Page 71 of Estranged Heart

Elijah: Sure. Should I pick you up or meet you there?

Me: You can pick me up if it’s a date.

My heart speeds up and I feel like I’m holding my breath waiting for him to answer.

Elijah: I’ll be at your place at 3 p.m. If that works for you, we can have dinner afterward.

Me: Can’t wait

Elijah: Sweet dreams, Sunshine.

With all the happiness and hope bursting inside me you’d think I would, but if it didn’t keep the nightmares away last time, why would it now?

Twenty-five

Elijah

I’m adding change to one of the drawers when the door swings open. I look up, ready to greet a customer when I’m taken by surprise by the person smiling at me. Jessa and I have only exchanged short conversations over the phone since the day of the funeral.

“Look at this place, Eli. It’s really something. Landon would be so damn proud. Hell, I’m proud. You really look like you belong here.”

“I feel like I do.” I step around the counter. “It’s good to see you.”

“Is it? It’s been a while, and I was worried until I saw you at Mabel’s Bakery holding hands with some guy. New friend of yours?”

My face heats and I shove my hands in my jeans. “I’m not really sure what we are yet. He sorta came outta nowhere.”

“Well, whatever the case, I think he’s good for you. You’re bathing and you look like you’re sleeping again.”

“I don’t know.” I lean back on the counter, looking away from her, and she steps forward, tugging at my face.

“I do. Landon would have wanted you to be happy, you know. He would have hated being the one responsible for making you so down in the dumps. You know he would.” Her hand drops and her lips lift into a gentle smile.

“Yeah, but with someone else, and so soon? I don’t know. It’s hard to not feel at least a little guilt over it, but I shrug it off when I’m with him because being together just feels so damn good.”

“You loved Landon more than anything in this world. He knows that. I know that. You finding happiness with someone else will never erase that, and there’s never a time limit on these things.”

“Shouldn’t there be?”

“Not when it has to do with you finding joy in life again. Before, you could barely step foot in this place, and now you’re fully in your element.”

“He makes being here not so bad, and I find myself thinking more of happy times when I walk in here. I thought I’d only feel that with Landon. There was never supposed to be someone else.”

“I know, Eli. But so many events take place in our lives that aren’t supposed to happen. Neither of us were ‘supposed to’ ever stand here speaking of Landon in the past tense either. It does neither of us any good torturing ourselves with all the ‘supposed tos.’ We’ll still land where we are now either way. Do you think if the roles were reversed, you’d want Landon to hold back on life?”

“No, of course not. I’d want him to be happy even if it wasn’t with me. I’d want him to take the good anytime he had the chance to have it again, but this is different.”

“Why?”

“Because it is.” I take a breath. “You see, he’s married.”

Her eyes round. “Wait. You two are having an affair? Who have you even become? This is the man who wouldn’t keep a five-dollar bill he found on the street.”

“I know, it’s crazy. And I don’t know how to explain why it was so easy for me to break my moral code with him, other than that we both needed to escape from something and could only find that peace with each other.”

“So his wife or husband—”

“Wife, and she knows. They’re no longer living together. There were problems in their marriage way before we met and I’m not the main reason he’s leaving. I think he’d eventually have ended up going through with it whether I came along or not.”