Page 37 of In Love With a Master (Interview With a Master 2)

“Jonah!” Leticia cried my name as though it were an exclamation of her pain. She came suddenly around the table to me. I rose from my chair. Leticia wrapped her arms around me and I stood like a statue, cold and remote while she imprisoned me in her embrace.

“Give us a chance,” Leticia cried, and I heard the pleading timbre in her voice. “All we need is time. You can’t condemn us. You can’t deny us the chance to love each other because you’re facing surgery tomorrow.”

I tore myself away from her. Leticia’s arms fell heavily to her side and she stood there, suddenly very small and broken. She was sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping from the line of her jaw. She swayed towards me again and then stopped herself.

“Leticia, I’m not ending this relationship because I am facing life or death surgery tomorrow. I’m ending this relationship because if I survive I don’t want your life to be wasted or our relationship to be a hollow empty façade. I’m letting you go now because you deserve to be loved by a man who is capable of loving. In your heart, your dream for us is unattainable. I don’t want a white picket fence, and I don’t want children,” I said. “I don’t want the hearts and flowers of a romance novel. It’s not me. It’s not who I am. It’s my world – my way, and I wish with all my heart that I could live happily ever after in your world. But I can’t.”

Leticia suddenly flew at me with terrible pain and heartache contorting her face and flashing in her eyes. I was unprepared. She lashed out at me, and I swayed my head away at the last instant before her nails could rake bloody lines across my face.

“You selfish bastard!” she shrieked her anguish. “You won’t even give love a chance!” She struck at me again, but I trapped her wrists. I crushed her to me. Her whole body was trembling and shaking, and the terrible agony of her crying shook her shoulders so that she heaved within my arms. She flailed and dashed her anger against me like ocean surf against a rock until she was spent and softly weeping. She pressed her palms flat against my chest to push herself away from me, and there was a stricken look of revulsion and wounded betrayal in her gaze.

I could not bear what I saw in her eyes.

I let her go.

Leticia staggered away and collapsed to her knees on the cold kitchen floor.

I did nothing.

I was silent now, staring down at Leticia, straining to hold back my own agony – my own terrible pain and remorse. A part of me was torn by sympathy, and the enormity of the hurt I had caused threatened to overwhelm me. Behind the dark remote flint of my eyes I died a little inside…

Leticia was shaking wildly. She turned her face up to mine and there was despondency and despair and humiliation torn across her face, crashing over her in a relentless surge of tears and sobbing.

“Jonah… just one last chance…” her voice rasped in terrible hopelessness, and then trailed away to nothing.

I shook my head. My heart was cold and heavy as a stone. “Leticia, we never had a chance,” I said sadly. “I know that now. I am sorry. I wish that I had realized it sooner.”

Chapter 26.

It was late. It was dark.

Outside a storm was brewing in the night sky. Thunder rumbled, so close overhead that my office window rattled in its encasement. A flash of blue light jagged across the sky and hard rain began to lash against the glass.

I sat hunched at my desk, burdened and glowering darkly into empty space.

Sometimes doing the right thing can feel so very wrong.

Was Leticia right? Had I disguised my selfishness beneath a cloak of nobility?

I sat back and sighed. I didn’t have the answer. All I had left was my wavering beliefs.

And guilt.

And sadness.

And despair.

I poured the glass half full of whisky then slipped the knot of my tie. I sipped at the glass but the alcohol tasted sour and bitter.

I stared down at the sheath of legal documents on my desk, then picked up the pen and signed my last will and testament with a sudden flourish.

I sealed the documents in an envelope and left them on the desk beside the phone.

The phone…

I paused, frozen for a moment, and then picked up the receiver and slowly dialed.

It’s never too late to do the right thing.

I screwed up my courage…

The dial tone echoed in my ear for long seconds before Leticia’s familiar voice answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I said, feeling my heart begin to race with anxiety. “It’s me.”

“Jonah?”

“Yes.”

I heard Leticia make a little hiss of pained sound. “Go to hell,” she said softly.

I stared at the blank wall before me. “I probably will,” I confessed.

There was a long, agonizing moment of silence – a moment where everything hung in the balance. I could sense Leticia’s pain, and hear the soft muffled sounds of sobbing down the line.

“What do you want?” she faltered, and then her voice became harder. “Haven’t you hurt me enough?”

I took the blow like a punch to the heart. “I’m sorry,” I said, lowering my voice to a whisper. “I called to apologize.”

More silence – this time longer. I felt my grip on the receiver tighten until my knuckles where white.

“You’re a bastard,” Leticia muttered. I imagined her, standing in her apartment, maybe by the big living room window. I visualized her, rigid and unyielding, hurt beyond belief by the way I had ended the relationship – the cruel way I had rejected her… turned my back on our future. I imagined her eyes red from crying and her face distraught, her sense of devastation.

“Yes,” I said. “And more… and I’m sorry.”

Leticia huffed cynically. “Sorry, Jonah? You’re sorry? For what? For breaking my heart, or for being a callous, selfish bastard?”

“Both,” I said softly. And then I took a deep breath and pushed myself out of the chair. I needed to pace.

“Leticia… I was wrong,” I admitted, and then it

all came out in a rush of words that had been gnawing at my guts for hours. “I was scared,” I confessed. “Terrified. You don’t understand. You see me as some kind of an expert on women… and maybe I am. But I’m not an expert at emotions, Leticia. I’m not. Last night in bed you said that we should pretend ‘this would last forever’. It terrified me, because I realized I might not live… and I wondered if I could ever truly love you. I didn’t want to lead you on – not when I couldn’t promise you the future you saw for us. I did the one thing that would set you free. I went cold. I shut down. I locked you out and turned my back… because I had nothing I could offer you. Not even hope.”

Leticia stayed silent for a long time. I paced the floor, prowling in the shadows, listening to her ragged breathing down the line. Finally she said, “So why are you calling now? To clear your conscience?”

“No,” I said. “I’m calling to ask you to forgive me,” I said simply. “Leticia, I was wrong – and I can’t believe I made the same mistake again. It took Tiny’s death for me to realize I was wasting my life, and that every moment was precious and should be seized…” my voice dropped suddenly to a hushed whisper. “And it took the loss of you – the raw breaking ache I’ve had in my heart all day – to realize that I don’t want to live without you.”

I heard Leticia gasp – a sharp intake of breath like a tiny sound of shock.

“I… I don’t understand…” she said softly, and I could hear the falter in her voice. The dismay. “Jonah, yesterday you told me that men never changed. That’s why you ended our relationship. You said that we never had a chance…”

“I know.” I threw my hand into the air in a gesture of exasperation. “And I was wrong about that too,” I admitted. “I believed with complete conviction that men never change, Leticia. I believed it right up to the moment I felt my heart break when I realized I had lost you. Men do change,” I said, and then shook my head, not really understanding what I was saying, but knowing now for certain that it was the truth.

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