Redemption

by Robin Covington

  “Mateo... man, I am so sorry. If I’d known you were coming over, I would have warned you,” Max says as he reaches out to catch me just in case I decide to take a header onto his newly refinished oak floors. “I’m sorry, man.”

  I just stare at her, soaking in every detail. Her hair is longer, still the same deep, rich red with the streaks of gold shining in the sunlight streaming through the huge windows I helped Max install. One look at her and I realize that the Carlisle that still haunted my dreams is a fucking poor imitation of the real thing. She is amazing. Gorgeous. Beautiful.

  And my traitorous fucking heart keeps trying to jump out of my chest and get to the woman who’d taken it with her when she left the rest of me behind.

  “Mateo. You okay?” Max’s voice penetrates through the fog of “what-the-hell” that has taken over my brain and I drag my gaze back to his face.

  “Yeah.” I shake my head and bend down to pick up the box I dropped, keeping my eye on Carlisle in my peripheral vision. “My mom finished the calligraphy on the wedding invitations for Kit and…”

  I barely register Max taking the box from my hands as Carlisle’s movements catch my eye. She’s rising from the couch, her actions careful, a little jerky but executed with purpose as she pulls over two forearm crutches and rises to her feet. Everything about her muscle tension, the way she bites her bottom lip, and the familiar bunching of her eyebrows testify to her concentration as she straightens and balances herself on her own two feet.

  My breath catches in my throat and I know the sound that escapes from my mouth is harsh and wet with the emotion that threatens to break free.

  I’ve never seen anything look so fucking good in my whole life.

  At least I think so until she starts to walk towards me, her steps a little slower than her usual stride but strong and sure. I’d have to be a bigger asshole than I am to deny that the sight of her walking is like Christmas and my birthday and every fucking Fourth of July fireworks display I have ever seen or would ever see.

  Carlisle’s half smile is tentative, only her eyes giving away her doubt and all the emotion zinging back and forth between us. Somewhere in my head, I knew I would see her again and I knew it would be charged with everything we’d had between us at one time and all the things we would never have. But this actual moment is a million times crazier. Harder. Better. Worse. Amazing. Painful.

  The ache starts in my gut and expands, sending out stinging tendrils pulsing out in time with the throbbing of my heart. After ten months I’ve gotten to the point where I can push it to the back of my mind and push on through. I get up in the morning. I go to work. The twinge is always there and I was reminded frequently enough to ensure that I never did feel “normal”. It made sure I never forgot.

  So, no matter how good she looks. No matter how glad I am that she is doing well, I can’t afford to forget what she did to us. What she did to me.

  She wrecked me. I went back to the rehab facility the next day and she was gone. All of her stuff packed. No forwarding address. Her phone turned off. And if I hadn’t had my family and Zane to kick my ass, I might have stayed down on the ground where she’d left me.

  Kit trails along behind her, stopping to stand next to Max with the best seats in the house to witness whatever this was going to be.

  “Hello Mateo,” Carlisle says, her voice soft but clear in the unnaturally hushed foyer. She glances down when she has to adjust her grip on her crutches but when she looks back up at me, her smile has more strength and purpose but doesn't disguise the nervous edge to her voice. “It’s so good to see you. You were on my list of people to see now that I’ve moved back to Nashville.”

  “Well, it’s nice to know I made the list.” My tone is harsher than I intended, the effort it takes to push words past all the emotional shit clogging up my chest making the edges ragged. And I’m pissed. Fucking white-hot angry and it must have shown on my face because her upper body reels back a little bit, her emerald green eyes wide with her surprise.

  “We’ll leave you two alone for a few moments,” Kit murmurs as she tugs on Max’s arm and leads him out of the room and back into the family room. I don’t care if they stay or not. Anybody who has any doubt about how this is going down is a fool.

  “Teo, I know you’re angry…” Carlisle begins but I’m not having any of it.

  “Wow. I’m allowed to have feelings or an opinion or anything with you around? I thought you had the monopoly on making decisions for both of us. I was ready to sit back and wait for you to tell me how to react when after ten fucking months of radio silence you show up at my cousin’s house and tell me that I was on your list of goddam people to see when you prance your royal highness ass back into town.”

  My voice doesn’t need the awesome acoustics of this old house to relay just how pissed off I am. Months of holding it in, sending emails to an account that bounces them back to me, and calls to a number that is never answered erupts in my speech. I regret nothing.

  Not. One. Word.

  Carlisle’s cheeks turn a vivid shade of pink with her reaction, anger, embarrassment or something else, I have no idea. I don’t trust my read on her anymore, not after she blindsided me with her one-sided decision for us to be over. Her grip on her crutches is white knuckle and her entire body vibrates with whatever is going on in her head.

  “You were first on my list. The person I wanted to see the most.”

  “That explains you being at Max and Kit’s house. I’m sure you got confused that I don’t actually live here.” I’m not giving an inch. No way am I making this easy on her. “Well, you can check me off the list and consider us caught up.”

  She steps forward, everything about her demeanor screaming how rattled she is but she pushes on in typical Carlisle fashion. I can’t help the admiration and the spike of attraction that hits me in the gut. If I’d tried to kid myself that I was over her, it wasn’t working.

  “Teo, you were first on the list.” Carlisle takes a deep breath and blurts out the rest in a voice barely above a whisper. “But I had to build up the nerve to come see you. I—”

  “Did you think I was going to bite or something?” I walk towards her, close enough that she has to lift her face to look at me and close enough for me to smell her scent. The familiar smell of her gardenia soap envelopes me and I have to close my eyes for a moment, steeling myself against the rush of memories that accompanies it. I remember the day when I lost that scent on my sheets, in my car, on my clothes and realized she wasn’t coming back to me. It was hell, whichever layer Dante reserved for fools. “Or were you afraid that I would lose my shit? Yell? Break something?”

  She shakes her head, emerald eyes huge as she stares at me. I’m staring so hard right back that I don’t even see her reaching out to touch me until her cool fingers brush against the skin on the back of my hand. My instinct is to extend my fingers and weave them together with hers, to pull her close and stop all this useless talk with the press of my lips against her own.

  “No. I was afraid you wouldn’t... ” She stumbles on her words and I can hear the effort it takes for her to swallow down whatever is caught in her throat. “I was... ” She corrects herself and starts over again. “I am afraid that you’re going to tell me it’s too late. That I’m too late and we’re over.”

  I’ve spent nights, days, countless minutes praying for her to show up and say exactly what she just said. Longing, not just for her body or for sex, but the need for her to fill this Carlisle-shaped hole in my chest almost knocks me down. My mouth waters, my heart kicks into a beat that rivals a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and sweat prickles between my shoulder blades. I’m a mess and I hate it. I hate that this is my reaction after all those fucking months, after she walked out and left me hanging with more questions than answers, after she acted so selfishly. I hate... her.

  As much as I ever loved her, I hate her now. In this moment. Right fucking now.

  “It’s too late,” I say and pull my hand away
. I keep my eyes glued to hers because I want to see her reaction to my words. I want to see the pain I hope I’ll inflict. It’s not pretty and it’s not nice but it’s real. “I’m with someone else.”

  “Oh.” She blinks rapidly and I can see the extra moisture filling them as she sucks in a ragged breath. “Are you... do you... ?”

  “I love her.” I answer the question she can’t get out and I close my eyes against the pain that flares in her own and sends a flush of red heat over her porcelain skin. I immediately want to take it back, to rewind and delete the lie. Carlisle and I never lied to each other. Even when we said stuff that neither of us wanted to hear, we always told the truth. This is wrong. “Carlisle... ”

  My phone rings, the ringtone loud in the silence that has surrounded us. I fish it out of my pocket and glance at the screen. Anne.

  “You take that. I’m sure it’s important,” Carlisle says as I swipe the screen to send the call to voicemail.

  “Carlisle. Wait—” I shove the cell back in my pocket and try to capture her hand with my own but she’s already stepping backwards and turning towards the family room.

  “It was great to see you Teo... Mateo. I’m glad you’re doing so well.” She pauses in her retreat and gives me one of those smiles you know is fake only because you know the person so well. It won’t convince me and she knows it but this whole scene is now about saving face and acting like nothing between us ever happened. We aren’t Carlisle and Mateo anymore. We’re just people who used to fuck and share and tried to make each other happy. Strangers. “And I’m so glad you’re happy. Really glad.”

  For a split second I think about following her but I don’t. I might feel like an asshole for throwing out the whole “I love her” lie but nothing has changed. Carlisle is still the woman who makes me stop breathing but I can’t forget what she did. Why would I do that to myself again? It's pride and ego and all that male bullshit but it’s all I’ve got right now.

  The hate I felt was real. As real as how much I still love her. I don't know how you get past that. I’m not sure I want to.

  I turn and open the door, not even bothering to yell a goodbye towards Max and Kit. They’ll figure out that I’m gone with one glance into the foyer. Besides, we’re family and you can forget your manners with blood relatives and they have to take it. It’s a rule.

  I get to my car, slamming the door as I settle behind the wheel, my hands clenching at ten and two. I glance up at myself in the rearview mirror, my pupils are blown as if I’m high or aroused. Or angry. Emotional. Freaking the fuck out.

  Where is the multiple choice answer for “all of the above”?

  I pull out of the driveway and head towards downtown Nashville and the trendy, microbrew restaurant where I’m having dinner with Anne and her friends. Traffic is light and it’s a good thing because I’m on autopilot, navigating the turns, the lane changes, and the speed limits with my mind very preoccupied with what just happened.

  Carlisle is here and she’s staying.

  And while my head actually hurts with that mind-blowing truth another one pops in that threatens my ability to breathe.

  She can walk.

  Wherever she’d gone, whatever she’d done all these months, had worked. She was walking, with the aid of crutches, but she’d beaten the odds and made a comeback. It was all I wanted for her, no matter what happened between us.

  As I pull into the parking area for the restaurant and hand over my keys to the attendant, the memory of Carlisle moving towards me would not banish itself to the background. I should not be thinking of her, should not linger over the details of how she looked: a little thinner but still strong, her hair longer and curlier, the same spatter of freckles along the bridge of her nose, the same cool fire in her emerald green eyes.

  “Mateo.” I am ripped out of my little fantasy by Anne striding towards me, her blonde curls framing her smiling face.

  She walks straight to me and loops her arms around my waist, lifting her face for a kiss. This woman is openly affectionate, sweet, and uncomplicated. To fall for her would be easy and our relationship would be smooth and drama-free. I press my lips to hers, willing myself to forget what just happened, to keep Carlisle in my past where she belongs.

  “Hey,” I say when I end the kiss, hoping my voice sounds normal and not like the bottom just fell out from under me like those rides at the amusement park. “You look good.”

  She smiles at me but something in my expression makes it falter. “You all right?”

  I nod, kissing the top of her head as we turn to walk into the restaurant. “I’m fine.”

  I look straight ahead as I try to forget the fact that for the first time in our relationship, I just lied to Anne.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Carlisle

  “Why didn’t we live in a place as nice as this when I was here?”

  Livvy gives me a dirty look as she trails her gaze from the gorgeous view of the Nashville skyline to the modern interior of my new apartment. It is a lot nicer than the place we lived in.

  “Because I hated you.” I smile widely at the middle finger she is pointing in my direction. “I still do.”

  “Kiss my ass your majesty.”

  “I have no idea where that ass has been,” I toss back at her as I roll myself across the hand-scraped floors to the sofa where I go through the movements necessary to transfer my body to the extra-wide cushions. Balance and strength earned through countless hours of training in a gym make it possible. Livvy watches from her place by the window, her eyebrow raised in the universal silent question of “do you need help?” but I wave her off. It’s not the most graceful dismount but I make it there with minimal fuss and only a little breathless. “I loved our old place but this building has better accessibility for the wheelchair.”

  “How often are you in it these days?”

  I settle against the armrest and reach out to snag my bottle of soda from the coffee table before I answer. “Lately, I’ve used the crutches more often but it really depends on what my body feels like doing that day. I still engage with my physical therapist and I work out every day but it varies along with my level of pain. I never know whether I will be in the chair or on the crutches.”

  She crosses the room and plops down beside me, her face full of concern. “I thought the pain was going to get better?”

  “It’s so much better than it was but it’s never all gone.” I tip the bottle back and take a sip. “I can handle it without drugs for the most part and on the occasions where it is elevated, I have a prescription.”

  “No more self-medicating then?” I shake my head and she gives me a teasing grin. “You single-handedly put an entire drug cartel out of business by going cold turkey.”

  I toss a pillow at her face. “Screw you.” We settle back into comfortable silence and I get back to her original question. “This building has a place next to the elevator for my car and it’s accessible no matter what my condition. I’d love to live in a funky loft with all kinds of weird levels but my independence is more important. From here I can get to school, my gym, my doctor. It works.”

  “So, school? What are you? The oldest sophomore in the history of Nashville U?”

  “I think I might be,” I say, thinking about the summer classes I will take to ease back into the life of a student. I’m nervous but not because of the academics or my classmates, it’s more elemental. I look at my best friend and I confess. “This will be the first time I will live completely independently since the surgery. When you leave, I will be completely on my own.”

  “Scary shit,” she muses.

  “Terrifying but exciting too. I’m ready for it.”

  “I’m proud of you. I never told you but I am.” She smiles but I can see the moisture making her eyes glassy. “And I’m really glad you’re still here. I love you and I can’t imagine anyone else standing up with me when I get married.”

  I reach across the couch and grab her hand, squeezing her
fingers lightly while I also fight back the bawling that comes so often these days. The barriers I put up after the bombing, after Aaron died, are all gone. Taken away with the little bits of metal from my back and I feel things keenly these day. I’m not a walking/talking blubbering mess but the sensations of joy, sorrow, loss, and appreciation are sharp, clear and run very deep but are also just below the surface of my thin skin.

  “I love you too Livvy.”

  We sniffle and laugh and give our eyes a very unlady-like swipe with our hands before we settle back on the sofa, enjoying the sunshine spilling in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and the view of downtown Nashville. I picked this condo for the view, even when I’m not in it I feel like I’m part of the life and bustle in the streets. Even rattling around in the large two bedroom, two and half bath unit won't feel so lonely when I can look below and see so much vitality and energy.

  At least that is the plan.

  “Have you seen Mateo yet?” Livvy asks and while the question is abrupt, I was expecting it so I didn't even flinch.

  I nod. “I saw him yesterday when I went to Max and Kit’s house.”

  “You went to see them before you went to see Mateo?”

  “He had the same reaction,” I laugh but it tastes and sounds bitter. “I felt like an ass when I saw him. I should have gone to see him right away but it wouldn't have made a difference.”

  “Why not? It would have shown him that you’ve been pining for the last ten months.” I roll my eyes and she holds up a hand and gives me the “don't even try to deny it” finger wag and head toss. “I said it: pining. Don't you even try to deny it. You were a miserable bitch who took it out on everyone around her.”

  I wasn’t going to deny it but I did have one objection. “I didn't take it out on anyone but I did channel it to make myself work harder.”

  “Miserable. Bitch.” Her lips are in a thin line, telling me that I won't win this argument.

  I let it go. Getting down to the heart of the matter... namely the new info I received from Mateo yesterday.