

  “You don’t know…” he began.

  “Stop.”

  “I need to tell…”

  “Look, you want to start over and be friends.”

  “I want us to be friends but I don’t think we need to start over,” he said, disliking the sound of that. What he wanted in his heart was to have back the Elizabeth who had been his best friend in the world, who knew him better than anybody else ever had.

  “Well, we can’t go back.”

  “Yes, we can.”

  “No, if we’re going to be friends, we have to start over and move forward.”

  “That’s really what you think?”

  “I’m willing to try, but only if we leave the past behind us. Dwelling on it is going to keep us both from moving on,” she insisted.

  “Okay, we’ll move forward. But don’t friends talk about their past relationships?” he asked, still longing for her forgiveness and understanding.

  “I don’t talk about our past with anyone.” It was true. She kept that story locked away in her heart.

  “Nobody?”

  “Nobody but Kate. Very rarely, though.”

  “And William,” he added matter-of-factly with a frown on his face.

  “Why are you so on edge about Bill?” She suddenly realized that there must be more to their tension than she had first realized. They were always bickering about something, but this was something more.

  “We had a disagreement.”

  Elizabeth noticed his reluctance to discuss the details of his problems with William so she decided not to inquire any further.

  “Well, you should get past it quickly. He’s your best friend and you guys need each other.”

  “Maybe.” He doubted that he could ever look at his friend the same way after William’s confession that he had always been in love with Elizabeth.

  “That’s just my friendly advice.”

  “See, we’re already making progress.” He grinned at her as he spoke, shifting the conversation.

  “I guess we are,” she said with a laugh, still not exactly sure how it could really work.

  Chapter 11

  After Nathan left, Elizabeth’s mind was tangled in knots. She knew he was sincere about wanting to be friends. In truth, his initiative fit well with her own goal to put their past behind her. If he became her friend rather than just her ex-fiancé, then it might be much easier to do that. She just wasn’t sure that she could let the past go enough to get there.

  To deal with her uncertainty, she did what she always did. She cooked. It was a coping mechanism that she had learned from her mother and it always worked well for her. Focusing on the food and the flavors always took her mind off of her troubles. Traveling to the remote destinations that she did for work made it rare to have access to a real kitchen so it had been a long time since she had been able to take advantage of it.

  She was so lost in her work that she didn’t see Kate come into the kitchen. Her sister stood behind her and watched her in silence for several moments, a look of concern on her face. Though Elizabeth hadn’t realized it, Kate and their mother had seen Nathan leaving the house earlier. While Diane was thrilled, Kate had spent hours worrying that her sister was about to be hurt again.

  “It smells good in here,” Kate finally said.

  Elizabeth whirled around in surprise at the sound of her voice.

  “Thanks.” She wiped her hands on her apron.

  “Cooking a big dinner to avoid talking to me?” Kate asked knowingly as she watched her sister’s discomfort.

  “Why would I be avoiding you, Kate?” Elizabeth said as she turned back to stir the sauce that she was working on.

  “I saw Nathan leaving when mom and I were coming back from our walk.”

  “He’s been here before.” Elizabeth tried to play down the importance of his visit. She knew that she would need to talk to Kate about it soon. The problem was that she wasn’t even sure how she felt about the conversation that she’d had with Nathan so she didn’t know how to begin to explain any of it to her sister.

  “Yes and things were weird then. Remember how he acted around Bill?”

  “I guess.” Elizabeth sighed, resigning herself to the fact that they were having this conversation right now whether she wanted to or not.

  “So I’ve been waiting for you to tell me why he came by today.” Kate took a spoon from the door and dipped it in the sauce Elizabeth was working on. “That’s yummy. Since you’re stress cooking, I’m going to guess it wasn’t a casual visit.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask when you and mom came home?” Elizabeth opened the oven to check on the fish she was baking. In many ways, she loved that Kate knew her so well but it made it very hard to keep anything to herself.

  “Because I thought maybe you needed time to process it.”

  “Maybe I still do,” Elizabeth said, her defensive tone the final piece of evidence Kate needed to confirm her suspicions.

  “I knew it!” Kate cried.

  “Don’t sound so smug.”

  “I knew he said or did something to get under your skin.” Kate started to pace back and forth. She had hated Nathan for years because of how much he hurt her sister, but there was a new anger brewing in her at the thought that he was callous enough to think that he could do it all over again.

  “It wasn’t that.” Elizabeth kept stirring her sauce, avoiding eye contact with her sister.

  “Then what was it?” Kate demanded. The thought that he was selfish enough to play with her sister’s emotions in the midst of everything they were going through with their mother was enough to make her want to scream at him.

  “He wants to be friends.”

  “Friends?” Kate scoffed at the thought of Nathan and Elizabeth being friends after everything that had happened between them.

  “That’s what he says.”

  “How in the world can he expect you to be his friend after everything he put you through?”

  “He did try to apologize for that.”

  “What did he say?” Kate blurted out in shock. What words, after all, did he think could make up for everything he had ruined? Her mind was racing at his thoughtlessness before her sister even answered her.

  “I didn’t let him finish.”

  “Oh, good. I’m so glad you told him you can’t be his friend. You were right not to accept his apology.” Kate nodded as relief washed over her. If her sister was smart enough not to listen to his apology, then maybe she wouldn’t let him break her heart all over again.

  “It wasn’t like that.” Elizabeth kept her eyes locked on the stove so that Kate couldn’t read her expression.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I told him I didn’t want to hear him apologize for something he wasn’t sorry he did. It wouldn’t have been genuine.”

  “How can he not be sorry that he lost you?” Kate still couldn’t believe that such a smart man had been so foolish as to let her sister go.

  “He has everything he wanted. It all worked out for him.”

  “Just not for you,” Kate whispered.

  “It’s not so bad. I’m happy,” Elizabeth said, the tremble in her voice undercutting her words.

  “I can’t even believe he thought you could be his friend.”

  “I can try to be.”

  “What?” Kate frowned, shocked.

  “I’m going to try.” Elizabeth finally sounded confident.

  “No!”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth knew that Kate was only concerned that she would be hurt again.

  “Why?” Kate threw her hands in the air.

  “Because holding on to the past has kept me from really moving on,” she explained, not sure how to make her sister understand her motivation.

  “You aren’t making sense.”

  Elizabeth turned and faced her sister, sighing as she tried to find the right words.

  “I haven’t really faced it all, you know? I ran. I’ve been pretending I’m fine. The intensity of my job and all the traveling gave me the illusion that I was over him, that it was all in the past. But remember that day when you told me he got engaged to that lawyer? I cried myself to sleep for three nights. And it was almost seven years after we broke up. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Kate felt her stomach sink. A sense of impotence washed over her. Her sister and her mother were her entire world and she hated to see them suffer.

  “How is being his friend going to help you get past that? Isn’t getting close to him again just going to set you up to get hurt all over again?” Kate’s voice had no trace of anger in it. There was only worry.

  “We can’t go back. We’re never going to be as close as we were. I just want to be able to look at him without my heart bleeding.”

  Kate was beginning to see why Elizabeth might think it was a good idea.

  “There’s no closure there.” Elizabeth finally accepted the truth of her emotional state.

  “Because of him!” Kate accused.

  “Neither of us has tried to face it all.” Elizabeth knew from Nathan’s earlier words that he had pushed their past away just as she had.

  “Because he’s ashamed to own what he did!”

  “I need to find peace in that relationship. It’s the only way I can really let go of the future I thought we would have together.”

  “I love you.” It was clear that Elizabeth had already made her mind up. Instead of arguing further, Kate wrapped her arms around her sister and hugged her close.

  “And I love you.” Elizabeth rested her head on her sister’s shoulder.

  “I might not think it’s a good idea, but I will support you,” Kate promised, tears forming in her eyes as she thought of all that her sister must be going through.

  “I know you will.”

  “And if he hurts you, I’ll take a baseball bat to his Volvo,” Kate said, not a bit of humor in her voice.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Elizabeth laughed. With that, she turned back to the stove.

  Kate went to the back of the kitchen door, taking down her own apron and putting it on. Without another word, she pulled out the cutting board and got to work helping her sister.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Elizabeth was busy unloading the dishwasher when she heard a soft knock at the front door. When it opened, she was surprised to see Nathan standing there. She knew that he was dedicated to them becoming friends, but she just hadn’t realized that he planned to fast track the process.

  “You’re here early. Did you need to see mom? She’s still asleep,” Elizabeth said as she gestured for him to come inside quietly.

  “Nope, I just wanted to see how my friend’s doing.”

  Elizabeth was wearing the same hooded sweatshirt that she had lived in during their college years. With her hair pulled up in a ponytail, she looked just as beautiful as she had when Nathan first fell in love with her all those years ago. He couldn’t help but stare at her, bittersweet memories washing over him.

  “Isn’t that what friends do for each other?”

  “I suppose it is.” Once she got over the shock of his surprise visit, she realized that he hadn’t come empty-handed. The sight of two cups of coffee in his hands had her mouth watering. The long nights of worry about her mother had made sleep elusive and she needed all the caffeine that she could get.

  “Here you go.” He handed her a cup once he noticed her staring at it.

  “Coffee! You’re a prince. I was just getting ready to put a pot on.”

  “It’s no trouble.” He was pleased that she was so happy to see him, even if it did take a small cup of coffee as a bribe to get that reaction.

  “It isn’t from the hospital cafeteria, is it?” she asked as she stopped midway to raising the cup to her lips.

  “No,” he said with a chuckle. In fact, it was from her favorite coffee shop, a locally owned place a few blocks from the hospital. It had two creams and no sugar, just the way that he remembered that she loved to drink her coffee.

  “Good, because I’m not that desperate for caffeine.” She giggled, taking a sip and gesturing for him to follow her into the kitchen.

  The kitchen was Elizabeth’s favorite space in the house. It was a place where she expressed her creativity, celebrated joyful events and vented her frustrations. But it was also a place where Nathan had shared so many happy moments with her and her family. Standing there with him again after eight years sent shivers up her spine.

  “I brought one for Kate too.” He held up the other cup.

  “I’m sorry but she’s not here right now.” Elizabeth took it from his hand and set it on the table.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12