Eli Hardy
WATCHING LILA WALK toward me with the sun-kissed highlights in her hair and perfect features marked with pain, I realized something. She had felt “more.” She had experienced that “more” that we all hope for. That intensity that grabs you and holds you so tightly you can’t do anything but enjoy the ride and hope for the best.
I wasn’t the ride for her. The night I met her she’d already been grabbed by it. Hell, she was already on the ride and didn’t want to be. Cruz had snagged her heart a long time ago. But I was thankful her journey had brought her to me. Without her, without my feelings developing for her I would have never believed I could love someone like I loved Bliss. I knew now that I was wrong. Bliss was my best friend, she was my childhood. We were grown now and our ride was over.
Lila stopped at the table I had found us outside the bakery in Sea Breeze. One I’d eaten at many times before. She’d called me two days after Nate came by to see me asking if I had heard from her. I hadn’t at the time. But he told me some bad shit went down concerning Cruz and Lila had run.
I had asked her where she was when she had called and she’d told me in Nashville. I thought about going to her. But I didn’t. She wasn’t mine. She never would be. But this morning I’d gotten a text. She was in Sea Breeze. She wanted to see me.
The dark circles under her lovely eyes and the sadness obvious in her expression pained me. I hated to see her like this. I knew what heartbreak felt like. It was never easy. It destroyed you. Pulling yourself together afterward took strength. And I knew Lila had that strength.
“I ordered your coffee the way you like it,” I told her as she sat down across from me.
She attempted a smile. It was weak and didn’t meet her eyes. “Thank you.”
I watched her take a small sip and then lift her gaze to look at me. “Thanks for meeting me here.”
I shrugged. “Had nothing better to do. Sea Breeze has grown boring.”
Lila didn’t laugh at my attempt to lighten the mood. Instead, I could see her eyes go somewhere else. Her thoughts lost in another moment. I let her go there alone while I drank some of my tea. She was more broken than I’d ever seen a female. Nate had told me the story. What Cruz had done. Why Lila had left and how she’d found out. It was a messy clusterfuck. But after meeting Cruz it didn’t surprise me. Nate said he’d known Cruz was fucking that married woman back when they were teens. He hadn’t really thought more about it over the years.
“Have you slept any?” I asked bringing her back to the here and now. Not the demons in her head taunting her.
She focused on me again then started to nod and stopped. “No, not really. When I close my eyes . . . I’m there in that room. She’s showing me the video . . . I hear them.” She stopped and shook her head. “And I know it was before me. I know he was with many, many females before me.” She closed her eyes as if she had to say something she didn’t want to say. That she couldn’t bear to look at me as she said it. “That woman took advantage of him. I don’t even blame him completely for the affair. She was the adult for the majority of their . . . relationship.” She slowly opened her eyes and met my gaze. “It’s the video. The things he said to her,” her voice was a whisper. “If that’s what he wants. He never said things like that to me. Our sex . . . had to have bored him.”
As completely curious as I was to know what he had said during sex that had her so concerned, I asked the obvious question instead. “You’re not worried about her being pregnant?”
Lila shook her head. “No. Even if she’s pregnant, which I don’t believe she is, it’s not his. Women have been claiming pregnancy trying to hold on to a man they’ve lost since the beginning of the human race, I’d guess. At first, I believed her but I was devastated. I’ve had time to think about her actions. The way she told me. How she said it. She isn’t a mentally stable person.”
I had to agree with the mentally stable part. If she’d started fucking Cruz when he was sixteen then something was off in her head. “Are you going back soon?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’ll have to eventually. I have my studio to finish. My life to get back to. It’s going to be hard. Cruz didn’t lie to me because I never asked about his past sexual experiences. But he had known this thing with Kelsey was about to blow up and he didn’t tell me. Maybe having sex with her when he was young and stupid can be forgiven. But the video I saw was more recent. He was older. He was still seeing her. How can I trust him if he had no guilt over screwing a married woman?”
She had a point. And I wasn’t sure I had an answer for her. What I did know was that everyone had their secrets. Their own darkness. Something they hid from the world. Choosing to forgive them was a choice. Was losing a chance at having that “more” we all wanted worth being unable to forgive? Or could love be enough? To cover all of it and heal them both?
“Do you love Cruz?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Did this . . . video, or this woman’s words kill any of that love? Weaken it in any way?”
She paused then shook her head. Her shoulders drooped sadly as she admitted it.
“Then you owe it to yourself to listen to him and forgive him. If you don’t you’re only hurting yourself.”
Lila’s eyes filled with tears. “But I may not be enough to hold him. I’m not . . . I’m not experienced. I don’t do things like what I saw and heard. I’m . . . I am boring.”
That made me want to laugh. The woman in front of me was anything but boring. But I didn’t laugh because I had enough females in my life to know when they say shit like that they believed it. Laughing at it didn’t turn out well.
“You are anything but boring. Sure, you’re polite, prim, and proper. You’re kind and thoughtful. You don’t use your beauty as a weapon. You are completely fascinating. Men watch you. They are stunned by you, and you miss it because you’re oblivious, which makes you more appealing. Cruz Kerrington and I have very little in common. But the one thing we do is we are both heterosexual males. I know what he sees when he looks at you. I also know that the man came running after you when you had left town. He didn’t want to lose you. He loves you, Lila. I saw it at your apartment that morning. Go back. Let him explain.”
She gave me a small smile then. “You think all that about me?”
“Every word.”
“Why couldn’t it have been you? Why did my heart have to love him?”
I laughed then. I wondered the same thing at first but I had time to think about it and I knew I had some things to face. Things to admit to myself. And before this past month, I wouldn’t have been ready to move on. I would be wasting my life wanting a woman who was never going to feel the same. I would still be messing up every date I had because I was comparing them to Bliss. But things were different now. I was different.
I had her to thank. It was all because of Lila.