Page 115 of Healing the Heart

“Do you want me to stay?” Lexie asked, jiggling and bouncing a now red-faced-and-crying Miah.

“Go see to him. I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” she shot back loudly to be heard over the racket the baby was making. “But I’ll be right inside if you need me.”

“You’re the best, Lex. Thanks.”

When she was alone and it was quiet enough to think, she slid out the tri-folded sheet of paper. She didn’t recall ever seeing Noah’s handwriting before. Like most physicians, his scrawl wouldn’t win a penmanship contest, but it was also neat and deliberate, as though he hadn’t quickly jotted it off but had taken his time with it.

Fiona,

There is no excuse for how I left things with you. I can’t express in words how sorry I am for that. The nightmares may have clued you in that I’ve been struggling. Seeing you with a knife to your throat brought back some things from my past. I was trying to work through it on my own and clearly not doing a good job of it.

Again, no excuse.

The time away, including eighty plus hours spent on planes and in airports, gave me time to think. It made me realize how much I want you in my life. I hope I haven’t eliminated that possibility because I don’t want to lose you.

Call me, please. I’d like to see you and talk more.

Noah

She read through it several times before Lexie returned without Miah. It was his nap time.

When she sat next to her, Fiona passed her the letter.

“We all have baggage,” she said after she finished reading. “What we don’t all do is act like an asshole and bail on people we supposedly care about.”

“He apologized, Lex.”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged quietly. “But what’s stopping him from turning asshole again the next time he’s triggered?” She gripped her hand. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Fiona admitted, totally conflicted because she loved him, but he’d wrecked her.

“Good. Let him stew in his dominant juices as you mull it over,” she suggested.

Fiona nodded then leaned into her friend and rested her head on her shoulder. Lexie immediately wrapped both arms around her in a side hug.

They sat in silence for a long time before she asked, “Why does life have to be so hard?”

“I wish I had an answer for that,” Lexie replied. “Some people go through a rough patch, whereas I traveled a nearly three-decade long pothole-ridden road and frequently asked myself the same thing. I convinced myself it would always be like that. Then, one day, it stopped being hard.”

“Because of Jonas?”

“Yeah. There’s a good man out there for you, honey.”

“What if it’s Noah, and I don’t take him back?”

“Then you move to San Antonio near your BFF. We have a lot more to offer than LA. You could get a job in a minute and buy a house three or four times the size of your apartment at half the price. And we have a Club Decadence, too. The original.”

“I can’t even think about that.”

She released her and said with a crestfallen look, “But we’re supposed to go to LBD night tomorrow. It’s my first time back since Miah was born. I had it all planned. I was going to introduce you to the girls, and we were going to trash talk Noah Richmond as we downed pitchers of the best margaritas in Texas.”

“You hate tequila.”

“True. You have margaritas. I’ll have lemon drops. But you can’t desert me.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

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