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“Don’t cry, baby; I’m here.”
“But you left,” she wails.
“I’m back. Don’t cry.”
She finally calms down, and I grab some toilet paper to dry her tears.
“Do you want to go to bed?”
“I want to talk. Please don’t leave me.”
“I promise I won’t. Wash your face, and I’ll be waiting for you when you come out.”
She gets off my lap and turns on the sink. While she’s washing and brushing her teeth, I go into her bedroom and take off my jacket and shoes. I sit in one of the light blue velvet side chairs and wait for her to come out. Lana exits the bathroom and sits down on the bed with her legs crossed. She looks younger than her twenty-nine years, like a lost child.
“Zane, I’m sorry. I’m just…”
“Lana, what’s going on with you? Paige is very concerned.”
“I haven’t been happy lately. Declan has been busy, and all the wedding preparations have been on me. It’s like he doesn’t even care.”
“Why are you marrying him then?”
“You know why. I can’t do this again. I just can’t.”
“He has to take some responsibility for how you feel. You told me he made you his first priority.”
“Before we got engaged, he did. Now it’s different. It’s like he has someone else to worry about. I sometimes think he has a mistress with all his trips, some of them last minute.”
I cringe with the knowledge I hold inside and wonder if I should just spill the beans and tell her.
“And now he doesn’t care? You’re not a priority?”
“It doesn’t seem like it. I told him I was depressed and he said deal with it. Don’t embarrass him. I thought the pills would help, but I feel like a zombie when I take them.”
“You can’t mix them, and you can’t drink alcohol. You were never like this when we were together. You were unhappy, but not this bad.”
“I always cared for you Zane, I still do. Do you want to know a secret?”
“Sure.”
I watch as she reaches behind her neck and unlatches the chain holding the locket she always wears. She holds it out to me to take from her.
“Open it, and you’ll learn my secret.”
My hands are shaking a little when I unhook the locket. It pops open, and the locket that I gave her years ago is inside. I look up, and tears are rolling down her cheeks. I slide my nail into the seam, and as it opens, I see the pictures of me and us together that she had put in there. I’m confused, and my heart clenches.
“Why do you still have this?”
“Because I never could forget you. You were my first real love. The man I thought was my soul mate. The man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.”
“But if that’s the case, you’re living a lie. Do you love Declan?”
“I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure. I was too caught up in the material things that he gave me to look hard at our relationship.”
“You need to end it before it’s too late.”
“I can’t do that. I just have to hope that everything works out after we marry. Maybe things will change.”
