Page 100 of Four Times Forever

"Well..." I started, but her eyes kept going wider with her words.

"Because you're a man, aren't you? Deep down, you seek power. Control. You couldn't let the police handle it. You had to do it, to take control of how he affected my life..." She was going.

"No, it wasn't like that. Yeah, after what he did to you, I wanted to kill him," I growled.

She shook her head and backed away as if I had evolved into a monster.

"I was angry. Tyler offered his services..." I said.

"His services?!" she gasped.

"Yeah. Former mob boss, you know? He has some ties," I nodded.

"How could Ann-Marie keep this from me?" She kept backing up. Her legs were trembling now.

"Lily. Please. You don't have to be afraid of me," I interjected and moved toward her, grabbing her before she could run away.

"No, let me go!" she screamed.

Now tears fell down my eyes. "Lily. Stop. It's Eric. I'm still me!" I held her tighter and her body rattled out of control, the tears pouring from her reddened eyes mixing with snot.

"Out of everyone else, I was supposed to know you the best! You were supposed to know me the best!" She stopped struggling, dropping her body weight into me, pressing her head into my chest and grabbing my shirt. "You were supposed to be my fucking stupid fairytale ending."

"You never believed in fairytales," I reminded her.

"Not until you all re-entered my life and had me convinced that shit was real." She punched my chest.

"It was real. Is. Please. Lily. When you were gone, I was going out of my mind without options, my parents were ill, I didn't want to bother them, I got some contacts from my parents, but lost it when Matt and I accidentally crashed the car on my way back from the airport..." I squeezed my eyes shut, the weight pulling my forehead down to rest on the top of her head.

"You crashed?" Her voice scratched.

"Tyler offered to help us find you. We figured either Marco or Terry had you. Turned out it wasn't Marco and Terry tricked us," I forced the words out against the boulder in my chest. "Fuck, we were so close. We were there, where the containers were..." My heart was pounding now, my vision darkening, my pulse taking up all the space in my chest.

She was silent, looking up at me. Tears trickled down my neck, the tickle the only thing making me aware I was still crying.

"We could have rescued you, if we got the truth beaten out of him then and there." My hands tightened around her waist.

"Eric. You know I don't like violence," she insisted.

"They could have killed you!" I released her, my body growing hot.

"But they..." She raised her voice.

"Yeah, yeah. I know. They didn't. But they could have. And Terry was like mold. Unless you tore down everything and eliminated it from the source, he'd keep coming back. How long would they lock him up for?" I asked.

"I would have handled it." Her lips trembled.

My lungs expanded to capacity and I grabbed my head, steadying myself.

"I know there were better ways to handle it. But I wasn't thinking straight, okay? None of us were. After you were rescued, we thought it went without saying that Tyler would leave it. But then he told us that he caught them. And he was going to handle it with or without us."

Lily opened her mouth.

"I know what you're about to say, because I know you, remember? We could have left it. Called the police and told them that he caught them. Let the law deal with them. Talk Tyler down. Yeah, the last one wouldn't have worked. Besides, I wanted to see their faces one last time. And I wanted to walk away and leave them in the lion's den with Tyler. But Tyler wanted insurance. He wanted to make sure that we wouldn't go straight to the police, especially since Ryan was threatening that he would. Trying to talk him down. I've convinced myself that we didn't have a choice. But we did. We could have participated or let him hurt us. We chose ourselves, because he would've killed them anyway. I spent some time regretting it. But more than anything else, I was fucking relieved. You don't understand how much I love you, Lily..." I said.

"Don't do that. Don't blame this on love," she sobbed.

"But I didn't want that man to have access to you anymore. And as the days went by, and I knew he wouldn't be popping his slimy ass into your life ever again, it became easier to sleep," I confessed. "I wanted to protect you."

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