"THIS TIME AROUND"
By: gb
Chapter 10
Ryan watched Gillian leave down the hall back to the club's front room before he turned slowly around and saw Hayley watching him, clutching her party planner book to her chest. She smiled uncertainly but said nothing.
Ryan slowly came over to Mateo's desk and leaned against it. Visions of Gillian's and his dance earlier were already flooding his mind.
Finally, Hayley spoke.
"You miss her already, don't you?" she asked quietly.
Ryan nodded. "I can't help it. She's everything."
"That happens when you're in love," she answered back.
"In love with someone I don't even know that well." Ryan said. "Hayley, we were strangers when we met and I kissed her two seconds after we met. I knew the second I saw her that my life would be changed forever and I would never be able to walk away from away. We were strangers when we married- when I burst into the church and broke up her wedding to someone else. The fire between us nearly threatened to explode in there! Our honeymoon is literally carved into my brain. We were strangers when I ignored her and she had an affair and I forgave her and we admitted our love for each other, when I went to jail for a crime I didn't commit and she stood by my side through it all and when I was released and she begged me to come home with her and I couldn't and I left her and we divorced and she got pregnant and even when we lost our daughter... through it all, we were strangers who couldn't stay away from each other."
"You knew enough to know that she was the one."
"Yeah, I knew it enought to kiss you and break her heart."
"Ryan..." Hayley began.
"Tell me something, Hayley," Ryan interupted her. "How can you love someone with everything you have and have that person be a total stranger. How can the thought of not being with that someone make you so physically sick that you don't want to live one second more than after they walk away, but yet the two of you are strangers except for this love?"
"I don't know," Hayley answered."You don't get to choose the one you love. It either happens or it doesn't."
"I think maybe that it was on the first day... yeah, I think somehow, it was." he admitted to her. "I always suspected, but the thought scared me to all hell and so I refused to consider it- I wanted it to be her body that I wanted. That she was just a nameless good time, but I couldn't make it that way. I just couldn't help myself not care what happened with her and I couldn't keep my heart out of it."
"Comon, Ryan," Hayley tried to make the mood lighter. "Love is a natural occurrance. It' not like you two have a 'Fatal Attraction' thing going on."
"Oh, no?" he asked. "I don't know about that. We're addicted to each other. The passion that we feel is..."
Ryan didn't finish. He couldn't explain it himself- he doubted that she would understand. What he and Gilli shared was almost like a fable somehow and it was nowhere near crystal clear.
Aloud, he said, "Hayley, I think I'm going to need some time off for a few days, if that's ok. I really need to think about some things."
"Ok, sure," she said. "Take all the time you need. We'll be fine."
She smiled to reassure him and he said his good byes and walked out the door through which Gillian left.
Once he had gone, Hayley walked around the desk, put her book down, sat down herself and after a few moments of staring into space, took a deep breath.
Aloud, she said, "You win, Gillian. Ryan's heart was yours the entire time. No other woman will ever be able to come before you to him...even me."
Ryan had come back up to the front room and saw that Gillian had left with Jake.
When his shift ended, he quietly went home to his apartment which he shared with Scott Chandler(who was out of town for a few weeks), and took a shower and got ready for bed.
He seemed to feel lonely now as he wandered about his place looking for a magazine to read to help him sleep. He couldn't explain it, but he hated this place now where before he didn't have much of an opinion on it. There was now a sadness in his heart that was scary to him. Funny, but being by himself just never registered in his mind so much before... before her...his Princess....before she came and took away that feeling that he was pretty used to living with and now no longer liked.
When had she done it?, he thought. When had she come and found a place by his side and when had his side needed someone like this?! The phone across the room was just sitting and waiting for him now. He didn't think. He couldn't let himself think even though he knew better. He just walked up to it and dialed the number that he knew by heart even though he'd had to fight himself not to use.
The connection was made and in a few minutes, a female voice so familliar to him said,"Hello?"
"I guess you made it back ok," he said quietly.
A brief pause was there before Gillian answered,"Yes, Jake and I got back a little while ago."
"Jake isn't with you now." he told her.
Gillian wanted to tell him that he was. She wanted to tell him that Jake meant more to her now and that Ryan was just a memory that she no longer thought about. But the truth was that after she left SOS's back office, she and Jake didn't really have that great a time. Gillian's mind was totally on Ryan and Jake had known it. They had danced some, and even had gone to dinner, but heart hadn't been it. They had returned to the boadinghouse and had talked as cheerfully as they could and tried to pretend that Jake hadn't spotted her at the club with Ryan, but something had changed and they both knew it.
They had gone up to their individual room with a dinner planned for the next night and Gillian had gone inside to her place and closed the door. She had put her purse away, her shoes back in the closet, and walked over to her chair by the window and put curled her legs under her and cried silently.
She cried for Jake who had been the best friend she had ever had and been the most patient man on earth with her and wanted to love her on any terms she had to offer and whose heart she had just broken and would continue to break. But she found that she was mostly crying for herself. She was crying because she would love Ryan forever and would have to live with that no matter what she was to him. She couldn't stop wanting this man and his gentle touches and his teasing smiles and his loving body the way he worshiped her with it as they made the most passionate love that she knew she would ever know....
Maybe he couldn't love her, but he knew how to love her body and it was his forever! She wanted his heart and prayed that he would give it to her. What else could she do- she couldn't let him hurt her again. What would become of her if she did? But what would become of her if he walked away- she would shrivel up and want to die, she knew.
She had somehow taken a shower and put on one of Ryan's t-shirts and was back in her chair for the night. She moved the phone by her and decided that she would have to learn how to sleep in the bed again by herself, but not tonight. Tonight, she wanted it to be just her and her chair.
She was fighting for sleep when Ryan called. And now she was focused on him again.
"Can't you sleep?" Ryan asked.
"Not since last night," she answered. "I want you with me."
Ryan laughed quietly. "At least you admit it."
"Admitting it is not the problem, Ryan." she said. "Dealing with it is the mess. I can't stop wanting you with me."
"We could fix that. " he said. "I could come over."
"No, it can't be that way, Baby. I would just waste away if I let you back in."
"Gillian, why are you fighting it? We want to be together."
"Because, sex is just one part of a relationship. We need more than that."
"It's not just sex between us, Princess, and we both know it." Ryan said. " We have something between us that is not going to go away. Deny it all you want, but your heart wants to be torchured by mine."
"I think I need to sleep now, Ryan," she said quickly.
"Are you wearing one of my shirts?" he asked her suggestivley.
When she didn't answer him, he continued," Is your hair all loose and spilling ever so seductively over your shoulders and catching fire in the moonlight? Are you biting your lip to keep from calling out my name? Do you still ache for me in your sleep like I do for you?"
His voice was a hushed whisper and Gillian released her bottom lip but remained silent.
"That's my Princess," he laughed. " Maybe you're not such a stranger to me."
Gillian decided turnabout was fairplay.
"Are you showered and in your pj bottoms,Ryan?" she asked. "Can you feel my warm skin next to yours even now? Does my touch haunt your every minute leaving you wanting more? How big is your bed anyway? I bet it's soft and silky and we would feel wonderful lying in it together in each others arms while watching the sun come up...I just love the space under your jaw against your neck, Ryan. That's where I want to sleep now..."
Ryan swallowed hard. God, she was killing him, but it was not her body that he wanted, but her heart to hold forever in his own. He didn't want anyone else- no one else could make him feel like this and he knew it.
"Call me in a couple of days if you can't see me now?" he asked her.
"Yes." she told him. "Good night, Ryan. Sleep well, ok?"
"I'm still here waiting, Gilli," he told her. "I'll always wait."
"I know."
"Good night, then," he said.
They each put down their receivers carefully and each curled up more snugly in their chairs and closed their eyes for the night....
To be cont...