February 1975

"I walked into her today. She was in a hurry, she always is. I didn't get a chance to apologize but-" I lower my head, suddenly terribly embarrassed. "You'll think less of me."

Alex shakes her head and lowers herself carefully to the sand beneath her feet. It's much more of an endeavor than it was a few months ago. Now her petite frame has to carry the additional weight of her pregnancy and she resembles more a lazy cat than the little blonde sprite I'm accustomed too. "No, I won't." She settles in the sand and pulls off her shoes with a sigh of happiness. "I promise, you know I'd never shatter your confidence like that."

"She smells amazing." I admit as my face flushes to crimson. "Like lavender and fresh lilies, not in that overly flowery way that makes you think of the plants instead of the woman, but in a way that makes it impossible for me to stop thinking about her." I drop to the sand next to her and move her shoes away from the crawling edge of the surf.

"If I wasn't already married, I'd be jealous." Alex quips as she lies back on the sand and watches the cloudy sky. "Must be lovely to be free like that." Sighing as she turns her head towards me, she winks. "But you're looking to get tied down aren't you?"

"You could leave him." I point out dutifully as I ignore her jibe. "Just take the baby and go."

"Where?" Alex asks with a bittersweet smile as she turns her attention back to the sky. "Can't really drag the poor kid all over the world now can I?"

I lie down in the cool sand next to her and see the first hint of the moon start to peek through the cloud cover. "I can think of worse ways to grow up."

"It wouldn't be fair." Alex replies with the same exhausted sigh. "I can't take this baby away from his or her dad, not without giving John a chance to know his child."

"So you're back to where you started." I remind her gently. "Someday, you know you'll have to get away from him."

"I'm constantly away." She teases with a half-hearted wink as she rolls up on one elbow. "That's what John loves about me. I'm beautiful, talented and continuously on the wrong side of the world." Dropping back to the sand with a giggle, she rests her hands on her mounded belly. "Though, admittedly my traveling has been cut short lately.

I reach for her hand and entangle my fingers in it. "You are definitely the first two."

"And you're charming." Alex wraps her other hand over mine and seems even sadder than she was a moment ago. "I'm going to miss you when you finally get that lady of yours."

I pull my hand away to run it nervously through my hair as I sit up. "Olivia Blake is too good for me." I pick up a few stray pieces of beach glass and toss them back into the surf. "Have you seen the people she spends her time with? Massey, Greysolon, AJ Deschanel-"

"Del Douglas, who's sister happens to be your best friend. Elaine Stevens, who you've known for years. You're making excuses to someone who knows all the excuses." Alex kisses the tip of my nose and grins impishly. "I make better ones for staying with my husband."

She runs delicate fingers across my back and digs her toes into the sand. "You're just afraid of rejection, like everyone else. And pretending she's out of your league just lets you down easy, without any of that terrifying speaking to her."

I flip to my stomach, watching the moon start to illuminate her face. I wish I'd met her first. Before John married her and put the genie back in her shackles. "What would I say?"

Alex draws little circles in the sand without watching her hands. "She's a lawyer, incredibly driven, controlled, beautiful and recently single from a stinging breakup with AJ, who refused to marry her but jumped into an engagement with her best friend." She keeps her eyes on the clouds and starts to laugh. "A woman like that wants stability. She doesn't want a lover, she wants a wife. Someone to come home to at the end of the day. Someone sweet, caring and passionate. Some darling young man that can quote medieval literature and massage her feet."

I chuckle and straighten the crumpled sleeve of her sundress over her tanned shoulder, grateful for the moments of intimacy we share that keep me from being alone. "Why would she want to hear old literature?"

"Because it's not law. It's not work, but it's not a waste of time like a fashion magazine or the evening news." Alex squirms into a better position, giving me a half-smile of frustration and amusement. "Give her a chance to just be the woman, not the lawyer behind the desk. Just Olivia, not Counselor Blake. She'll melt."

I kiss her cheek, blushing as soon as I pull away. The unspoken desire has always been between us, but we've avoided talking about it so far. She just smiles at me with the same sad smile. "You've an awful lot to offer any woman, but especially a woman like Olivia."

January 1997

"We can run away together, just you and I enough treasure in that briefcase to take you to the moon and back if you want to go." Elaine's eyes light with passion and I wonder if it's me or the treasure she's passionate about. "What do you say?"

I keep silent as I reach for my pants. Running away is the final solution, a step I'm not sure if I'm ready to take. My silence does nothing to deter her, and she goes for the kill. "Olivia doesn't love you. She hasn't loved you in years."

"But I have a life here." It's a weak excuse for a life, but it's mine. "Two children."

"Caitlin's nearly grown up and she's always been her mother's daughter." Elaine knows she's right, the thrill of victory is in her eyes. "Sean's in boarding school. You never see him anyway."

She runs a hand through my hair, the way Olivia used to when we lay in bed together on lazy Sunday mornings. "You always tell me how happy I make you. Let me do that all the time, let me remind you want it is to be loved by someone with a heart." She runs a hand over my cheek, and there's truth in her eyes. Whatever Elaine has been to me before, there's a desperate honesty to her now.

"Aren't you tired of going to bed alone and wondering when, or even if she's going to come home to you? She lowers her head to my shoulder and sighs in empathy. "Isn't twenty years enough? Olivia got what she wanted out of you when you gave her kept her from being a single woman in a world of married men. It's the nineties, being divorced is all the rage, she'll adapt."

I drop my hands to my lap and wonder where the lines of age came from. "It'll probably be a week before she even notices I'm gone."

Elaine kisses me and there's a desperation in her lips. That need to be with someone, anyone who keeps you from feeling alone. We'll be alone together, but we'd be together. Soul-mates in our grief over lost loves and disappointment about our children. Is that what I want?

I don't get a chance to decide. There's a knock on the door of the hotel room. The knock is meaningless, but the voice- the voice makes my heart jump into my throat.

"Elaine are you ready yet?" It's Olivia's voice. The tone I'd know anywhere, the light in a crowded room- Olivia who's looking for Elaine.

"How did she?" I whisper in a panic as I scoop up my clothes and dive towards the closet.

Elaine grabs my arm and kisses me again, hard enough to bruise my lips against her teeth. "Say you'll come with me or I'll open that door right now."

She raises her voice and calls towards the door. "Just a moment Livie."

She turns back to me with her ultimatum. "What's it going to be?"

I nod, desperate to do anything that will keep her from opening that door. "I'll be ready tomorrow. We'll leave then."

I shut myself in the closet and start putting on my clothes. I'm not really doing this am I? I listen to their conversation fade away down the hallway and try to imagine never hearing Olivia's voice again. I waited twenty-five years to meet her, I spent half of my life with her. How can I throw that away now? Maybe this is the next phase, the post-Olivia reconstruction of my life.

I button up my shirt and escape from the hotel room, dignity intact for now. Olivia will know. No matter what I tell Elaine she'll know the moment I'm gone. I flee across to the parking lot and wait for my heart to stop racing as I sit behind the wheel of my Mercedes. I don't want to have to wait for her to find out from someone else. I want to see the look on her face when she finds out I've been sleeping with her best friend. I need to see that anger in her eyes when she knows I've been intimate with her most trusted friend. Not that Olivia trusts any of her friends. Sometimes I wonder if she trusts anyone at all.

The anger was the reason the affair began. Elaine makes wonder what Olivia would do if she knew. Many affairs represent affection, but my tryst with Elaine represents fury. Perhaps fury is the only emotion left between Olivia and I. Even as I contemplate that thought, I realize that fury results from love. Fury represents the embers of emotion, love that refused to burn out even when the fuel was gone.

I pull my car into the driveway but as I reach to turn off the ignition, I know JohnI can't leave Olivia. I'll never be able to leave her. She means too much. I love her and I hate her but I'll never be able to leave her. She's been part of my life too long. She's been my life, she's still my life and she'll always be.

Olivia is the sole proprietor of my heart. The one person I couldn't help choosing to love, the person I fell into love with head-over-heels. She took all of me without asking to have it.

What scares me most is that she'll never want me again. That I'll spend the rest of my dark, dismal little life unable to go and unable to live in the prison we've created. Death is preferable but even that holds more value than the rest of my miserable time on this earth.

I pull out of the driveway and turn back towards the hotel. Even my misery has to be spent with Olivia.