Danielle Steel: Lightning

Alex helped Annabelle put her sweater on, and then her hat and coat with trembling hands and she didn't say a word to Sam until Annabelle went to ring for the elevator, and they followed.

“Don't make things harder than they have to be. I know this is a hard time for you, and I feel terrible, but Sam …don't hurt all of us again now.” If he toyed with her, it would only hurt her, and Brock, and Annabelle, and even himself. “Don't do that.”

“I didn't mean to hurt you,” he said thoughtfully. There was suddenly so much he had to tell her. “I guess I ought to have the guts to leave you alone, no matter what I feel, especially if I'm going to prison. I promised myself that. But maybe it's a bigger mistake to just let you slip away without at least telling you I love you. I know I have no right to you. Hell, I don't even feel like a man anymore. Everything I ever hooked my identity to is gone, money, success, position … I guess that's how you felt when you lost your breast, but we're both stupid. Your womanhood wasn't in your breast …my manhood wasn't in my office …it's in our hearts, our souls, who we are, what we believe in. I don't know why I never understood that before. I understand so much more now, and the bitch of it is that I've figured it all out too late, too late for us anyway … all I want is to turn the clock back a year and start over.” She was shocked by what he was saying.

“I can't, Sam,” she whispered, as she closed her eyes for a moment so she wouldn't have to see the pain in his eyes, or the love she suddenly saw there. Why hadn't he said it all a year before? It was too late now. “Don't say these things to me … I can't go back again, and I can't do this to Brock.” She had promised him she wouldn't only that morning.

“What are you doing with him?” Sam said, sounding annoyed. “He's a kid. A nice kid, I can see that. And he's been good to you, but ten years from now where will you be? Can he really give you what you want?”

“It's not what he can give me,” she said firmly to Sam, “he's already given me so much. It's my turn to give now.”

“You can't give him your life to make up for what he did for you, any more than I can make up to you for what I didn't. But I still love you, Alex …you're still my wife. Maybe I have no right to you anymore, I'm sure I don't. But I want you to know I'll always love you. Even at my craziest, at my worst … I always loved you. I didn't want to leave, but I couldn't stay either. I was running away from everything, you, my mother's ghost, reality. And I had to get that girl out of my blood. I know how wrong it was, but she was driving me crazy. And so were you. I was driving myself mad more than anything. But I never meant to hurt you.” He wanted her to hear all of it from him, before he went to prison. But it wasn't fair. He pulled a string that hadn't been severed yet, and touched a part of her that was still his, which hurt too much. She didn't want to love him.

Her voice was deep and sad when she answered him, and glanced ahead at Annabelle, waiting for them in the distance, in the hallway. “It would be so much easier, Sam, if we left each other cleanly. Don't look back, don't cry over the past …what's the point now?”

“Maybe there is no point anymore. But there is no ‘clean' after eighteen years. I don't know where you stop and I begin,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Can you really walk away from it like that? Can you say you don't feel anything, only loyalty? I don't believe you.”

Neither did she, but she was suddenly furious at what he was doing. Suddenly, he wanted to confess all his sins, and bare his soul. At the eleventh hour, in spite of everything that he had done, he didn't want to lose her. “What do you want from me, Sam?” she asked him angrily. “To make me admit I love you, so you can feel good about it when you leave? …Let me go …let us both be free, just as you said yesterday after the verdict. We both need that. Don't carry this with you to prison.”

“I can't let go of it,” he said, in visible agony. He had been awake all night, thinking about her, and the verdict. And suddenly, everything was different. He wasn't willing to just let her slip away from him in silence. “I don't know how to let go,” he said, touching her arm, and aching to kiss her. “I still love you.”

“So do I, Sam,” she said miserably, and Brock knew it too, he had said so. “But it's too late now.” They both knew it, but he wasn't ready to give up yet, and she looked at him, Annabelle waved and the elevator door opened. “Don't do this, Sam …please …for both our sakes.” It had been much easier than this when he'd left her for Daphne. He had seemed so sure then, and now he seemed so broken, and she was no longer clear what she owed him.

“I'm sorry, Alex,” he apologized, looking desperately unhappy. “Can I see you sometime?” He looked panicked. The elevator was waiting.

“No.” She shook her head and hurried toward Annabelle, sorry she had come at all. “I can't, Sam …” She couldn't do that to Brock, or herself. She just couldn't. “I'm sorry.”

She stepped into the elevator then, next to Annabelle, and his eyes blazed into hers as the doors closed. And all the way home to her apartment, she tried to force him from her mind, and everything he had said, and think of Brock, as she clung to her daughter.

“Was Daddy mad at you?” Annabelle glanced up at her, looking puzzled, in the chill wind, as Christmas shoppers hurried past them.

“No, sweetheart. He was fine,” she lied, wondering why children always saw all the things they shouldn't.

“He looked sad when we left.”

“He was probably just unhappy to see you go, but he wasn't mad. I promise.” Only sad. And very foolish.

It was a relief to get home to Brock, and the rich smells wafting from her kitchen. He was making spaghetti sauce and garlic bread, and Alex had promised to make soup and pasta and salad, and hot fudge sundaes.

“Everything go okay?” he asked, glancing at her as she took her coat off and warmed her hands. She seemed very cold and somewhat shaken.

“Fine,” she smiled, slipping her arms around him as he stood at the stove, and forcing herself to forget everything Sam had told her. But no matter what she did that night, or how tightly she clung to Brock as he lay beside her, Sam's words continued to drift around her like spirits.

Chapter 22

Annabelle spent a week with Sam, starting on Christmas Day, and Alex made a point of not seeing him when she dropped her off. She let her go up alone in the elevator at the Carlyle. Alex hadn't heard from him again since the last time she saw him, and she could only assume that he had come to his senses. And whether or not he was thinking clearly again, she knew she was.

Christmas Eve had been wonderful with Brock and Annabelle. And they had rented the same house in Vermont for the week between Christmas and New Year's. And this time she skied and had a great time. She had never felt better all year. Her hair had grown longer by then, and she was wearing it in a stylish bob that Brock said he loved, and thought was very sexy. And after a few days in Vermont with her, he relaxed about Sam. Brock knew how much Alex loved him, and he felt suddenly foolish to have been worried.

They also learned, while they were there, that Sam had filed for divorce just after Christmas. And Alex was particularly relieved to hear it. He had obviously come to his senses. Leaving the past behind was difficult for both of them, but there was no question in her mind that they had to do it.

She and Brock talked about getting married quietly in June, and she reminded him again that they still had to work things out at the law firm. They even talked about their honeymoon as they lay by the fire on New Year's Eve, and Alex said dreamily that she would love to go to Europe.