Eliza Banks is the perfect housewife: dutiful, attentive, considerate. She knows there is nothing more she could possibly want than what she already has. Her husband, her childhood sweetheart, is the kind of man other girls would give their lives to get their hands on. Her life is idyllic, picture-perfect. Eliza Banks’ life is surely a dream come true.
But all of her delusions come crumbling down with the return on Callie Stewart seven years after she last saw the woman, storming from her bedroom in the early hours of the morning. Eliza knows it’s a dangerous game she’s playing when she offers to help Callie pack up some of her belongings in her old house. She knows, deep down, this can only end badly.
Old feelings stir, old flames are sparked, and everything Eliza worked so hard to bury beneath the folds of a wedding dress comes rising to the surface once more.
“Are you done with that stack of records?”
Eliza turns her head and suddenly realizes that she is on the floor and she laughs a bit because Callie is peering at her -- all upside-down -- and that's just funny.
“There was that day when we were in the woods, you know, the woods, right?”
“I do ...”
“And you hugged me. It was very cold that day. But you were nice and warm.”
Eliza blinks slowly, not sure if what she said has made much sense, but by the time her eyes re-open Callie is beside her -- propped up on her elbow, grinning in a manner that Eliza knows so very well -- and Eliza cannot stop herself from shifting closer, closer to Callie Stewart, right where she is meant to be.
“Eliza Ryder, are you drunk?”
The words seem to brush against Eliza’s ear, as if she can actually feel them, and maybe she can because Callie is so close. It takes nothing at all for Eliza to reach up and slide her fingertips across the smooth surface of Callie’s jawline and it takes nothing at all for Eliza to kiss Callie because goodness knows that's what she's been wanting to do since yesterday afternoon.
And all the faded images of that one night that she tried so hard to forget, all the sensations she tried to bury within the folds of a wedding dress, it all comes back to life again -- the feeling of Callie touching her, the taste of Callie against her tongue, the trembling wonder and the fervent need that rushes through her blood -- it all comes back to Eliza now, vibrant and wild.
Callie is the one who puts a stop to things, the two of them breathing heavily once they are apart, but Eliza doesn't want to stop. She wants to keep going, she wants all of Callie, everything she is, but Callie is shaking her head and moving away.
“We ... we can't do this, Eliza...”
“But why not?”
“Because. Because it's not right, you've had almost a whole bottle of wine and you're not ...” Callie sighs as she runs her fingers through her own hair, “... you're married. And you let me go, before. You turned me away.”
Of course, Callie is wrong and right at the same time. Eliza is perhaps a little tipsy but she knows who she wants, she's always known, and if this is all they'll ever get, all they’re going to amount to, then Eliza is bound and determined to show Callie the truth that she's had to deny for so long.
Eliza’s heart has always belonged to her.
