Lotus: Second Chance Love with Romantic Suspense

by Jennifer Hartmann

“You’re going to lose me by trying too hard not to lose me, Syd.” A quivering gasp echoes in my ears. “Good night.”

There’s a hurricane in her eyes, and it’s either going to swallow me whole or leave me crippled, on my knees, lost and alone among the wreckage.

Tabitha’s encouraging smile shines back at me. “Be courageous. Be confident. Be bold,” she says, her voice brimming with sincerity as she reaches for my hand once more. “Be red.”

“You know, Charlene was always quite fond of you,” Lorna tells me through a squint, a trace of candor seeping into her voice. “I think she’d be happy to know you found your way back to each other.”

Staring at a photo of Oliver and me, I hold my grief in the back of my throat like a burning ball of could-have-beens.

Oliver’s eyes darken with a thick, ugly swell of jealousy as he advances on me. “You’re worried I can’t fuck you like they can.”

“I’m trying to understand you, Syd. I’m trying to learn why you pull away from me, why I can’t fully reach you. Why you run.”

“God, who hurt you, Sydney?” “You did!” I shriek, unplanned and untethered, my hysteria bubbling over. “Something inside of me fucking died the day I lost you!”

“It appears we continue to hurt one another, despite our greatest efforts not to. It’s a paradox.” Oliver’s gaze drifts past me, his forehead wrinkling with contemplation. He lets out a remorseful sigh and opens the door. “Love is a paradox.”

All these years, I’ve never given my heart to anyone. I told myself it was because I was too picky, too independent, my standards were too high…but that’s not the truth. The truth is, I didn’t have a heart to give. My heart was with a ghost.

“I’m uncertain why everyone considers me to be so breakable. I survived in a basement for over two decades with not much more than a sleeping bag, a bucket, and a lifetime supply of Chef Boyardee.” My back is all that faces the two men across the room, so I don’t see their expressions when I deliver the bold statement. “I’m not nearly as fragile as you all seem to think I am.”

His eyes twinkle with authentic joy. Over a fruit skewer. “God, I love you.” The three words tumble off my tongue, unexpected, spontaneous—a potent proclamation. A weight that sinks me, sinks me, until I’m swallowed whole, struggling for air.

“Remember when you said I wore my heart in my eyes?” He flashes me a knowing smirk. “Let me guess. Your heart is sitting two stools to the left on his third strawberry daiquiri, looking like he’s working up the courage to ask you to prom.”

I look around for his cupid’s arrow, but I can’t seem to find it—it’s probably already lodged inside my heart.

All four of us laugh, candid, without constraint, and I know this moment will stand out in my mind for the rest of my life. Me and my boys—my sweet, beautiful men, smiling and alive, together, vibrating with genuine joy. The last two decades wash away like a message in a bottle—the one that housed a desperate plea from inside my heart, a letter to the man in the sky, holding my wishes in his capable hands.

A whispery breath leaves me on unsteady legs, my arms and heart clinging tighter than ever before. “I’m hard to hold,” I confess, my words pulled from the coil of fear inside me. But Oliver’s smile only swells as he lowers my cheek to his chest, his palm still cradling the back of my head like I am cherished—like I am his missing piece. “Nothing worth holding is ever too hard.”

“For so long, I was just a name carved into a stone wall. I was a picture on paper, created by my own muddled mind,” he confesses, and there’s anguish woven into his words, evidence of his years of loneliness. But then his eyes find their way back to mine, and I see a shift. I see hope. “You make me feel like I’m…someone.” “You are someone, Oliver. You always have been.”

“I’m not gone anymore, Syd.” His palms find my face, clasping my cheeks, tears slipping through his fingers. “I’m right here, with you, and I’m still holding on to your heart. Please don’t ask me to give it back.” A tiny sob breaks free, and I kiss him.

“I ache for you, Sydney,” Oliver rasps, one hand curling behind my head, fisting my hair. “I crave to be inside you more than I craved freedom in all of those twenty-two years combined.”

“There is no logic in the way our hearts beat, Sydney. Only magic.” “Oliver…” “Tell me how to break that thread.”

“I love you, Oliver Lynch.” I say his name, I say it loud and clear, because he is real. He is someone. He is everything to me.

She gave herself to me, mind, body, and soul. She told me she loved me. Sydney loves me. And I love her, so entirely, so painfully… I always have. I tell her in the way I hold her, in the way I look at her, in the way I say her name. She is my favorite part of me.

“You always deserve what is meant for you, and if anything is meant to be, it’s us,” I tell her earnestly, with whispered passion, my thumbs drifting over her cheekbones.

“I want you to teach me everything. How to touch you, taste you, worship you.”

For the very first time, I am truly and exceptionally happy. I have a family. I have freedom and possibilities and fresh air and sunshine. I have hope. I have meaning. I have her.

And somehow, right then, her implication dawns on me. My stomach twists into knots. Love. I never told her I loved her.

Love. My mother. My beautiful mother. My God, how she must have missed me. She’ll never know that I’m okay. She’ll never, ever know.

“I love you, Syd. I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you until my dying day.” There was never a question, never a doubt.

I thought I had experienced the worst out of life, being brainwashed and held captive in a stranger’s basement for over two-thirds of my life…but my God, how wrong I was. The worst moment was the look in Sydney’s eyes when she made the choice to end her life because she couldn’t bear the thought of living without me again. She made a conscious decision to die that night. To burn. For me.

We wield our swords together, finding true strength in one another. We will fight. We will live.

“It’s our initials, Oliver. I wished for us.” There it is, in plain sight, gazing up at me: sn + ol

Written on my arm in black ink, misconstrued and upside down, those letters manifested into the only true friend I had down in that hole. It created pages upon pages of stories and adventures, keeping me company, keeping me sane, keeping me alive for so many years. It was her.

Sydney Neville + Oliver Lynch It’s always been us.

loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you until my dying day. You’re my best friend. You’re my queen,” he whispers, words spilling out like poetry. “Will you be my wife?”

As we hold each other beneath the starry sky, I stretch out my hand, watching as the lotus diamond sparkles and gleams with every burst from above. I think about its meaning and how it represents our love story in the most exquisite way. The Lotus will bloom into the most magnificent flower, even when its roots are in the murkiest of waters.

And it’s there upon our secret hill that we dance, we cry, and we fall in love all over again. It’s there we bloom.

Our matching tattoos smile back at us: sn + ol