Lone eagle

But they had both paid a high price for what they'd done.

“I should have listened to you two years ago,” he said. She nodded and said nothing. The two years he'd taken to agree to a divorce had cost her Joe. She wondered if he was married yet. The papers hadn't said, only that he'd gotten engaged several months before. And she had to respect that now. It was too late for them. And certainly for her, she felt. Andy had wasted her life, and destroyed her dreams. They belonged now to the woman who was going to marry Joe.

And Kate had none.

“You were probably right to try,” she said to Andy, trying to be fair. But she had been too much in love with Joe to even consider it. The marriage to Andy had ended the moment she saw Joe again.

“Go back to him, Kate,” he said softly, looking like the friend he had once been as she watched his eyes. “I've never understood what you two had, or why, but whatever it is, it's powerful for both of you, you deserve to have it, if you want it that much.” She had all but died when he left.

There was nothing left. She felt dead inside. “Tell him you're free now. He has a right to know.” Andy had spent two years feeling guilty over the lies he'd told Joe, particularly once he saw that Kate had closed all doors to him. But he had no idea how to undo the damage he had done to her, in Joe's eyes. And he didn't have the courage to tell Kate. But as much as she and Joe loved each other, or had, Andy suspected Joe would forgive her anything.

“He's engaged to someone else,” she said with somber eyes.

“So what?” Andy smiled. “We were married when he came back. If he loves you, he'll want you now, no matter what.”

“Is that how it works?” She smiled back at Andy for the first time in a long time. For two years, he had been her jailer and nothing more. Maybe now, in freeing her, they could at least be friends again. It was what he had hoped when he had decided to let her go. Even he wanted more. “It's too late for us.” Andy knew she was talking about Joe.

“Our timing is pretty grim. He's engaged.”

“I remember when everyone thought he was dead, and you still believed he was alive. You've been dead for two years, Kate. You need a life again. All you've ever wanted was to be with him.”

“I know,” she said softly. “Crazy, isn't it? I always did. The first time I met him, I was hooked. It was the damnedest thing. Like some giant fishhook in my gut. We never seem to be able to cut the line.”

“Then don't. Swim back to him.