Love Stories

Chapter Seventeen

On the journey Leah had a lot of time to talk with Keldan and he agreed that it would be a fine thing for her to travel with him for awhile. Together they arranged where and when and Leah was starting to cheer up again when it was all blown to the wind only the day after arriving in Valdara.

                Leah was in the library, searching for a book when in frusration at not being able to find it, she turned in a circle and saw him. As soon as she did she stopped dead and just stared. He was standing in the doorway watching her. She could tell right away there was something different about him, but not certain just what. And he dared to stand there, and he dared to look at her, and he dared to say, "Hello."

                Leah couldn't stop herself from asking the question, but she did refrain from shouting it at him. "What are you doing here?"

                His mouth moved but he must have thought better of it because no sound came out. "I, uh, was traveling," Torr said. "And I'm here."

                Leah just nodded until another question came to mind. "Why?"

                "I heard you would be returning." Torr came further into the room slowly, touching things to distract himself from the tension. "I couldn't go... home... yet..."

                "They miss you," Leah said. "You should."

                "I... will." Torr chanced a glance at her. "Would you come with me?"

                Leah blinked a few times. "Torr, I can't."

                "Leah I'm sorry," Torr said and the look in her eyes was more than enough to see his own hurt. "I don't, I don't know how it happened, each day I thought about going home, every day I thought about you, but I never went home, I never wrote you or told you anything, I never did anything, I just... I just did." Leah took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a minute but she could still only nod. "I just want everything back like it was. It was perfect. Couldn't you forgive me?"

                "It's not that I can't forgive you," Leah said, returning her gaze to him. "I have forgiven you. You hurt me a lot, but I have forgiven you."

                "So don't you want it back? I promise I mean it. I'm just the same as I was. Can't we be like we were? I can make everything up to you." His expression was both pain-fillled and earnest.

                "You can't erase the past that easily, Torr."

                "No," he agreed, "but can't we forget about it? If you've forgiven me can't you forget it? I came back for you, Leah, because I don't want to lose you ever again. I can't ever lose you again."

                "You walked away," Leah said and it was easy to see it was hurting her, too. "I was happy, I could have lived the rest of my life like that, but I couldn't go back to that now."

                "Why not?" Torr questioned in frustration. His brown eyes flickered with the orange that made them bright. "This is a chance to go back! Forget everything happened. Have you stopped loving me?" He saw his point and stood on it. "Have you?"

                "I don't know," Leah admitted after a moment. "But if we went back, I could never be sure what you were doing when you weren't with me."

                Torr stared at her. "You can't mean that. Leah! This is me! She was one girl. It wasn't even her! She just... promised adventure. It was different. I don't want to go anywhere but home anymore. There's no one there I love unless you're there. I love you. Only you."