me you loved me back, then poof, one day, with no real explanations, you were just gone.” I desperately need him to understand what I felt back then.
“I know, El. Matt was supposed to explain the things I couldn’t. I was weak, and the very idea of leaving you tore me up. Of course, I felt the same! I was so fucking in love with you. But, I made promises to my dad and he saw how close I was getting with you. He knew I was wavering on my decision to leave you.” The look on his face is pure agony as he expresses all of his pent up anger and regret. “He signed me up early. I had no choice, I had to leave.”
Hearing his heartfelt words I can’t help but fall to my knees. He’s just confirmed that I meant something to him. How is it even possible? His father is the reason I’ve lost it all? Him and oh God, is he telling me I could’ve been with him all this time? If that’s the truth, it means I could have had…no! We could have had our…baby.
Rocking back and forth on my knees, I hold my head, because it hurts too bad not to. The realization that we could have been a family all along cripples me. Micah sinks to his knees, joining me, and takes me in his arms. I don’t fight him, I can’t.
“After some time, I knew it was better not to interfere. I would wait and come back home someday to find you. I did just that, the first night back home. Went to your house, but your father had me believe you had no desire ever to see me again. That if you ever meant anything to me, I’d let you go, let you live your life.”
His body is trembling against mine and his eyes wince like he’s in pain. Seeing him this vulnerable and shaken, breaks me even more. The need to touch him is too powerful. I need to touch him in some way. Grasping his cheeks in my hands, I just let them rest there. Our eyes dance as years of lost moments dawn on us.
I’m in disbelief, like all of this is some sick joke. My laugh, if you can call it that, is reminiscent of an evil witch’s cackle. “I can’t believe this. All I’ve done is spent years thinking I meant nothing to you. That all I felt was a one-sided crush.”
His breathing hitches. “It’s not, and it never was.”
The way his baby blues command me, the way they speak to my soul, it’s all consuming. I have to ask him the one thing that’s bothered me for so long, and while we're being honest, I ask him as softly as I can.
“What happened with your father, Micah? Make me understand why you left the way you did.”
Micah’s moving us, so we’re stretched out on the floor against the foot of my bed. I’m intently listening to him fill in the blanks. It’s not a beautiful story, it’s more of him telling me how he was forced into fulfilling his father’s dream for him. At one time, following in the family’s footsteps was Micah’s dream, too. The minute it looked like Micah would choose me over the Air Force, it all changed. His father made the choice for him.
His father drilled it in his son’s head that I was a sixteen-year-old crush, a girl he would get over. I simply was not his future or his life. Micah told his story of being pulled in two separate directions. His love for me and his family traditions. His father won, he got his wish.
“Why could you not have both, Micah? This is what I don’t understand. Why not be with me and be in the Air Force? Why one or the other? Why so cut and dry?” This made no sense to me.
The sigh he lets out, signals more truth is coming. “You were a distraction for me, and my father clearly saw it, predicted it even. He insisted I enter the Air Force, with a clear head, and nothing left behind to mess with my mind. It failed, I never stopped thinking about you, the girl I met in high school. All bubbly, and sweet as hell, in this petite body. My pretty girl.” He says my nickname while running his hand tenderly down my cheek.
Listening to his words, and seeing the honest look he