Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,56

the way his touch almost burned it felt so good. I exhaled slowly, trying not to remember it, the way it took my breath away when he held my hand, the way my heart told me he was the one I should be with forever.

“Was it all that bad that you had to run out of the bar like that?” Frank asked.

Then I made the worst mistake a girl can make. I looked at him. Straight in the eyes. Those deep, navy-blue eyes, the ones I thought I’d be looking into at the altar, the ones I thought our babies would have. I felt that familiar pang in my heart, that emptiness in my belly. Our baby.

My heart stood stock-still for a few seconds until I got the nerve to say, “You know, Frank? Yeah. It was that bad. In fact, it was worse than that bad.”

His face fell. “But, Di, come on. My parents. And I was just a kid.”

“You were just a kid?” I practically spat at him. “No, I was just a kid! You were old enough that you should’ve known better. You were old enough that you should’ve fought for me.”

He nodded and swallowed hard. “I know, Di. I knew it then; I know it now. I’ve known it the whole time.” He paused. “But, damn, Di. You were the one that left me. It took me a long time to figure out why, but back then, you broke my heart. I was devastated.”

But I bet you still don’t know why.

I shook my head. “I find that hard to believe, that you, smart as you are, couldn’t figure out where I was.” I tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed my hand. “Where have you been for twenty years, Frank? What have you been doing all this time that kept you from coming back before now if all that’s really true?”

He stared at me and burst out, “My dad, D, he’s gone.”

And just like that, I was in the past, back in Frank’s house, laughing on his porch while his daddy grilled hot dogs. I put my hand over my heart as my breath caught in my throat. I had loved Frank’s daddy. He had loved me. I used to dream that I had a daddy out there who was just like him, that he would come find me one day.

“Frank,” I said, his name tasting warm and familiar in my mouth, as if it hadn’t been twenty-two years, as if no time had passed at all. “I am so sorry.”

He shook his head. “For all these years, Diana, I haven’t been able to move on. All I’ve dreamed about is you.” He seemed sort of out of breath, and I found myself, as much as I didn’t want to, reaching over to touch his arm, to steady him. “I just wanted you to be happy. I thought my staying away was the best thing, even if it meant that I would be miserable.”

“So why now? Did you suddenly decide that you didn’t care about me being happy?” I was trying to lighten the mood, but I could tell by his serious expression that that wasn’t in the cards.

“No. I’ve known all this time that I’d never really be happy without you.” He took my hand in his and said, “But it took me until now to realize that maybe this is how it is with true love, that it never goes away. And I thought that maybe you couldn’t really be happy without me either.”

CHAPTER 9

gray: a summer thing

It had been three weeks. Three weeks of no Wagner. Three weeks since I had ruffled his shaggy blond hair or kissed his sweet, doughy cheeks—which were losing their doughiness by the minute, much to my chagrin—or pulled him into me for one of those great hugs where his entire body went slack. I was literally counting the minutes.

Sure, I wasn’t thrilled about having to see Greg, but it was totally worth the trade-off. Despite being at odds, we were able to keep things civil around Wagner.

I’ll just say, I gave myself most of the credit for that. My mom taught me to be the bigger person, to turn the other cheek. Some days it was harder than others to think about my husband—and, even more so, my son—with another woman, but I was tolerating it.

As I sat on the porch waiting for my boy to get back to me, I automatically picked up my