The Road To Forgiveness Read online

  The Road To Forgiveness

  Justine Elvira

  Published by Justine Elvira

  Smashwords edition

  © 2013 Justine Elvira

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. This book contains material under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any Unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Cover image used under license from shutterstock.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  This book is dedicated to anyone who wants a happily ever after. We’ve read them in our favorite children books, we see them in our favorite movies, and we want them to for ourselves.

  Prologue

  I’m being pushed in to a cream colored room with one window. The storm outside is defining and I worry about the safety of one person. The person I need here with me the most. The person who is traveling to be here, with me.

  I’m not nervous or anxious for what is about to happen to my body. I’m calm and relaxed. I know the only reason is because I’m happy.

  Truly, sickeningly happy.

  The kind of happy you only dream about. The kind of happy I never thought I’d have again.

  My mother walks into the room just as I hear a crash of thunder vibrate through building. We both look out the window to see the rain and hail beating on the pavement. It’s coming down harder than it was earlier.

  “You’re going to have to prepare for the worst, Mia.”

  My mother was always the pessimist.

  “He’ll be here, momma,” I say calmly, while letting out another deep breath.

  “Honey, I just don’t think you are being realistic. It’s raining cats and dogs out there. The winds are blowing around fifty miles per hour. It’s just not going to happen.”

  My frustration is growing. I love my momma but I need her to be on my side for once. I need her to think positively for me. If she doesn’t believe it… who cares. All I need is a false sense of hope then.

  “He said he would be here, so he’ll be here. I need to believe he’ll be here. Why don’t you get that?”

  Just then, I hear commotion outside the door while a man’s voice drifts into the room. I would recognize that voice anywhere. I’m right… He is here.

  Chapter One

  7 months earlier

  Sebastian

  It’s been four weeks. Four weeks since I’ve seen Mia. Four weeks since I’ve touched her skin and smelt her on my body. I miss her smile, her laugh, and the way she’d glance at me when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  I’ve been miserable without her. I flew out to Riceboro, Georgia two days after she left. The private investigator that works for me found a lead through the cab driver that picked her up. She was headed home to Riceboro, or so I thought.

  I’ve been in Riceboro for four weeks and I can’t fucking stand it here. It’s a cute town, I’ll give it that much, but it isn’t for me. Riceboro has a population of around eight hundred people and I’ve spoken to just about every one of them. Sure, everyone knows Mia but no one can tell me where she is.

  I met her mother the first day I was in town. It wasn’t the way I had pictured meeting Mia’s mother but desperate times called for desperate measures. She’s a pleasant woman, much younger than I expected and good looking too. I know where Mia gets her looks.

  Melanie, this was Mia’s mother’s name, was also a hard woman. I could see it all over her face. The past year had gotten to her and gotten to her bad. Melanie told me she had seen Mia several times over the past several weeks but she didn’t know where Mia was staying.

  So every day I parked my car outside Mia’s mother’s house, hoping Mia shows up. She never does. I don’t know if Mia knows I’m in town. Her mother doesn’t seem like the kind of person to withhold that information from her daughter. I hope she knows I’m in town but needless to say, it’s been four weeks and still no Mia.

  That’s why today, I’m sitting in my rental car at the cemetery. This is the cemetery where her son Miles is buried. It’s a long shot but something tells me I’ll see her today. She hasn’t been visiting her Mother but I know she is visiting her son.

  It’s just after four in the afternoon and the cemetery closes at five. I’ve been here for seven hours. Luckily the temperature is cool this time of year, so I’m not sitting in unbearable heat in my car. I haven’t had anything to eat today and I’ve started to get the shakes from all the coffee I’ve drunk.

  I start my car and am ready to leave when I see a car pull up and park a little bit down the road. I see her brown hair first and am instantly relieved at the sight of her.

  Fuck.

  She looks tired but she is also breathtakingly beautiful. She is wearing dark sunglasses on the top of her head. She raises her hand to lower them to her face. She closes the car door and starts walking up the grass and past the gravestones.

  My hand turns the key in the vehicle so the ignition turns off. I just sit and stare at the woman I am madly in love with. I’ve gone four weeks without seeing her. I started to think maybe I had imagined her up. I thought maybe she wasn’t real but fuck me; she was real and right in front of me.

  I watch her walk to a stone about two hundred feet away from her car before she stops. Her fingers lightly graze the top of the stone before she sits down in front of the gravestone. This must be her son’s grave. I see her mouth start to move as her fingers start playing with the grass in front of her.

  I feel like I’m invading her privacy by watching but I can’t stop looking. She looks so helpless and I want to save her. I want to help her get past this and move on. I just don’t know if she wants me to help her. She left me; maybe I should take that as the sign that she doesn’t want me. That she wants to be left alone but I can’t. My life was shit before her and now I know how good life can be. I’m not giving that up without a fight.

  Regardless of how tough she acts I know her life was shit before me, too. She needs me just as much as I need her so I’m not leaving. I’m going to be here for her until she realizes she needs me. I love her and I’m not giving her up.

  I continue to watch her even as the sun starts to set and the cemetery ground’s keeper starts closing the gates for incoming guests. It will only be a few minutes until someone comes over here and kicks us out.

  My phone starts to ring from inside my jean pocket. I pull it out and glance at the number before answering. “Hey, Darcy.”

  “Where are you? We had a meeting today and you blew it off. I have other things I could be doing but we rushed this for you. You wanted this to happen as soon as possible and when it is time to sign the documents you don’t show up. Where were you?”

  She is pissed and I can’t blame her. I did rush this. I needed this to happen as soon as possible. I wanted to show Mia I was serious about being with her and this meeting was to finalize ever
ything, and I didn’t show up.

  “I’m sorry, Darcy but something came up. I’ve been distracted. I should have called.”

  “Where were you?” She said, again.

  “It’s nothing for you to be concerned about. I’m sorry I didn’t show up.”

  “Sebastian, are you still in Georgia?”

  I laid all my cards out on the table the morning after Mia left me. I called Darcy and had her come over to the estate. She was annoyed at first. Darcy didn’t like being summoned. I explained to her how I needed a divorce. How our arrangement wasn’t working for me anymore.

  I expected a fight. Darcy was all about appearance and a high profile divorce could look bad for her image. Surprisingly, she agreed. She was happy to end the charade. She even agreed to expedite everything so we could get divorced as soon as possible.

  We had everything settled and the meeting today was the final step. All I had to do was sign the divorce papers. I’d loose a lot of money after the divorce was finalized but it was worth it. Darcy wanted half of everything but I didn’t care. Money didn’t mean anything to me if I didn’t have Mia.

  I hope this will help solve everything. I don’t know for sure why Mia ran but I’m sure the fact that I’m married didn’t help. Now I was getting a divorced and I hope this helps her with any doubts she has.

  “Yes, I’m still in Georgia,” I say drearily.

  “Have you found her yet? Is she ready to come back to Miami?”

  I told Darcy why I was here and she has been supportive. Any anger we had towards each other in the past is gone. I think we both just want to be happy and life is to short not to be.

  Even though we are on good terms, her question angers me. If Mia were ready to come back to Miami, we would be in Fucking Miami. I wouldn’t be sitting in a fucking cemetery, in a town with the population of Darcy’s apartment building, waiting for a chance to talk to her.

  “I’m working on it, Darcy,” I reply as I look towards her son’s grave again, but Mia isn’t there.

  I start to panic until I spot her opening her car door and getting in her vehicle.

  “Darcy, I have to go. I’ll call you later to reschedule the signing.”

  I click end on my smart phone before I hear her reply. Mia’s car starts to pull away from the gravesite. I start my vehicle and follow her out and onto the main road. I make a quick decision to follow her to her next destination. Once she stops her car, I will confront her. I will talk to her. I will get her back.

  Chapter Two

  Mia

  It’s the beginning of December and the air has gotten chilly. I’m glad to get a break from the Georgia heat and humidity. I’ve been back home for a while now, maybe three or four weeks. The truth is, I don’t know how long I’ve been back. I stopped caring what day it was as soon as I arrived. I prefer to just wallow in self-pity.

  I’m staying with my friend Jonathon, in his apartment a few towns over. Its small and only has one bedroom, but its perfect for him. He lives alone and is hardly ever home so he doesn’t need some huge elaborate place.

  The night I left Sebastian, I called Jonathon from Miami International Airport. After he got over the initial shock of hearing from me, he agreed to pick me up from the airport and let me stay with him. I wasn’t ready to go home and stay with my mother and I hoped Jonathon’s place would be a place Sebastian wouldn’t look for me.

  I was right too. I haven’t seen or heard from him since I left Miami. I continue to tell myself this is a good thing. This is what I want. Every time I tell myself these lies, my heart breaks a little more.

  It only took about five minutes for Jonathon and I to fall into out old habits. We were back to the relationship we had before. We spent the first two days catching each other up on what had happened the past several months.

  Jonathon and Cameron broke up in October. Cameron was offered a job in Seattle and wanted Jonathon to move to Seattle with him. Jonathon wanted to stay here, God only knows why, so they broke up. Jonathon was heart broken, still is, but not enough to make the move. He doesn’t like change and at the end of the day, Seattle was too big of a change for him.

  After a bunch of junk food and some of our favorite Queen classics, I spill a cliff-notes version of what happened in Miami. I even tell Jonathon about the pregnancy.

  We sit in silence before Jonathon finally shares with me his two cents.

  “You left him? How could you just leave him? What are you thinking Mia? You can’t raise another baby by yourself. I mean, you can, but why would you when you have a hot, sexy, billionaire boyfriend who would help raise it with you?”

  I sit there in silence while Jonathon is patiently waiting for me to reply. Finally I decide to speak.

  “He’s married. He has this whole life, a great life, and I don’t feel like I fit in to it. I’m constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop with him. I know in my heart that a relationship with him won’t work. That it would fail… and I was right. I found out I’m pregnant and that is the other shoe dropping.”

  “How is that the other shoe dropping when you haven’t even told him you are pregnant? Maybe he wants a baby and you never gave him a chance to tell you that. Or maybe he never thought about children before, but once he found out he would be on board. Or maybe he doesn’t want children at all. My point is, you will never know because you never gave him the chance to tell you what he wanted. Now I’m all about women’s rights and all that bull shit but as a man, I also believe the father has a right to know.”

  “Are you done, can I speak now?” I say annoyingly.

  Jonathon raises his eyebrows and gestures his hands out to me, “Go for it, love.”

  “I’m banking on him wanting the child. The best case scenario is that he will want his baby.”

  “Come again?” Jonathon replies with confusion all over his face.

  “I don’t want this baby. I can’t raise another child, not after what happened to Miles. It feels like I would be betraying his memory. I couldn’t do that again but I want Sebastian to want this baby. When the time is right, I’ll contact Darcy in hopes that she will give Sebastian his child. Who knows, maybe they’ll even decide to raise the child together.”

  “Oh, baby girl, no.” Jonathon gets up from his seat across from me and sits next to me on the love seat.

  “Don’t. I don’t want to hear your opinion right now… or how you think I’m totally fucked up. I know I’m fucked up. I just need your support right now. Whether you agree with me or not.”

  I look to Jonathon and see the concern he has for me written all over his face. It doesn’t look like he knows what to say so I fill the silence for him.

  “Will you do that? Will you just be supportive? I need you to hug me and tell me everything will be okay.”

  Jonathan moves over and wraps his arms around me as I bury my face into his neck. He holds me all night. Jonathon rubs circles into my back with his palm and whispers words of encouragement to me. It was exactly what I needed.

  In the weeks to follow I slowly become accustom to Jonathon’s routine. It’s easy staying with him. When he goes to work in the morning. I tidy up his apartment or go visit my mom.

  The first week I was back in town was rough. My mother was still super mad that I up and abandoned everyone and just left. She didn’t see my side of things at all and only worried about how it affected her. I would have been angry with her but she was alone now. I know how much she hates being alone.

  Charlie left about a month after I did. My mother said he was having a hard time dealing with the role he played in Miles’s death. He blames himself. I wish I paid more attention to how Charlie was feeling. I would have told him it wasn’t his fault and I didn’t blame him. He had no control over the other drivers on the road. If we wanted to blame anyone for the death of my son, it should be me. I should have been with him that morning.

  I guess Charlie lives is Chicago now and is working for some printing company. Mom doesn’t keep in t
ouch with him but I know she misses him. I’ve caught her crying a few times that I’ve been over. I mentally take notes to fix her and Charlie. It’s the least I can do after abandoning them.

  After I spend my mornings visiting my mom or cleaning Jonathon’s place, I spend my afternoons at the cemetery with Miles. The first day was the hardest. I almost left without saying anything to my son but I find comfort now in our visits. I sit and talk to him about everything. About the mistakes I made with him, about the role I played in his death and how I miss him terribly. It makes no sense but I feel closer to him when I’m there. That’s why the first visit turned in to a second and a third. Now I visit Miles everyday.

  I’m running later than usual today. I slept until noon because Jonathon and I stayed up late the night before watching a True Blood marathon so I was caught up for the next season. I shower and head over to my Mom’s house to see if she needs anything from me. We speak for about an hour about nothing of importance. She asks me again what I was doing the months I was gone. She has been really adamant about learning what I was up to in Miami. It’s frustrating when all I am trying to do is forget. I tell her what I always do; I don’t want to talk about it.

  Now I’m pulling up to the cemetery to visit Miles. It’s a little after four in the afternoon so I don’t have as much time with him as I wanted. I pull over on the side of the road near his grave. The cemetery is small and fairly empty. I only spot two other cars on the premises.

  I step out of my car and head to Miles grave. Once I approach his gravestone, I do what I always do. I gently strum my hand above the top of his stone. This gives me comfort. Almost like I’m caressing him instead of the solid stone.

  I sit down on the grass and spill the details of my day. I picture him telling me about his day too. I like to imagine he’s happy in heaven. Strumming the guitar with Johnny Cash or walking the streets paved of gold with Moses. I guess I’ll never really know what he’s doing but these thoughts bring a smile to my face.