Take Me All the Way by Toni Blake

Author:Toni Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

“You are real, aren’t you?” he said. “I have such real dreams very often. You might be one of them.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Chapter 14

FLETCHER FELT like he was seeing a ghost. He blinked, stared, tried to figure out if she was real.

She looked almost the same. Her hair was shorter, curlier than before. And her face perhaps showed a few signs of aging, the kind he’d never have noticed if he’d seen her every day. But her smile remained just as electrical, her eyes as bright.

“Kim,” he murmured, trying to wrap his head around this.

He’d spent all this time waiting, wanting, knowing she’d be back one day. But lately, just since meeting Bethany, he’d begun to think less about it, put his focus elsewhere—on what was in the here and now, in front of his eyes. If Kim had tapped him on the shoulder two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have been nearly as stunned as he was right now.

“Look at you, Fletch,” she said, taking him in, same as he was doing with her. “I barely recognized you. You shaved and cut your hair! You look great! It’s so good to see you, my love.” She was shaking her head in a heartfelt way, the way of lovers long parted, the way he’d dreamed she would someday.

He just hadn’t expected someday to be tonight, right now, when for the first time ever he’d been gathering the strength to finally move on.

Fletcher tried to think of words—but none came. He’d played this moment over in his head a thousand times—but it hadn’t happened like this, in the middle of a party, in front of the people who’d become his friends, in front of a woman he’d been ready to kiss. Nothing about this felt the way he’d thought it would.

When finally he found his voice, he said, “Wh-where have you been?” From his peripheral vision he could see eyes upon him. Music still played, but the people who knew him best were watching, understanding that this long awaited place in time had finally come. He could barely hear anything over the pounding of his heart in his ears.

The question made Kim’s smile fade. Funny thing was, he’d always planned to make it easy on her. To welcome her back with smiles and hugs and joy—and sort it all out after the fact. But that wasn’t turning out like he’d expected either.

His wife swallowed visibly. “I’m so sorry, Fletch. No words can make up for it, I know.” She reached out, grabbed his hand. Her touch felt strange—both familiar and foreign. “Let’s go somewhere and talk. Is there a place we can be alone?”

“I . . . I have a house. I bought a house.”

She looked surprised, understandably. They’d never wanted to own property, be tied down—they were adventurers together. “A house?”

He just nodded. “It was a long time, Kim. Had to live somewhere.”

She looked appropriately guilty. Which he hadn’t intended exactly—and yet he wasn’t sorry to point out the obvious: Her actions had been monumentally life changing, and monumentally hurtful.

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