To Have and To Hold

Chapter 7

Well, she had been successful, finally. She got what she wanted. He was ready to let her go. Only, what the hell was he talking about? How had she whored herself out? And who did he think he was, banishing her across town? If she wanted to stay here, she damn well would. His days of ordering her around were over.

Michael sat down and once again, rested his head in his hands, hiding from her. How could he change so quickly from attack mode to looking tired and defeated?

"Michael, we are not done here. I am not ready to leave. You can't just say what you did and then order me out. What they hell do you mean, I whored myself out? How dare you say that to me? Fucking look at me, when I'm talking to you!" Anger started to wash over her once again, and she was not sure how much longer she would be able to cope with this constant shift in emotional climate before she would shatter like hot glass dipped into ice water.

"It doesn't matter. I'm sorry for what I said. I got angry." The voice was lifeless and flat. It scared her more than any angry yells could ever have managed.

"No, you don't say anything you don't mean. You think things to death before you let them spill. How have I used my body? You might as well continue now."

"Danny, ok?" He raked his hands through his hair and looked up at her. "You used the attraction you knew Danny still felt for you when you decided to punish me. You took off with him. I wanted to be there for you to help you deal with the loss of our baby. So we could deal with it together. You know, like normal parents who lost a child. But no, you had to do it your way. You talk about me shutting you out, when you locked yourself away when it mattered the most. When we needed each other the most. And you used yourself to get him to go with you. And I don't even want to know what else you did to get over your supposed pain."

Her supposed pain? How low could he hit?

"Don't you dare bring our baby into this. I told you I didn't want you to talk about him ever again. You know nothing of my pain, Michael. And you don't have a clue about what is going on with Danny and me. Real friendship is as foreign to you as air to a fish. Danny has nothing to do with what happened to us." Tears started to spill from her eyes and she was sure they were tears of rage, as they could not possibly have been proof of her depthless, never-ending grief. He was right, though, it had been easier to be around Danny, who was save to her emotional fortress than to face him, his deep sense of loss, his desperation, and his love. Danny also distracted her from her own feelings of guilt over having let Michael down, over not having been able to give him what he had desired the most in this world.

"You're right. What happened to us had to do with you running away. It's your specialty. So, go, leave. There's the door. I am sorry, I made the mistake to think we could work this out. I am sorry, I never got over you, and I realized that I will never love anyone like I love you. I'm sorry the thought of being married to someone else was so unbearable to me that I could not think of any other way to deal with it than by having the only woman I ever wanted to be married to with me. I am sorry that I want to hold you and make love to you and forget for one frigging moment that I can't be with you. You have no fucking idea how sorry I am about all of this, Lisa-Marie!"

Lisa swallowed hard. She was not sure what she had expected, but those words had not even been in the realm of what she had imagined. Her now icy cold hands clasped her shirt together as she started to tremble. She reached for her jacket and her purse, then turned toward the door that had minutes earlier been her backbone when she had melted against it, weak from the sensual tsunami unleashed on her. She stared at it through a rising curtain of tears.