Fighting to Let You Go

A/N: Oh, I should so be in bed right now. But Jeff and Trish wanted to talk, so who was I to tell them no? This is the second to last chapter, and I know some of you will not be happy. All I can say is this: Remember that, when it comes to my stories, it ain't over 'til it's over. I don't own Jeff, Trish, or Adam. Read, Review, Live, Laugh, Love, and Enjoy!

"Trish Stratus, let me introduce you to Jeff Hardy," Lita smiled proudly as she dragged her new friend by the arm. Her boyfriend's little brother hadn't stopped talking about "that new blonde girl" for weeks, and the red-head finally decided it was time to arrange a little meeting between the two soft-spoken superstars.

Trish blushed and stared into the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen up close. "Hi, Jeff," she forced her best extroverted smile and thrust her tiny hand forward for him to shake. She would not be shy, giggly Trish. She would wow him with her confidence, her poise, and her out-going nature. No matter how much he made her blush and lose all train of thought.

The only comfort was that his own cheeks bore a slight pink tint as he shot her a million-watt smile and firmly returned her handshake. The naive-sound of his North Carolina twang made her heart flutter. "Seems like I've been waitin' forever for this moment."

"So," Jeff rocked slightly on his heels as he spoke. Trish knew, all too well, that it was his trademark move when a situation was uncomfortable for him. "How've you been?"

She nodded, a little too zealously. "Good." Clearing her throat, she added, "Really good." In the awkward silence that followed, she spouted, "How 'bout you?"

Jeff's shoulder relaxed a little, and the confusion on his face said he didn't know whether to tell her the truth or not. "Decent," he answered simply. She mumbled something about how she was glad, and that's when Jeff's eyes met hers again. "I've missed you."

Two years, and a million pep talks later, Trish was in the place she had always known she would have to stand. Face-to-face with the man she swore she was over. Here they were, in a room that was seemingly growing smaller by the second, and she had no idea what to say, do, or think. "I gotta go find Adam," she mumbled.

But Jeff gave her a look that said there was no way in hell she was going anywhere. "I know you probably hate me," he started.

She shook her head. "I never hated you," she admitted. Sure, she'd had moments of "how could he do this to me" anger. There had been heartbreak and confusion. But she had loved him too thoroughly, too completely, to ever hate him.

After another long, painful pause, Jeff cleared his throat and looked around. The hallway was empty, as though everyone had known this would not be a comfortable event to witness. "I've thought about calling you a hundred times," he finally whispered.

Grasping for anything that would make her sound unaffected, apathetic even, she stared at her feet and prayed for an answer. "I'm glad you didn't," she said honestly.

He seemed to accept that answer as he looked her over. Jeff Hardy quit a lot of things before he finished them, but speaking his mind had never been one of them. If he had something to say to Trish, he wasn't going to quit until he had gotten it off of his chest. "You deserved an explanation – more than the one I gave you."

As though his words caused something in her head to snap, Trish looked up and shook her head. "You explained yourself perfectly, Jeff. Our relationship was just a stumbling block in your little path to self-discovery," she spat, a little more harshly than she had intended.

Instead of drawing back at the venom she was spewing, he took a step toward her and shook his head, his arms crossed over his chest. "Walking away from you that night was the hardest thing I had ever done, Trisha."

Adam had once told her, before they were dating, that she would reach a point when all of the hurt she felt over what Jeff had done would fade into anger over how he had done it. And, as Trish realized that the "day of reckoning" had arrived, she almost wished Adam was there to witness it.

Biting back all of the evil things that jumped into her head, she shrugged. "Seemed pretty easy that night. You just kinda laid it out there and walked away," she accused.

He had always made her feel off-balance. When they had been a couple, it was an incomparable adrenaline rush, one that made being in the ring, in front of a live audience, seem tame. It had been exciting back then. But now it made Trish want to throw up, as Jeff took yet another step in her direction, his intense stare boring into her defiant gaze.

"You were my heart, Trish. My soul. And you were broken. Watching you cry on that bed, it damn near killed me. When I walked away, it was like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and left it there on the bed to die. I couldn't let you know that it was killing me – that would have only hurt you more." He stopped his forward motion and studied her.

Trish shook her head. "It's been two years, Jeff. Almost two years." She wanted to stomp her feet and act like a child. Instead, she crossed her arms and leveled him with her stare. "Do you have any idea how long that is?" When he didn't answer, she took a step away from him. "Too damn long."

When he finally lifted his eyes from the floor, there was a twinkle of inspiration there. "Time and space cannot untangle the chords with which fate binds it's souls," he stated.

That was Jeff Hardy's charm. The poet in him said all of the things that a woman dies to hear, even if she won't admit she's dying for it. It had been the thing that drew Trish to him in the beginning, his willingness to profess his feelings for her at a moment's notice, in the most passionate of ways.

"Ya know what?" Her blonde hair swirled around her shoulders as she shook her head again. "Not this time." He looked surprised. "You don't think, Jeff. You don't use your head. You feel. You wanna live and love with your heart and your soul. And that's beautiful. It makes beautiful music and poetry and art." She huffed slightly, as if realizing what she was saying for the first time. "But it doesn't make a relationship work.

"Commitment makes a relationship work, Jeff. And you have to decide to do that with your head. You wanna believe that love is only worth it if you're walking a tight rope all the time, never sure of what's gonna happen next. And that was exciting, for awhile." She looked at him, the faintest trace of a tear in her eye for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She had spent months, more than a year, trying not to do this very thing. And now she was frustrated, irritated, and pissed at herself for showing him any emotion.

With a sigh of resignation, she said the last of what she had to say to Jeff Hardy, content to say good-bye forever. "I can't do it again. I can't even entertain the notion of inviting you back in. You made me believe that love was unstable because life is unstable. That we never know what tomorrow brings, so planning for a future is silly. You convinced me that the "right now" was more important than anything else. And I wanted to believe you.

"But to me, love isn't poems about destiny and fate and unbreakable chords. Not anymore. It's about knowing I'm gonna walk around that corner in a minute, and Adam's gonna be there. Because he said he would be. It's the assurance that he's going to hold me tonight when I fall asleep, even though he'll be pissed as hell that I just spent all this time talking to you.

"What we had was electric. It was amazing, and I'll never experience passion like I did with you, Jeff. But I can't be with someone who always takes the easy way out." By the time she finished speaking, her voice was cracked, and tears stained her flawless cheeks. But her words were clear, and their meaning crystal.

In her tangent, Trish hadn't noticed Jeff taking baby steps in her direction again. So a small shiver of shock ran down her spine when he reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand. For a split second, she thought for sure he would kiss her. But instead, he licked his lips and narrowed his eyes.

"You're right, Trisha, about most of what you said. You've pretty much got me pegged, down the last finite detail. " He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. "Except for one thing. I do think. Every day, about walking away from you. I wish that I could do it again. I would do it every day, if I could."

Unsure of meaning in his words, Trish stood still, waiting for an explanation. "As hard as I thought it was to leave you there? Baby, it was nothing compared to the agony of waking up every day since then without you. I think about that every day. I think about how I could have made us work – how I should have made us work. And I pray for a chance to do it again."

She sucked in a breath as he lowered his face slightly. He was mere inches from her mouth now, and his breath on her skin was turning her anger to a slow, simmering tension that heated her to the core. "Jeff," she sighed.

"You may not believe in destiny, Trisha," he whispered. "But you're here, and I'm touching you again. And I have to believe that it means something."

A loud bang sounded from somewhere behind them, causing Trish to shake her head and look over her shoulder. Adam's flowing blond curls were all she saw before the heavy back door clanged shut again. "Yeah, it means everything just got a hell of a lot more complicated."