The Purple Heart (17 page)

The sky did seem to be opening up, and
rays of light were streaming down around my yard. I watched her
walk to her car and drive away. I was almost afraid to close the
door. It reminded me of closing the lid to a coffin. I would be
alone again.

I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it,
but Gina was right, I was willing to try anything to reach out to
Aiden. Since I had exhausted all traditional means of
communication, I needed to try her suggestion.

So where could I go to feel centered
enough to try and contact him?
My Zen.
Aiden had taken my
backyard and made it into a place of Zen for me. The rain had
stopped, so it was only a matter of grabbing my papasan cushion and
a blanket. I settled myself into my chair, and pulled my knees up
to my chest.

“
Okay, here goes nothing.
Aiden, please, come back to me,” I expressed quite flatly and
flopped my hands into my lap.

I felt like a complete idiot. This
wasn’t going to work. I might as well ask to win the billions from
the lottery gods. I had about the same chance of either request
working.

I needed to make this more real. I
started to picture Aiden in my head, his warm smile, and the timbre
of his voice, his beautiful eyes.
Wait, his eyes always seemed
to reach into the depths of his soul when I looked into them. I’d
focus on his eyes.
I imagined he was standing in front of me
and I was staring right into them.

“
Please, baby, come back to
me. I am so, so sorry for asking you to leave. I didn’t mean
it.”

I opened my eyes and nothing. I felt a
pang of hurt, lowered my head and began to play with the hem of my
pants.
Maybe if I just told him how I felt, really felt from the
heart, he might hear me.

“
Aiden, I am so sorry for
what happened between us. It’s my entire fault. I was a complete
and utter ass. I pushed you away right when I should have been
pulling you closer. I wasn’t honest with you.” I said it with every
emotion I had pent up inside me.

A breeze blew over me that chilled me
right to the bone. I wanted to get up and hightail it inside but I
wasn’t done. I was actually feeling connected to him. Well, at
least talking to him was making me feel like he was with me in
spirit.

“
Baby, I don’t know how to
find you. But I hope to God you can hear me, or at least feel me. I
need you to know how I feel. I don’t want you to be gone, because …
I can’t live without you. Please, Aiden, come home to
me.”

“
Sydney.” It was almost as
though I could hear his voice. “Sydney?” I heard it
again.

“
Please don’t let me be
hallucinating,” I whispered under my breath.

“
If you’d just turn around,
you’d see that you’re not.” He chuckled from behind me.

I jumped out of my papasan, causing it
to spin on its base, only to dump me flat on my stomach on the
floor. The cushion and cage encased me, making me appear to be some
sort of awkward, bizarre turtle. I was staring at a pair of shoes.
Normally I might be humiliated at my display of gracelessness, but
all I wanted to do was make sure Aiden’s feet were in those
shoes.

“
Those are some awesome
evasive maneuvers you have there. I would have been proud to have
you as a member of my platoon.”

I felt Aiden start to remove the cage
from my back, but I quickly scrambled out from underneath it, and
literally crawled up his body until I was back in a standing
position and nestled into his arms.

“
Aiden. You came back to
me; you’re home,” I said through tears. I was grasping onto his
shirt, holding him in place so he couldn’t leave.

The waterworks were flowing so freely I
was afraid I was going to drown him as I covered his face with
kisses. I hugged him so close I was sure I was suffocating him,
too. At this point, I was loving him to death,
literally.

“
Sydney, babe, I couldn’t
stay away from you even if I tried. Believe me,
I tried
. It
took everything I had to stay away, so I could regard your wishes.
I tried to give you what you wanted, but it’s not what I want. I
came here to beg you to reconsider. We can work this all out. I
promise, I’ll do whatever it takes to make you more
comfortable.”

“
I don’t care about any of
that. I just want you here with me. You’re a part of my life I
can’t live without. Please don’t ever leave me again.”

“
I don’t plan on it.
Apparently you get violent when you’re alone. What the hell did you
do?” he voiced his concern while cradling my bandaged hand in his.
He ran his fingers over my wrist and eyed me carefully.

“
It’s not what you think.”
I knew his initial impression was that I had tried to slit my
wrist. It looked like I had, the way it was wrapped.

“
I should hope not, Sydney.
That would have been very detrimental to our future together,”
Aiden said sternly.

“
I would never do that. I
stabbed myself while trying to not starve myself.”

“
Very interesting way of
going about things. I’m sorry.”

“
Why are
you
sorry?”
I questioned.

“
Because if I
had
been here,
that
wouldn’t have happened. I hate the thought
of you in pain in any way at all. I’m sorry I didn’t come back
sooner. Hell, Sydney, I’m sorry I left
at all
. I should have
fought you to stay. I must have made you feel terrible, like I
didn’t care about you or want you. It’s been torturing me since I
walked out the door. I’m so sorry I hurt you like that.”

“
Again, why are you
apologizing to me? I’m the one who hurt you. I
made
you
leave. I told you to. I turned my back and listened while you cried
over me. Please say you forgive me, Aiden. Please. I can’t stand
what I did to you. And I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but
if you could find it in your heart …”

He placed his finger in front of my
lips and shushed me. I felt like licking it. The feel of his skin
touching mine was more than I could bear even from just his little
finger alone.

“
Have you eaten? Gotten any
sleep at all? Does your hand hurt?” I was overwhelmed by his
compassion for me after everything I had put him
through.

“
Gina came here and made me
eat and shower. She took care of the cooking. Cheryl drugged me so
I got at least three hours of sleep. Yes, it hurts, but I’ll
survive. How about you?” I smiled and waited for his
reply.

“
First things first.” He
took my hand, raised it to his mouth and placed a gentle kiss on
it. All the pain seemed to melt away. “Yes, I’ve eaten. No,
sleeping was not an option without you beside me. I’ve become
spoiled in that respect. Does it feel better now?” he
explained.

“
Yes, actually it really
does. Do you want to go inside? I can put on a pot of tea. Maybe we
can talk things out or just hold each other for awhile.” I didn’t
care where we were, really.

“
I’d like to do all of it.
I just want to be in your presence. Does that sound
strange?”

“
No. I completely feel the
same way.” And I did.

He took my good hand in his and led me
inside. He brought me to the couch in the living room and sat me
down.

“
I’m making tea for you. I
don’t trust you in the kitchen right now,” he teased. “You’re hurt.
I want to pamper you. Wait right here, I’ll be right back. Don’t
move.”

I nodded and watched him walk to the
kitchen to begin making tea. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was
actually afraid to. I needed to be sure he was really here with me.
I was also making sure he didn’t ever leave again. The thought of
barricading the door crossed my mind.

He returned while the water boiled,
sitting right up against me and placing his arm around my shoulder.
He pulled me close to him.

“
Can I ask you a question?”
I requested.

“
You can ask me whatever
you want. I won’t hide anything from you ever again. I realized how
it must have made you feel, my being so secretive.”

“
I shouldn’t have pried,” I
told him.

“
You had every right to,
both personally and professionally. I was wrong to not be open with
you.”

“
Where did you go? I mean,
were you with anyone I …”

“
Stop right there. I would
never run out and into the arms of another woman. So no, I was not
with anyone. I went to a twenty-four hour diner. I spent a lot of
time there. Sal, the owner and a very nice old
gentleman
,
and I had a very long talk. You can thank him for helping me work
some things out in my head. Very knowledgeable man.”

My sigh of relief was probably louder
than it needed to be. He smiled in response.

“
I know the feeling. Gina
missed her calling as a psychologist.”

“
I’m glad she was here for
you. There’s another reason why I didn’t get any sleep. They don’t
take kindly to sleeping in diners,” he joked. “Look, I’m sorry I
didn’t call you to let you know where I was. I just wanted to give
you what you asked for. Space.”

“
I’m a fool. I had the best
thing that ever happened to me right in front of me and I threw it
away. I won’t ever do that again. There is no
me
without
you
.”

“
You have no idea how true
that statement is, Sydney. There is
no me
without
you,
either. Now I’m going to make that tea. Are you
hungry?”

“
No, thanks. I don’t want
anything but you. If the tea wasn’t on the stove already, I’d say
forget it, too.”

The expression he had on his face was
just so damn cute I couldn’t resist pulling him into a kiss. His
lips lingered on mine before he tore himself away to head into the
kitchen. He returned shortly with a tray holding the pot of tea,
two mugs and cookies. He poured us each a mug and handed mine to
me.

“
Ask me anything. What do
you want to know?” I eyed him while trying to determine if he would
sincerely answer anything I asked him.

“
You don’t have to do
this,” I told him.

“
Yes, I do. Now
ask.”

“
All right. Do you come
from a big family?”

“
I have two older brothers
and my parents. Neither of my parents had siblings, so no cousins.
So not really, just a very small family.” That seemed
painless.

“
Do you miss
them?”

“
I miss them, but my
parents weren’t fond of my choice to join the military. It was
really quite sad. They were opposed to war. They said if I partook
in it, I was no longer their son in their eyes.”

“
Oh my God, that’s
terrible! How cruel. Whether people believe in war or not, every
soldier deserves the respect and gratitude of their fellow man.
Especially their family! You’re the reason they have the freedom
and lives that they do. If it weren’t for our soldiers, we would
live in a world of dictators and tyrants, unable to express who we
are. Why can’t people see that?”

“
Yes, it’s very sad that
the very people we protect turn their backs on us.”

“
It’s a crime. Treasonous,
actually.” I felt his pain. I was disgusted at the lack of respect
for all soldiers by many.

“
Maybe. The world we live
in isn’t what is used to be,” he said.

“
How about your brothers?
Do you speak to them? Do you look like each other?” I was imagining
two other beautiful men both resembling Aiden.

“
No, we all look quite
different. My brothers each went their own way. As time passed, we
lost every day contact and soon it became a call for a birthday or
a card for Christmas,” he explained, disheartened.

“
I didn’t have any
siblings. I guess you don’t miss what you’ve never known or
had.”

“
We were never really that
close. They were quite a few years older than me. They were already
in college when I was only in grammar school. Were you close with
your parents?”

“
Yes, very. I loved my
parents. We were very close. I shared everything with them. This is
their house. You already know they’re both dead now. They died in
an auto accident when I was only twenty-one.”

“
Syd, I’m so
sorry.”

“
It’s cool. It was a long
time ago. And anyway, I feel them here in the house sometimes.
Their presence, you know? I haven’t felt it for … well, for quite
some time now.”

“
Maybe they moved on
because they saw you were going to be all right and knew you
eventually wouldn’t be alone.”

“
I like the idea of that.
Yes, that’s the way I’m going to think about it from now on. I wish
they could have met you. I bet they would have loved you. My father
was in the military, too. I had their total support in everything I
did.”

“
You’re very lucky to have
had such loving and supportive parents.”

“
Yes, I really was. More,
please. Where did you grow up?” I was thoroughly enjoying our
sharing.