~ One Stolen Night ~

by

Peggy P. Parsons

“If your reason for not marrying me isn’t the other Steve and it isn’t Carla, what is it?”

“It’s too complicated--”

“That’s a bunch of bull, and we both know it.”

“It isn’t bull,” she said, hackles rising. “It’s the truth. I tried to tell you in the beginning that we had no future. I’ve tried to keep our relationship on a friendly basis. I care about you a lot, and I want to be friends. Can’t we be friends?”

“No. And if you really think that’s what you want, you’re either a coward or a liar.”

She backed away, needing distance. “I may be a coward, but I’m not a liar.”

He stepped forward. “You know what I think? I don’t think you’re a coward. I think you’re incapable of love. You’re just an empty shell of a woman.”

Speechless, Pam could only stare as he turned, and stormed out the front door, leaving it open and letting the screen bang behind him.

She stared down at the ring on her left hand. She should have taken it off and thrown it at him. Why hadn’t she? Because you can’t bear to give it back, a still small voice replied.

He was mad, but so was she. He had no right to accuse her of being a lesbian. No right to demand answers. Who did he think he was? Your fiancé, that still small voice said. The man who loves you and wants to spend the rest of his life with you. And you’ve just broken his heart.

Tears clouded her vision, and remorse flooded her heart. She twisted the ring on her finger, unable to bring herself to take it off. She tried to remember what she’d planned to say, how gently she’d planned to deliver her message, and ask him if they could remain friends.

But he didn’t want friendship. He wanted a wife.

Pam stood there in a dither, trying to redeem herself in her own eyes. But all she could see was the hurt and rejection in Steven’s before he stomped away, out of her life. Forever?

Less than a minute had passed, yet already she regretted what she’d said and done. Blasted by remorse, tears slashed down her face with the fierceness of a terrible winter storm. Regret and panic gripped her. She had to do something. But what? How could she tell him what she’d buried so long ago?

How could she make him understand if she didn’t at least try? She grabbed the phone and called him.

He didn’t answer.

She dashed out the door without bothering to put her coat back on, ran to his condo, rang the bell. He didn’t open the door, not even when she pounded until her knuckles bled.

With more fear that she’d alienated him forever than fear of revealing her secret she stumbled home. In the space of a few awful minutes her world had turned into a living hell.