If Forever Comes (Take This Regret #2)(5)
Author: A.L. Jackson

My eyes dropped closed. My best friend. They fluttered open to meet with hers. “Perfect.”

Everything was perfect.

Present Day

God, I missed her. Missed her so much it paralyzed me, left me without a will. Because this wasn’t about betrayal, not something she or I had caused. This was something that neither of us could control. This was unfair, unjust. This was torture.

“Hey, man, we’re getting ready to close up.”

Jarred from my stupor, I scrubbed a palm over my face to wake myself up, swayed a little as I tried to find my footing. I struggled to focus as I signed the tab he slid my way.

“You okay?” Kurt asked, eyeing me as he gathered the receipt.

The laugh that escaped me was humorless. “Yeah, I’m f**king perfect.”

Chapter 3

Present Day, Late September

Remnants of our devastation simmered just beneath the surface of my skin. A constant, nagging reminder of what I had lost. I’d do anything to purge them from my mind. Yet, at the same time, I clung to them. I clung to the memories that haunted my heart because they somehow comforted me. Those months that I’d been favored enough to spend in Elizabeth’s arms, with Lizzie by my side, those days we’d laughed and loved as we’d lost ourselves in expectation—I wanted to hang onto them.

God, I wanted to hang onto Elizabeth.

I rammed the heels of my hands in my eyes.

Fuck.

This wasn’t the life we were supposed to be living. I just didn’t know how to get through to her, how to break through the pain. How could I make her see?

The residual of last night pounded my head, spun with the overwhelming urge that burned inside to make this right. I thought I finally had.

I was so wrong.

The traffic light turned green, and I accelerated as I traveled the seven-point-three miles to Elizabeth’s house.

Bitter laughter bounced around the cab of my car.

Seven-point-three miles.

When I came to San Diego more than a year ago and found out just how close Elizabeth and Lizzie lived to me, the short distance had seemed like an affirmation that everything was as it should be. Like maybe things had shifted as they slowly aligned. Like if I just reached out, I’d be close enough to hold Lizzie and Elizabeth in the safety of my arms. That I’d be able to protect them. Love them.

Maybe I was a fool to think that after everything I’d done, I could somehow deserve what Elizabeth had promised.

Because now I knew better.

Seven-point-three miles was a greater distance than I could ever fathom.

God.

Remorse shook me as I glanced in the mirror and changed lanes. We’d come so close to making it. Only one day and Elizabeth would have been my wife. Then one brutal lash of fate had cut us deep. Shattered us in a way that neither of us could have anticipated. That wound had festered. Rotted and decayed. Built and burned until it’d erupted. Elizabeth had cut me from her life just as harshly as the trauma had struck her down.

But it wasn’t as if I weren’t broken, too.

I crossed those impenetrable miles. Steadily my heart began to pound harder and faster with each second that passed by. Not with the stirring of hope as it’d done all those months when I’d first returned, when I’d done everything I could to make amends for the greatest mistake I’d ever made. Definitely not like it’d done with the overpowering thrill of excitement I’d had when I traveled here after the modest house had become my home.

Now it thudded with the deepest resonance of pain.

On a heavy sigh, I made a left into the quiet neighborhood. I pulled into Elizabeth’s driveway, killed the engine, and forced myself to climb out. A cloak of early morning fog sat like an oppressive weight in the gray sky, blanketing me in a heaviness I couldn’t escape, even if the sun were to somehow manage to shine. In disinclination, I stuffed my hands in my pants pockets and plodded up her sidewalk to the front door. Drawing in a deep breath, I rapt twice on the door, then turned to study the loose threads of the tattered and worn welcome rug placed strategically in front of Elizabeth’s door.

Welcome.

Right.

Nerves wound me tight, a vise constricting the base of my throat. I fought to put up those walls of protection, desperate to guard my heart against what I would find inside.

For three months it’d been like this. But there was no getting used to it. I mean, God, I hadn’t gotten over Elizabeth in those six years I’d been away. There had been absolutely nothing I could do to cover up the love I had for her, no desires or goals or bodies dense enough to bury the need that had consumed me since the first time I’d glimpsed her. She’d stolen something from me that I’d never gotten back, something she kept hidden deep beneath the surface in places I doubted either of us could see, in places neither of us could define.

Did I really think I’d be able to strip her from my spirit now?

Metal scraped as the deadbolt was set free. The door slowly swung open to reveal Elizabeth standing there.

Unable to stop myself, my eyes sought out the one. The one who owned me, heart and soul. Looking at her crushed me anew. It was a punch straight to the gut, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.

No. There wasn’t a chance in hell I would ever stop loving this woman.

She was thin. Too thin, her cheeks sunken and her arms frail, her skin ashen and pale. But it was the warmth that had been snubbed from her eyes that absolutely killed me.

Broken.

There was no other way to describe her.

Every part of me ached to step across the threshold, to take her in my arms and promise her that I would somehow help her heal, that in time, it really would be okay, and that one day, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

But I had no f**king idea how to gather the scattered pieces, no clue how to put her back together.

For a fleeting moment, my eyes locked with hers, and I thought maybe I glimpsed it, a transient flicker of her own longing, like maybe she was wishing I was strong enough to save her, too.

In clear discomfort, Elizabeth dropped her gaze and fidgeted as she looked to the floor. “Lizzie, honey.” Her voice was weak. “Your daddy is here.”

“Coming!” Lizzie called back from upstairs. The muted echoes of my child’s movements in her room above filtered down to where I waited for her in the entryway below.

I shifted in the unease, attempting to study Elizabeth from where I pretended my focus was on my shoes. Gauging her, I tried to get some sense of whether she was really okay.

What a ridiculous notion. Okay. What did that even mean? Because okay in itself seemed impossible. Unattainable. She was most definitely not okay.