So, it was finally out there—the thing that Eric had been running from, the thing that he had been trying to make up for, the thing that had damaged Andie more than he could have ever anticipated.

He had abandoned her when she was just sixteen years old—a child with no parents, no sisters, no brothers; just an old aunt who died three years after his abandonment. He was so sure it had been the right decision. Even now as he looked back on it, he couldn't find an alternate ending. They wouldn't have been able to resist each other had he stayed. He had to leave. He didn't have a choice.

But, what did it cost? The isolation of a girl who hadn't yet figured herself out. And now the emotional scars of his abandonment scratched so deeply into her skin. She was just a child. And children are empty canvases who take from their surroundings to fill in the blanks. These young years are such influential years in a child's life. Those years make a child into an adult. And what did those years make Andie? An insecure, anxious, wreck of a girl who could have turned out so much differently had Eric found another way...

Closing his eyes firmly shut as the weight of his own self-loathing settled heavily on his shoulders, Eric crushed Andie to his chest. He held her so tightly that perhaps all of her broken pieces might press back together.

"Andie, I'm so sorry," he breathed into her hair, burying his face in her long blond waves. "I don't know how to fix this... I wish I could. I want to, but... How? Tell me what to do."

Her head was shaking against his chest. She didn't speak. From above, it sounded as if she had begun crying again. The sound tore at Eric, and he tightened his arms even more.

Perhaps she was better off without him....

No. He wouldn't leave her again. Not unless she directly told him to.

"Eric?" her voice, cracking through the thickness in her throat, spoke very softly against the white material of his dress shirt.

"Yes, Angel?" he gently, but quickly, tugged them apart so that he could see her; more than relieved that she was speaking to him. She blinked at the endearment, and then again several times as if forcing herself to return to her original train of thought.

"Why didn't you come back? Just once? For Christmas, or...something. Weren't you worried about me? Or at least a little curious how I was doing?"

"Of course I was worried about you, Andie. I thought about you every single day."

"Then why stay gone for so long?"

"I—" Eric pulled back a little further. He raked a hand through his hair. "I told you, I didn't trust myself. I knew that every year that passed would leave you more beautiful and more grown up than the last. You wouldn't believe the interal arguments I had with myself. When you were seventeen, I almost came back for a holiday, but the darkest part of me convinced me that you're almost eighteen, so if I wanted to, I could..." he trailed off, his eyes blazing, his heart racing, his body wound up with agitation at how out of control he was with her.

"You could have called..." she whispered accusingly.

"Andie!" he sighed, exasperated. "Do you think I could have turned you down if you asked me to come back?"

"I-I wouldn't have..." She looked away.

"Yes, you know you would have. And I wouldn't have been able to say no to you again. Not after leaving you once. If you begged me to come home, I would have."

"Then, what?"

"What?"

"Say I had asked you to come home, or say you hadn't even left in the first place. What makes you think it would have gone so badly?" She shrugged. "For all you know I had enough self control for the both of us."

"If I wanted to fuck you, you would have let me."

Andie flinched, and Eric almost regretted the harshness of his words. But it got his point across... And Andie understood now, and she didn't bother denying it.

If Eric wanted to have Andie, she wouldn't have told him no. Even if she wanted to... It just wasn't within her nature with him back then when they were so much younger.

"Do you see now, Andie?" he asked, gentling his tone. "I had to leave."

Andie lowered her head, studying her bare foot as she pressed her toes into the wood. She crossed her arms over her chest as if sheilding her heart from something—from him.

"So, why come back now?" She lifted her head. Her eyes stared so deeply into his soul he could almost feel her swimming around in the empty bleakness that filled him.

"I thought that you wouldn't feel for me what you did six years ago, and I wouldn't feel for you what I felt for you then. I thought that with six years between us, we would be past it."

"Are we...?"

Eric slowly shook his head. "I don't know... Are we?"

Andie lowered her head once again. She looked cold in her little slip of a dress, and Eric wanted to cross the room and wrap her in his warm embrace. But when she looked up she wore an expression that kept him where he was.

"You always had me..."

Eric's brow furrowed. His head cocked ever-so-slightly to the side.

"What?"

She looked away again.

"I was always yours," she whispered.

Eric watched, grounded by her reply as she quickly swiped away one last fallen tear from her cheek before looking up and gently clearing her throat. "So, to answer your question," she spoke to the walls in the room as she refused to look at him. "No, I guess I'm not past it." And then she let out one short bitter laugh through the wet pool that lingered in her eyes. "I would have let you fuck me too, you're right."

Eric's heart might as well have stopped in his chest as Andie took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and started towards the door.

"Where are you going?" He straightened, conveniently still standing between her and the only exit from the room.

"Home..." she answered with all the exhaustion in her heart.

He frowned.

"Chicago?"

"No... Just home. I'm tired."

Eric nodded, and still stunned by her confession, stepped aside, and let her pass. She was so perfect in every way as she closed her hand on the door knob. Her long hair bounced as she moved to pull open the heavy thing. It was a beast of a door, and she struggled to hold it open. So, Eric placed his hand over hers on the door knob and—

Fuck it.

"What are you doing?" Andie breathed as Eric shut the door. She turned just as his arms caged her between him and the door. He flattened his palms on the wood behind her and lowered his mouth to hers.

She went rigid beneath him and for a moment he thought she might pull away or refuse to participate in the kiss at all. But then with a gentle shift of his lips, she was melting against him.

Since the kiss they shares yesterday he could think of anything else but kissing her again. It was one of the reasons why he decided not to go home. Once again, he was in the position of feeling very out of control with her. He knew he would have gone home and found her waiting and willing and he would taken her without thinking.

But was there any reason to hold back now? She wanted him. He wanted her. They were no longer tied by his father's will. They were grown up.

At last, they could have each other.

Six goddamned years later, and he could have her.

Parting her lips with his, Eric slanted his mouth across her, deeping their kiss. A sound hummed from her throat and her arms lifted to twine around his neck.

Unable to bear being so seperated from her for a moment longer, he slipped his hands down her bottom and lifted her by the backs of her knees. She closed around him immediately. He turned and walked her to the desk. He rounded it and lowered himself into the large leather desk chair. With her sitting astride him, he took her face in his hands and turned her jaw so that he could kiss the underside of her chin. He raked his mouth down the side of neck and across her shoulder, pulling her short sleeve aside. He nipped at her collarbone and she gasped.

"Oh, Andie," he breathed against her skin. "I've been holding myself back for so long, but I can't stand it for another fucking second."

"Then don't," Andie replied, her hot breath fanning across his brow. "I told you," she said, fiddling boldly with the buttons of his shirt. "I'm yours."

Eric groaned, nearly undone by her unnerving ability to move him with her sweet statements. Eric knew she meant every word of it too. She was always his, and he supposed a part of him always knew that. Even six years ago when she was just a sixteen year old girl with a crush, and he, a twenty year old college student without any self control. Even then, she was his.

"I remember how you kissed me yesterday," he told her as she dipped her head to kiss his neck. "The way you pulled at the ropes with all your might to get closer to me..." His eyes drank in her flushed cheeks when she straightened, her attention caught by his words.

"I want you to do that again," she murmured as she eyed his lips greedily.

"Tie you to the ceiling?"

"To the ceiling," she said with a nod and then a shrug. "Or the bed...the wall...the floor...Wherever you would like to tie me. You could do anything to me."

"I think you mean that."

"I do."

"It's...unnerving. Yet, outstanding."

"I'm glad you approve."

"Stop talking and kiss me."

"Yes, sir."