Honey, I Love Your Love the Most

I knew the moment I walked into the bar and saw her sitting on a stool with a beer in her hand that I was in trouble. Just the fact that she is actually here blows my mind. I didn't think she would actually show up. She has a fiance, a whole new life that I know nothing about. She turns to look at me and the sweetest smile spreads over her face and it's contagious. I can't hold my own smile back.

Savannah steps down off her bar stool and greets me halfway across that bar. I can tell she's nervous by the way her eyes don't quite meet mine.

"I didn't think you were going to show up." I tell her with a smirk.

"To be completely honest I didn't think I was going to until about an hour ago." she looks down at her feet and then back up at me, meeting my gaze for the first time. "But I knew I couldn't let this opportunity pass me by. To talk to you, I mean."

"Well I'm really glad you did." she follows me back over to the bar where I order a whiskey and Coke and I hear her laugh from beside me. "What's so funny?"

"Same old Eric. Always a damn whiskey and Coke."

"Hey, me and Jack D are like this." I say while crossing my fingers. "Especially right now."

"And why is that?"

"Life on the road isn't always easy. It's a lot of stress. Makes me miss home a lot, but I guess I see the bus as my home now."

"But do you enjoy it?"

"Of course I do. This is what I have always wanted and I finally got it. But enough about me. You can Google my name and find out what I've been up to. I want to know about you. What are you doing now?"

"Well I went back to school. I got a teaching degree." just by the smile on her face I can tell she's proud of that. "I teach sophomore level English at a small school just outside of Charlotte. I live with Andrew. We bought a house last year." her voice fades as she mentions him and I can tell she doesn't want to make this awkward. I take my drink from the bartender and down a little of it before asking my next question.

"How'd you meet him?" I ask in a quiet voice. He's a part of her life and that's just something I have to deal with. I want to know everything about her and he is just a part of that.

"College, actually. He was studying to become an engineer. He seemed to be what I needed at the time. I needed structure. I needed something safe and normal after everything that happened. She looks down at her beer and goes quiet. She doesn't offer anything more on that subject even though that's the part I'm most curious about. Why did she leave? What happened that made her shut down and leave me the way she did?

When she looks back up at me her eyes are misted over with tears and she bites her lip, like she has something difficult to say.

"I loved you." she whispers while looking me dead in the eye. "I know we weren't together long but I did. I just want you to know that. Okay?" as a tear slides down her cheek I lift my thumb and brush it away. Her eyes close when my skin touches hers.

"Are you ever going to tell me why?" I ask nervously as I brush a piece of her hair behind her ear and lift her chin to look at me again.

"You would hate me."

"That's not possible. I just need to know what went so wrong. What changed you. Made you not even be able to be in the same room as me anymore."

"It wasn't you. I promise it wasn't you. You treated me better than anyone in my entire life and I wish so much that I hadn't screwed it up." she pulls out a ten dollar bill and lays it on the bar with her empty glass and stands up.

"Where are you going?"

"I just have to go. I'm sorry." I latch onto her wrist and pull her back against me.

"Not again. You don't get to walk out of my life without an explanation twice." she rips her arm away from me and takes off towards the door. I throw some money down onto the bar as well and follow her out. "Savannah!" she stops in her tracks just by her car with her back to me. She doesn't turn around, instead she wraps her arms around herself and when I catch up to her I see the tears overflowing from her big brown eyes. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and hug her tight as she cries.

"I screwed up so bad when I left you. So, so bad."

"It's okay now. Here we are and we are fine. Just talk to me." I pull away from her and put my hands on each side of her face. "I need to know."

"I was pregnant." the words are almost inaudible and I have to take a second to makes sure I heard her right.

"Pregnant? By me?" she nods and looks down at her feet. I run my fingers over my head and start pacing in circles. "What do you mean by 'was'?"

"I lost it." my head is spinning in circles from all over this information so I walk over to the curb and sit down. She comes over and sits beside me and stares out at the cars passing by.

"How?" she takes a deep breath, almost like she's trying to gain the courage from the air she's taking in.

"This is why you will hate me." she puts her head in her hands as she speaks. "When I left that day, I packed everything I could in just a few bags and I took off to Cody's. I didn't go there because I wanted to be with him. So don't think that. I just knew it was the only place you wouldn't think to look for me." she turns her head and looks at me with so much sadness in her eyes. "But I changed my mind. Three weeks later I knew I made a mistake leaving you. I knew we could work it out and make it work somehow. Because of how we felt for each other. So I packed all of my stuff and I was going to leave. Cody didn't understand why I didn't want to be with him. He thought me coming back to him was a way for us to start over. He started throwing stuff. He went into some sort of rage and I couldn't get him to calm down. He grabbed my purse and threw it across the room and started throwing everything that was in it around too. The pregnancy test was in there. He took one look at it and just snapped. He knew it wasn't his since we hadn't been together in months. All I remember is him grabbing me by my hair and slamming me into the wall. After that, everything is black. I woke up in the hospital, lucky to be alive. He beat the hell out of me, Eric. And trust me, I wanted to die."

I'm speechless as I take in everything she just told me. She wanted to come back. She regretted leaving. We would have had a baby together. That piece of shit Cody put her in the hospital and murdered the life we created. I slip my arm around her shoulders and pull her against me as she sobs. Everything I had been telling myself over the past few years has been a lie. She didn't leave because she didn't care. She didn't meet someone else and move on.

"I don't hate you. I could never hate you, Savannah." I kiss the top of her head and she looks up at me, tears covering her cheeks.

"By the time I got out of the hospital and got to feeling better, your parents told me you were gone. They said you went to Nashville because some record company liked your music." her frown turns into a smile. "I was so happy for you. I didn't want to ruin what you'd achieved so I begged your parents not to tell you I was looking for you. And I tried to let you go and move on with my life." I run my fingers through her hair as I let all of my thoughts settle. I look down at her and she just looks so weak and broken.

"I wish I had known. I would have killed him."

"That's why I didn't want you to find out. I didn't want you to ruin everything you'd worked so hard for over me. But don't worry, he got what was coming to him. Brody and a few of his friends kept an eye on him for weeks. Always letting him know they were just a few steps behind him. He got so paranoid he wouldn't even leave his house. So they broke in and beat him so bad he was in the hospital for two weeks." I can't help but smile. My friends back home had my back even when I didn't know I needed them. "And he went to jail after that. For what he did to me."

"Good." I look down at her again and I want so badly to kiss her. I know this is our last night together and I probably won't have this ever again. We both leave for different parts of the country tomorrow. She'll go off with her fiance and get married and who knows what will happen then.

I brush her hair away from her face and lean only centimeters from her lips.

"I missed you." I whisper before I press my lips firmly against hers. She melts against me and wraps her arms around my neck. I know what I'm doing is wrong, but nothing could reason with me to stop. I stand up and pull her with me and press her flush against her car as I claim her lips with mine once again in a deep kiss. Savannah slips her hands up the back of my shirt and traces small circles on my lower back which causes me to shiver.

"I have to go." she whispers as she pulls away from me, both of us a little out of breath. I reach into her back pocket and pull her cell phone out. She looks at me confused as I type my name and number into a new contact slot. I show her what I did and press the send button so her number will pop up onto my own cell phone screen and I can save it. I hand it back to her and she leans up to kiss me once again. "I will call you. And we will see each other again. I promise you that." I put my hands on the sides of her face one last time and kiss her like it's the end of the world. I don't know when I will see her again. Or if she's telling the truth and it kills me to not know. I push her hair out of the way as I kiss down her neck to her shoulder where I rest my forehead.

"I really hope so."

"This isn't goodbye, Eric. You know everything there is to know now. I have no reason to avoid you. We have our lives and we have to go back to them for now."

For now.

What does that mean?

She slides out from between her car and me and opens her drivers side door.

"I'm glad you know. I feel like a huge weight is lifted from my shoulders." she doesn't even give me a chance to reply as she gets in and takes off into the night. I'm left standing there not really sure how I feel or what to do with myself.