Page 13 of Winter Memories

His words aren’t loud, but the way they reverberate around the room has me swaying closer to him without even realizing it. What is he saying?

“Yeah,” I nod, my voice shaky, “I can understand that.”

“Can you?” His eyes bore into mine and all I can do is nod. He deflates right before my eyes, and it makes me want to sob. “I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life, but that day is my biggest one.” He shakes his head, and I can feel the weight of his regret, it makes the air around us heavy and wraps around us. “I’ve missed you every fucking day since then, Eden,” he whispers.

I take a step closer to him without realizing it. “I’ve missed you too, Fletch, so much,” my voice cracks, the emotion clear in my voice.

Something flashes across his face, and he scowls. “I thought you’d come home so many times. But you didn’t,” his voice is filled with an angry accusation, one I understand.

“I wanted to,” I admit, the words being pulled from me by the rage bubbling under the surface of him.

“Why didn’t you?” He spits the question at me. “It took a long fucking time, but I finally let you go, finally let the hope of you coming home go.”

We stare at each other for what feels like forever. The moment feels suspended between us, stuck in time, and lost to the ethos of our shared past.

It’s not until his hands come up and he wipes my cheeks that I realize the tears I was trying to hold back are sliding down my face. His touch does something to me. It both makes me feel like I’m shrouded in darkness and lit up from the inside out.

Fletcher, the boy, was my first love. But the man in front of me? It feels like I don’t know him anymore, but at the same time our pasts are entwined, and he could never truly be a stranger to me.

There’s still something between us.

I wasn’t sure whether there would be or not, but I had no doubt I’d know the moment I came in contact with him again. Did I want there to just be our memories between us or was I hoping for more?

Now I know there is still so much more.

But what do we do about it?

“I’m sorry I didn’t come home, Fletch,” my words feel like broken glass scraping against my skin with how much they’re filled with my truth.

His eyes slide closed slowly, as if he’s being cut by the shards the same way I am.

“You have a son,” he grunts.

“I do,” I whisper.

“He’s gorgeous,” his voice is filled with pain, his face contorting in a way that makes my heart clench.

“You’re the only man I ever wanted to have kids with,” I admit and his eyes pop open. “I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve laid in bed at night wishing he were yours. You would have never left us, left him. You would have been there, loving us and soaking it all up. But that’s not what happened, and I can’t change it.” My shoulders slump. “I can’t change any of it.”

His strong arms wrap around me, and he hauls me against his chest. I know what I’ve just admitted is something I should be ashamed of, but it’s the damn truth. Why should I hide it? Why should I be ashamed of it?

Everything I just said out loud, giving voice to my deepest thoughts and feelings, is true. Fletcher would have pressed his lips against my growing belly and whispered all of his hopes and dreams against my skin. He would have held me when I was scared and worried about the kind of mother I was going to be. He would have stood by me during the sleepless nights and when I panicked at every sniffle.

He would have been my, our, rock.

But that’s not the way life played out for me and Macklin. I can wish it a million times, I can fantasize about it even more, but that doesn’t make it true.

“Eden,” he rasps as his fingers dive into my hair and tighten at the back of my head. “I wish he was mine too.”

He tilts my head up and we stare into each other’s eyes, and it feels like everything disappears.

The 13 years of time and distance.

The regrets of not being in each other’s lives.

The room around us.

The memories our past is shrouded in.

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