Unforgivable

by Lindsay Delagair

  “Well, I’m only going around this world once, so why not live a little while I’m here.”

  Of course, that statement was a little harder to follow through with when I was standing on a platform a hundred and sixty feet in the air and ready to plunge through a forest down a mountainside on a thin metal cable. They had rigged it so that Pete would be following a hundred feet or so behind me on the cable filming my experience through the trees as Jason stood at the landing area with another camera to capture my arrival. This would have been something Ryan would have dearly loved to do, and just before I stepped off into air, I wished I had brought him along.

  It felt like I was literally flying through the trees, with the only sound (besides my initial scream) being the sound of the equipment sliding over the metal cable. Pete told me to feel free to ham-it-up on the zip-line, so seconds after launching I went arabesque and then (praying the whole time the guy who hooked me up was telling me the truth about what I could do) I flipped upside down, flying head first over the river. I righted myself as I neared the landing, I could hear the cable brakes being applied and my 50 mile-per-hour flight was coming to an end.

  “That was freaking awesome!” I yelled to Jason as they were unhooking me. Just then Pete arrived, laughing about my reaction to the adventure.

  “Okay, Leese, are you ready to go bungee jumping?”

  I nodded enthusiastically, my throat at the moment too dry for words.

  We made it to the bungee jumping site and I had to admit this was a hundred times more frightening than flying down a cable. This was like suicide with a safety net, “I honestly don’t know if I can do this,” I admitted, trying to worm my way out of diving off the bridge.

  “Come on, Leese, you’ll love it. Give it a try.”

  “Oh, really? Have you ever jumped, Jason?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I have.”

  “Great. You do it first and then I’ll do it.”

  “I’ll go you one better, I’ll do it with you.”

  Worry shot through my mind. If I wasn’t sure that I trusted (basically) a giant rubber band to save me from a smashing death, did I really trust it to hold two of us from diving to our demise?

  “You’re always in the palm of God’s hand, Leese, no matter where you are,” Pete added.

  He was right, and my confidence re-bloomed.

  Jason and I were tethered to a giant bungee line as we moved cautiously out onto the tiny platform. I was shivering uncontrollably, not so much from the cool air, but from terror. Jason wrapped me in his arms and asked if I was ready. It was at that moment I realized he might have ulterior motives for volunteering. He wasn’t much older than me and he certainly seemed to enjoy an opportunity to body-hug me.

  “Okay?” Jason asked.

  Before I could open my mouth, he had pushed off from the platform and we were swan-diving to the shallow river below. I know my scream was piercing, but I didn’t close my eyes as the earth rushed up to greet us. Suddenly I felt the tension in the line and our decent slowed as we neared the water. I stretched my arms over my head to try to reach it, but we were a couple feet shy of being close enough to get wet. The line pulled us back skyward and then sent us, once more gently toward the river.

  I was laughing and crying at the same time. What an adventure Canada was turning out to be.

  Jason was only laughing, but still holding me tightly as we dangled upside down. “Want to do it alone now?”

  “No. Once was enough of a thrill. You guys are just going to have to show this with you in it. I’m done.”

  I could tell at that moment he wasn’t going to mind being in the clip.

  The plane was repaired by night fall, but they wanted to run a couple more tests and said we would take off about four a.m. We landed in Colorado at around eight in the morning as I told the guys goodbye and jumped into my Aero and headed home. I couldn’t wait to pounce on the bed and wake Ryan and tell him what I had done.

  I pulled up to the house and didn’t bother to grab my bag. I was going to be loading the car for the new house in a few hours anyway, but I had to tell my adventure to him before I exploded.

  I unlocked the door and headed straight for his bedroom, surprised that his door was nearly closed. He never closed his door. I could see his arm hanging off the side of the bed in what appeared to be in an unnatural position. Panic gripped me. I had the sudden feeling something was horribly wrong. My heart was lunging against my breastbone as I softly called his name and gave the door a gentle push.

  The sight that greeted me froze me to the earth. It was not at all what I had feared to find-and for a jealous split second it was almost worse. He was asleep in the tangled bedding-with Candace.

  The air caught in my throat as his sleepy face raised my direction. He tried to right himself in the bed, but she had crowded him too close to the edge and he fell out onto the floor-stark naked.

  “Ah, shit!” I exclaimed, turning swiftly and then clamping my hand on my mouth over the remark. I jerked his door closed and headed for the front door.

  “Leese, don’t go,” I heard his voice as I gripped the door knob.

  “I’ll-I’ll be-back-I just can’t…” I went out the door and jumped into my car; I was so dumbfounded I just simply drove without thinking.

  I wanted him to find someone, someone who could mean to him what Micah meant to me, but why did it hit me so hard? If I could have Micah back right at this very moment, would I turn and leave Ryan without a second thought? I knew I would.

  How could I be so selfish? He needed someone who could give him everything I couldn’t, and I should be happy for them both. Then there was the embarrassing moment of seeing him nude. I was trying to stop seeing it inside my head and suddenly the humor of the whole thing hit me and I began to laugh. I was flying in there to tell him about my ‘great’ adventure and instead stumbled on to what had been his great adventure.

  I turned the car around and drove to the bistro and bought breakfast for three and then drove the two blocks back to the house. My hands were shaking so badly I hoped I wouldn’t spill the coffee before I got it inside to the table.

  Just as I reached the door, he opened it for me. His face was deep red and I had to do my best not to look at him at the moment. Candace was sitting on the sofa in his tee-shirt and a pair of underwear. I didn’t particularly care to see her dressed that way. She was taking a little too much liberty in what was, at least until I took my bags out of the house today, still me and Ryan’s place. I ignored her attire and asked if they were hungry.

  “Starving, actually,” she spoke up, following me to the table.

  I wanted to say, ‘yeah, sex will do that to an appetite,’ but I kept my mouth shut.

  “So, how was Canada?” he asked, pulling out a chair for me.

  “I really wish I’d brought you along,” I blurted, not thinking that it would sound like I wanted to prevent what occurred between the two of them. “I-I-mean the plane had hydraulic problems and…”

  I could see a worried expression come over his face at the mention of airplane trouble.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “Pete and Jason talked me into a day of adventure; I went down a mountain on a zip-line at about fifty miles an hour, and then Jason and I went bungee jumping.”

  “Bungee jumping?” Ryan raised an eyebrow at the same moment a little crooked grin appeared on his face.

  “It was terrifying,” I confessed, “you’d have loved it. So-Candace-you must have stayed the night,” I said trying to keep the little quiver out of my voice. “You must be playing hooky today.”

  “No,” she laughed. “It’s a record day, so I don’t have anything to do until three when I go into work.”

  “Oh,” was all I could come up with.

  “I’m going to go take a shower,” she said, drinking the last of her coffee and rising from the table. “Do you want to take one with me?” she reached over and was tugging Ryan’s hand toward the bedroom.

>   I could see the look of indecision on his face. He was debating about being a gentleman while I was in the house, or giving in to what Candace wanted at the moment.

  “Go ahead,” I said, hoping to help with his decision. “I’ve got stuff to pack up anyway.”

  Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be led away. I wanted to scream at myself for being such a jealous idiot, but I would have to settle for grabbing my bags and throwing them into my car. I was slinging them around with enough force to make up for not being able to scream.

  Candace, on the other hand, was having no problem getting vocal in the other room. The more she screamed and moaned, the less I could take. I finally had enough. I grabbed my keys and made the first run to my new house. I fit everything except two bags into my car, but I wasn’t going to bother to go back for them until well after three p.m. Consciously or unconsciously, she was flaunting the fact that he belonged to her now.

  I called Jan and she told me the combo to the lockbox on the house and then she told me my new alarm code. I pulled up to the large craftsman style, two-story home. The house was a gray-brown stone façade with beautiful white columns framing in the front porch. They had done extensive landscaping and flowers lined the flagstone path up to the front door.

  It was certainly bigger than anything one person needed with just over three thousand square feet and three bedrooms and three and a half baths. The upper story was a huge bonus area the family had turned into a game room. There was a billiard table, dart board, bar, ping pong table and even two full-size antique video arcade machines. One game was Centipede and the other was Pac-man. The pool was not excessively large, but more than sufficient for laps and there was an eight person built in spa that flowed into the pool. It had an outdoor kitchen and barbeque on the pool patio. This was definitely a party house, but I was a party of one.

  After turning off the alarm and finding the remote to the garage, I pulled my car inside and drug my bags into the house. It was funny for them to seem so heavy now that I wasn’t running on all the embarrassed energy that filled me while Ryan and Candace showered.

  I got as far as the living room with the bags and flopped onto the couch. “It’s okay, Leese,” I said out loud, “you can cry now.” I rolled over onto the pillow and began to sob.

  I woke to the sound of a doorbell. For a stunned moment, I didn’t know where I was. I stumbled toward the door, glancing at the time on my cell phone as I did. It was three-thirty. I approached the door cautiously, expecting to see Jan’s petite figure through the stippled glass, but it was a man. I was pretty certain from the height and the darkness of the hair that it was Ryan. I looked through the peek-hole and he was there holding my last two bags.

  I opened the door, but he stood there sheepishly, waiting for me to invite him inside.

  “Hey,” was all I could manage.

  “When I realized you weren’t coming back for these, I figured you might be waiting for someone to leave.”

  “Yeah, I guess it kind of sucker-punched me in the gut. I mean, I’m happy for you-both of you, I just didn’t think it would be that hard to take.”

  “Candace didn’t help matters any,” he admitted.

  “Well, I can’t say I blame her. You are pretty much the catch of the century, especially when all those clips of you come out on Remake.”

  He rolled his eyes and stepped inside, “Where would you like me to…” His eyes went to the other bags lying on the living room floor. “Which bedroom are you sleeping in? I’ll carry all these for you.”

  I showed him the master bedroom, grateful for him to move the bags for me.

  “So did you bring your shorts?” I asked, pointing toward the pool.

  He grinned and grabbed for the buttons on his button-fly jeans; two buttons undone and I could see his trunks.

  I had to ask, “Did Candace know you were coming over?”

  “Yeah, she did, but I swear now that she and I have… Well, let’s say she’s more insecure over me being around you than before. I finally had to tell her to just get a grip because you and I are still best friends.”

  “Well, don’t get into fights with her over me,” I said, clearly shocked she was still concerned about he and I stepping over a line.

  “We aren’t going to fight about it. She’s just going to have to accept it.”

  I smiled, “You want to go ahead and get in the pool while I get my bikini on?”

  He gave me the most unusual look. I had never seen that expression on his face before and I couldn’t quite understand it. He turned and headed for the patio as I went into the bedroom to find my bathing suit and robe. It wasn’t until I joined him poolside that the realization hit me I’d never worn a bikini in front of him.

  Suddenly, I knew what the look on his face was reflecting. There were no secrets anymore. Ryan was a man who knew the intimacies of being with a woman and I was getting ready to get close to him with very little clothing on. Micah had given me a similar look as he waited for me the first time we swam together.

  “This isn’t going to get weird between us, is it?” I asked as he waited.

  “Leese, I honestly don’t think there has been anything between us that hasn’t been weird since we met. You were an heiress in hiding, a hit man was getting ready to steal you away, you end up marrying him, I end up running away with you, we love each other but we can’t make love, you work on hooking me up with an old flame, and now here we are, alone again-we are about as weird as it gets, baby girl.”

  I had to laugh. He was absolutely right. I pulled off the robe and dove in.

  He caught me pretty quickly and I surprised him by hugging his neck and kissing his cheek. “Well, at least we’re happy weirdoes.”

  “All right, so tell me what bungee jumping was like,” he said with curiosity.

  “I should have had you with me instead of Jason. They tied our legs-”

  “You jumped with him-I mean, literally tied to him?”

  “Yeah, he hugged me so tightly that-”

  “Like embracing each other?”

  I wrinkled my brow, “Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” I teased.

  “Baby girl, you are too innocent when it comes to men. Don’t be so trusting because some guys have all the wrong intentions.”

  “I don’t typically get that close to a man, but I was terrified to jump alone.”

  “Did you go head first?”

  “Yeah, and, at first, you can’t feel the bungee and it’s like ‘I’m gonna die, I just know it.’”

  “It sounds like you had a great time.”

  “I-I did. So how was your-adventure?”

  “Terrifying,” he laughed, “at first, but after I got over my heart feeling like it was going to jump out of my chest, and then remembering to breathe, it was pretty awesome.”

  I wanted so badly to ask him something he asked me once, but I was struggling to get it out and he noticed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I can see it in your face, baby girl. You want to know something; just say it.”

  I grinned slowly, “So are you a rock star?”

  The eyebrows went up as he grabbed me by my head and dunked me.

  I came up spluttering as he laughed and said according to Candace, he was.

  “So that means you have to answer the same question, because you never told me last time.”

  I took a deep breath, “He was the rock star, but he did say he’d never experienced anything like me.” I caught and wiped the tear as it blended into the pool water on my cheek.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he sighed. “I think you would be so different from Candace-she’s fun, but she acts her age. But you? I have a feeling you would give a whole different dimension to making love.”

  “Let’s swim, before we get too deep.”

  The rest of the afternoon we lightened up and enjoyed ourselves. I invited him to bring Candace, Andy, and Ty back to the house tonight for steaks on
the grill, fun in the game room, and pool. He kissed my cheek and said he’d be back in several hours. I went to the local grocery store and did some serious shopping and came back to the house and got everything ready.

  Candace didn’t get off work until nine, so I didn’t expect company until nine-thirty or ten. They showed right at ten p.m.

  “You really need to be my girlfriend,” Ty said teasingly after getting a tour of the house.

  The guys grilled while Candace and I tossed a salad and cut potatoes to brown in the convection oven. It gave us a chance to talk as I asked her if she was happy.

  Her eyes went huge as she smiled, “Who wouldn’t be? He’s about as perfect as perfect gets. I just hope he likes me half as much.”

  “Candace, don’t worry about him-he never would have-”

  “Yeah, I know, but I may have pushed him a little hard on that issue.”

  “Still, if he didn’t want to, he would have found an excuse. Don’t doubt yourself; he’s crazy about you.”

  She giggled and thanked me for the vote of confidence.

  It was a little wild after we all got down to bathing suits and jumped into the pool, but Candace and I survived all the testosterone and flexing.

  Once everyone left and I locked the house and set the alarm, I got to try my wings out at being alone-really alone. I hated it. Within an hour, I was ready to jump in my car and drive back to our little place in the historic district, but I knew what I’d walk in on and I simply couldn’t handle that. I laid down in the silence, but it was driving me crazy. I finally got up and found the stereo and turned on the music and went back to bed. Drowning out the silence was preferred, but I still couldn’t sleep. Somewhere around five in the morning, I slipped into unconsciousness. Two hours later, I was having coffee and watching the morning sky, ripple across the hills.

  I didn’t see Ryan and Candace until late Saturday evening when they came over to swim, but I could tell Ryan was studying my face. I knew he wanted to corner me and ask how I slept last night, but I made sure he didn’t get the opportunity.

  Saturday night was no better and I simply couldn’t, no matter the exhaustion level, get to sleep. I went out and did laps in the pool until I was so weak I could hardly drag myself from the water, but within an hour of dozing off, I was awake again. This was driving me insane. Before I met Micah, I didn’t have trouble sleeping. After Micah, it was as if my ability to close my eyes stayed with him when I ran away.