Chapter One
I know now, just quite how, my life and love might still go on. In your heart, in your mind, I'll stay with you for all of time...
"She isn't out there you know." Asha offered behind his back. Logan Cale turned from the window he'd been staring out of for the past hour and offered her a lame smile. "It's been twelve years. She isn't coming back." Asha continued. He knew she was only trying to be helpful, that she didn't really mean to sound cruel, and that it had nothing to do with her feelings for him but still it hurt.
"Twelve years today actually." Logan offered and turned back to the window. Twelve years ago today he'd lost her somehow. Twelve years today, since he'd seen her face. Had it really been that long? Had it really been only that long?
"Logan you've got to stop torturing yourself this way." Asha offered coming up behind him and placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. Maybe one day he'd be able to just accept her gesture and not try to imagine her hand as Max's. "You've got a day every month that you dedicate to her, whether it was the first time you cooked her dinner, her birthday, or the day she popped into your life. You have to stop. Twelve years Logan. Twelve years without a phone call, without a letter. Do you think she is sitting in front of a window right now thinking about you? Do you think she even cares? Logan if she cared she wouldn't have broken your heart that way." Asha tried again to no avail.
"Asha, all I ask is for one day for her." he broke out.
"What about your son Logan? Doesn't he deserve a day with his father without her ghost tagging along? Things may not have worked between us but Daniel deserves a father."
"Daniel has nothing to do with this Asha." he broke out coldly.
"He comes home from here all the time asking questions about her Logan. He hates her. I don't want him to hate her Logan. I don't want him to hate you because of her." She pleaded with him. Logan only turned away from her hand and walked to the other side of the room. "He's getting older Logan. He's only four but he's not stupid. He understands that his mommy and daddy aren't together because of another woman. He understands that his father...he understands Logan." Asha finished knowing that Logan wouldn't take any of it to heart. He never did. "We can't do this to him. So you're going to have to choose. It's Max or Danny. You can't have both. Your current state only goes to prove it."
When Logan didn't turn to answer her she sighed and turned to leave.
"Saturday." he offered finally as she started to leave the room.
"Thank you Logan. I didn't want to have to take his father away from him." Logan dismissed her with a nod and she quickly slipped out of his penthouse and started home.
Maybe Asha was right. Maybe it was time he forget her.
When she left he'd thought he'd never be able to forgive her but he'd been wrong. He'd forgiven her eleven years, eleven months and twenty-nine days ago. He realized he'd already forgiven her years ago. But that didn't mean he could forget. He'd probably never be able to forget, Logan realized sadly as he pressed his forehead to the cold hard glass of the window that separated him from the rainy skies of Seattle.
On days like this every heartbeat seemed to echo her name and squeeze memories of her through him like the blood that traveled through his veins. The rain beating against the window, the hum of his computers, the echoing vastness of his penthouse, it all spoke of the past. And on days like this he didn't fight its overpowering pull into darkness. Days like this were hers, and like it or not, she claimed them greedily. Selfishly taking his soul on a heart-jarring ride of agony, she left him smiling coyly and begging him for more.
To feel her lips pressed against his again, to hold her in his arms while she cried, just to be able to say her name, something he hadn't done in years in an effort to bury her, these things haunted him.
But then he had his good days too. When Danny came over and they went to the park or the circus. When he could pretend that she had never come into his life and disrupted everything he'd ever had.
There were days when Asha, Danny, and himself were just like that picture perfect family they had always tried to convince themselves they were. But Asha had been right; they weren't that family.
If someone had told him that she'd leave, that he'd spend a night with Asha, that they'd have a child, and that he'd marry her only to divorce her three years later, well he couldn't have believed them. He never should have slipped up, and he shouldn't have tried to fix it by marrying Asha, Danny didn't deserve the lies.
Danny was the only light in his life now. And now if Asha was right then she was ruining that too. He had to fix it.
She left. She wouldn't be back. It was time to let go.