It was happening. She was falling, being torn apart, and this time, it was in the anguish she witnessed in Lincoln’s eyes. The pain she’d put there.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Lincoln,” she whispered. “There are things I don’t understand, and one of them is how I feel about you. I know I think about you all the time, I know I miss you when we’re not together. But what it all means…I don’t know. I have to learn how to move on without him and I’m stumbling right now. I have to learn how to accept that he’s gone and even though it’s not okay, I can still be okay. Somehow. I have to do this on my own, Lincoln. Otherwise…” Sara took a deep breath. “Otherwise I’ll never be okay. Not for myself, not for you, not for anyone.”
Lincoln exhaled noisily, squinting into the sun. “I know what you’re saying, I do. But…it doesn’t stop the way I’m feeling. Ya know, I always wanted to be like him. But not this time. This time I want nothing to be like him. I only want to be me. And I want that to be what you want. I want you to look at me and see me, not him. I don’t want to be a reminder. I want you to look at me and forget him.” Lincoln faced her, the force of him overpowering.
“I want you to want me for me. But you have to let go of him to find me, Sara. I can’t be the filler guy. I won’t be. So you have to figure that out. You have to decide what I am and you have to mean it. I’m yours. I just want to make sure, I have to know, that you’re mine. So you go do what you have to do.”
She blinked her tear-filled eyes, the chasm inside her lengthening. “Okay, Lincoln.”
“Okay.” He showed her his profile, his features stiff, unyielding.
Sara turned in the direction of her car, lost once more, and was immediately grabbed and whirled around. Lincoln threaded his fingers through her hair, pulling her face up, and assaulted her lips with his. Longing crashed over her and Sara responded to Lincoln’s fire with her own, her body thrumming with need. She grabbed his hair and twined it around her fingers. Lincoln moaned, moving them against a tree. The rough bark abraded her skin through the thin material of her jacket. He kissed her with a raw need, hunger in every touch of his lips to hers.
Lincoln tore his lips away, eliciting a whimper of yearning from Sara. His chest heaved up and down and his eyes blazed with passion as he stared down at her. “You think about this moment, right now, while you’re out finding yourself, Sara. ‘Cause you know what? I already found you. You’re mine. I’m yours. I know it. You know it. You just have to see it.”
***
The need to have a connection to him, even if only from her end, had been strong and Sara had walked into the garage before she’d known what she was doing. She’d stayed away for so long; not moving forward, but now it was time. She had to do it for herself, if she ever wanted to be at peace; if she ever wanted to be happy; even if she ever wanted to have a future with another man. Lincoln’s gray eyes shimmered in her mind and she pushed them away. This was for her. He couldn’t be a part of it, though he always was with her, no matter what she was doing or not doing. Imbedded into her heart, her soul, her being.
The boxes were endless; her past sprawled out around her in cards, letters, and photographs. Sara sat on the dirty floor of the garage, randomly plucking a faded piece of paper from the top of the box. She opened it, laughing shakily as she read the note.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I got a boner
And it’s because of you.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
She wiped her damp eyes, staring at his messy handwriting. Sara had loved everything about him; even his warped sense of humor. She set the note back in the box. Sara sorted through her past, keeping remembrances of him she could never part with, setting aside all she could. She found a black baseball cap with a snowmobile logo on it and set it on her head as she reconnected with what she’d lost. Halfway through she even grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge, but it was old and she didn’t like Busch Light anyway. One drink and she tossed it out.
The doors of the house were open; as were the doors to the future. It was time. It hurt. But it was time. She couldn’t live in the house anymore; she couldn’t live in the past. Sara had finally come to terms with that, though knowing something didn’t make it hurt any less.