When our love was brand new, we would talk about our lives and our future together. Ryder’s Dad never knew his father, and that was a heartache that he never wanted his future children to go through. He always told me that when he had children, he would do whatever it took to keep his family together. He wanted to be the Father that he never had, and I knew how much this meant to him. He was so different from most of the guys that I knew, he made me feel secure. Both of us came from broken homes, and when we talked about our relationship, we both agreed, that we didn’t want that for our future. We knew from early on that we wanted to get married and have a home and a family together. We would talk about what kind of house we wanted, and how we wanted our life to be . We were so in love, but for some reason, no matter how much we wanted to be together, there was always a road block.                 

      While I was living in Charleston, we both dated other people. Rebounding, to stop the heartache, and try to bring normalcy to our new lives without each other. He turned to partying and hanging out with the wrong crowd. When I returned to Savannah, we had hope for a moment, just a single day to be exact, but would of course be another road block by my parents. We could not even contact each other. No cell phones, no texting, no face book . My parents were really strict, and I could only hang out with guys at school or church. Even if I was able to date outside of those boundaries, Ryder’s Dad would have been totally off limits because of our history. After being separated again at my parents house, he continued on to drown his sorrows for the next year. In the midst of that, a pregnancy. I heard of the pregnancy through a close friend and I just buckled to the ground in tears. I knew then that the chance of our future together was over, because i knew how passionate he was about being a good father. I had to get myself together and just accept the fact that it was over. He would always have my heart but I would have to move on.  By the age of 17, I moved out of my parents house.                                           As the years passed, we would frequent parties in our neighborhood and because we had the same mutual friends, we would be there at the same time. Ryder’s Dad was married by this time, and we accepted that fact, but every time we would see each other, our hearts would beat out of our chests. We were both with other people but our hearts had not forgotten that first love. We never tried to contact each other or make any motions to let each other know how we still felt. We just both knew. One day,during my first year in college, we ran into each other on the road  in our neighborhood, and we just stopped in our cars and smiled. This was the first time that we had come face to face without anyone else around. In our nervousness, we immediately left that spot and met each other in a parking lot, so that we could talk.  We embraced  each other again. During that hour or so, we just poured out our heart to one another. I could finally tell him how much I still loved him, and just as my heart knew, the feeling was mutual. He began to tell me that He didn’t want to get married, but he thought it was the right thing to do so that he could raise his child. She told him that the baby would not have his last name, and he wouldn’t be able to see him, if he didn’t marry her. He was miserable and felt trapped. He knew in his heart that he was making a mistake and he wished it would have been me. I told him how hurt I was when I found out that he was having a baby. That was suppose to be us someday. He threw his arms around me and held me. We didn’t know where to go from that moment so we just left it at that. We felt better that we were able to get out all of the emotions that we had held in for so long. We just anticipated the next time we could talk again. I lived a couple of houses down from him with a friend and I was in my first year of college. A couple of days later, I heard a knock at my window in the middle of the night. There he was, soaking wet, and asking me to let him in. I jumped out of bed and ran to the front door to let him in. He said that he had gotten into an argument with her, and she threw water on him. I couldn’t believe he was in my house. My heart was beating so fast, and I was so excited, that I could not sleep. We stayed up for most of the night just holding each other and just going over all the things that we wanted to say. You see, we still had not really talked about everything that happened when I moved to Charleston. It was a very romantic night, even though it was never intimate. It was just a special night. Having just a taste of what our life would be like, if we would have made it. We just wanted to talk and enjoy that pure love that we had longed for the last few years. That void in our hearts was filled for the night, but we knew it wouldn’t last.  We wanted to just walk away from everything and start a life together. We loved each other so much, but there were other people to consider, and so we had a decision to make.
I decided that he needed to go home and raise his young child. I would find out later what I was sending him back to, and if I would have known, I wouldn’t have. He just told me that he wanted out, and that he wanted us to be together. He didn’t tell me all of the issues that he was dealing with at home. I thought I was doing the right thing, even though my heart was begging me not to. So reluctantly, he left, and then again it was over, or at least, we both thought.