I was a lineman. I could defend myself and anyone else who came along from another burly man hurdling across time and space with the intent of mayhem. But this was not a battle on the gridiron. This was not rush/pass play that kept me on my toes. This was Aly. This was my life and I had the sick, sinking feeling that once again both were slipping away from me. Where had it all gone wrong?
It was all I could do to keep upright, to turn away from that building, trying my hardest to keep last night from my mind, and the countless nights before then. She’d been mine, like a second skin. Aly had always been the scar I’d gotten at eighteen, something I earned, something I fought like hell to keep marked on my skin. I’d wanted her and always would. Was that the ache my parents had endured for sixteen long years? That feeling that you’d lost something vital—not a finger that you could manage to be without over time and with patience; not like a limb that you could replace with something else to keep you steady. Worse than that: like walking around without your heart. Had my parents really done that for so long? As I stepped away from the building I realized that’s what this was to me—losing Aly was like losing myself completely. I knew that I simply couldn't survive without her. It went beyond wanting her. I needed her. Needed her like I needed life itself.
Two steps, three more and I’d already gained new insight to what all those long, lonely years had been for my mother. How many times had I heard that prayer she made? How often had I wondered when the day would come that those prayers stopped? They never had and now, with the sting of that so very public kiss like a splinter under my nails, I realized I needed to learn a few prayers of my own.
But it was no use. They’d all be the same: Please bring Aly back to me.
I had no shame. Right there, with the bustle of New Orleans life all around me, I stopped in the middle of the street, lowered my head until all I could see was my feet, and I prayed. To be honest, it felt funny mumbling to myself, like a wish I wasn’t sure would come true, but I was desperate to try anything, anything, that would bring Aly back to me. To let me have one more chance for me to show her just how important she was to me, and how much I needed her by my side.
Maybe I stood there seconds. Maybe it was minutes or hours and the sting of her leaving had created some crazy rift in my mind, some weird lapse that kept me from understanding that I hadn’t moved, that I was standing there repeating the same prayer over and over, a dozen, a hundred times, a thousand times. Please bring Aly back to me.
I’d never had much faith. I knew God watched over me, or I supposed He did. Sometimes I thought He liked to fiddle with my life just for shits and giggles. But right then, in the middle of that street in the heart of the bustling city, with all the noise around me, I believed in Him. I believed like a child. I believed in miracles.
And right then, He answered my prayer.
The voice came to me like a whisper at first, and then it got louder, took shape. It sounded sweet and comforting and just like what I imagined salvation must sound like, and when I looked up, that sweet, sultry voice spoke my name.
“Ransom?” Aly said, smiling up at me. How could she smile at me like that? “Where are Mack and Koa?” She looked across me, slightly confused, as though she expected them to be trailing behind me on the sidewalk. Aly came closer, adjusting the buttons on her jacket and the thin dance skirt that fit loosely over her tights. “I’m starving. Where do you…” She stopped speaking suddenly when she spotted the moisture collected in my lashes. “Shoushou…" she said, with concern and love in her voice, as she reached up to brush the tears away, "What is it?”
“You…” The words stopped at the back of my throat, as though speaking them would confirm something I was too terrified to voice. I tried again. “You came back?” I moved my chin, nodding toward the building’s front entrance and the lobby that led straight to Ethan’s office.
Aly looked over her shoulder and comprehension dawned on her lovely, her beautiful face. “Well, yeah. Of course,” she said, looking back at me. “I had to give Ethan his ring back.” She held up her left hand, wiggling her fingers, and my breath caught when I saw it was unadorned, minus that glittering diamond that had torn my dreams apart.
My mind felt muddled, as though I’d tried to drown myself in a fizzy bath of Coke and Pop Rocks. “You, you told him? Aly, you left him? For real?”