Lone eagle

” He nearly had with her. She had taken a big piece of him with her, but he suspected she didn't know that. And he wished now that he could reclaim it, and her.

“You're too big to lose, Joe,” she said honestly. “I don't think you have any idea how big you are. You're enormous.” He was the biggest man she had ever known. He had an enormous spirit and a brilliant mind.

“I always think I'm invisible, or want to be,” Joe confessed, sounding like a boy."

"“I don't think anyone sees themselves as they really are. In your case, you have a lot to be proud of,” she said generously.

It was odd sitting there with him. If anyone had told her a month before that would happen, she wouldn't have believed them, but she was enjoying his company, and they were friends again. There was great comfort in it. For both of them.

“There's a lot I'm not proud of, Kate,” he confessed, looking boyish again, and it touched her heart. There was a side of him she had always loved, and knew she always would, and another side of him she had very nearly hated, the side that had hurt her so badly when she left.

“I'm not proud of the way I treated you,” he continued, and she was surprised to hear it. “I was rotten to you before you left. I was working you too hard, using you, I wasn't thinking about you, just about myself. But you scared the hell out of me. You loved me so damn much, and it made me feel so inadequate and so guilty. So trapped, I guess. I just wanted to run away and hide. You were right to leave, Kate. It damn near killed me when you did, but I don't blame you. That's why I never called, as much as I wanted to. You were right to go. There was nothing in it for you. I couldn't give you what you needed. I didn't understand how lucky I was. It took me a long time to calm down and figure that out.” And by then she'd been long gone.

“It's nice of you to say that,” she said generously, “but it never would have worked anyway. I realize that now.”

“Why not?” He frowned, nothing woke Joe up more than a challenge.

“Because this is what I wanted,” she said with a wave around the apartment and in the direction of the baby. “A husband, a baby, a regular life. You need a lot more than that in your life, you need power and success and excitement and airplanes, and you're willing to sacrifice everything for it, even people. I'm not. This is what I wanted.”

“We could have had this, and more, if you'd waited.”

“Not from what you said then.”

“It was the wrong time for me, Kate.