âThatâsâŚââ Perhaps the idea had been fleeting, a spur of transcendence where thought of all things that tethered him to this city felt as transparent as everything that held her there too. Everything sheâd ever known had been built up between the brick and mortar of the city itself, every hairline crack in the pavement could slip whispers of the nights sheâd spent tracing the very foundations of New York as if it alone filled her lungs with air. âYou know I never expected you to just.. drop everything.â However unexpectedly sheâd allowed the possibility to find life in the gripe of her own voice a year prior, Lucinda knew him better than to have truly believed heâd ever just.. leave with her. Just as surely as sheâd thought something might have slipped, caved within the harbor of his chest and fallen wayside to something beyond his anger, he paved the way to her own.
âMy whole life was here too, Jules. Everything Iâve ever..â The rigid curve of her brow sharpened as if perplexed by the idea sheâd even have to say it. âIâm sure I must have made it look easy from where youâre standing but leaving everyone, leaving you was..ââ Beyond excruciating. âIt was stay here and know that everything I knew was quite literally being ripped out from under me or do something to stop me from losing my fucking mind. Do you really think if youâd called and Iâd answered that I wouldnât have been right back here without second thought?â Even now, stood right in front of him, sheâd die, in a thousand fires, before she willingly put everything she knew behind her again, even if it gave her the slightest possibility to smooth out the pieces of her that resembled the burnt rubble of the once stable ground she knew. âSo donât look at me like that, say whatever you want, think whatever it is you need to but donât.â donât look at me like it meant nothing for me to leave.â
There was no real knowing how and what heâd planned to throw at her feet to simply prove that things could always get worse, but the very idea of it stilled her to the point that she wasnât even sure if her heart beat in her chest. Was someone else dead? Did they lose someone else? What could possibly have been worse â for either of them, than the horrors thatâs besieged their lives before sheâd left the concrete city behind. Whatever her mind could have conjured up, it certainly didnât prepare her for this. âWhat?â Crystalline hues filled almost entirely with speculation and a haunting glimmer of something well beyond it. To simultaneously feel the inside of her stomach tear open and fall through an abyss she barely knew was there, while the guilt that followed her immediate thought clawed itâs way up her throat like stomach bile; all of which she swallowed back with rough conviction, was something sheâd never quite felt before. It was then, the tandem moment of confusion that hung limply in the air between them, burnt and scorched by heated argument, that Cinda even took notice of his home. Nothing quite out of place, but with each haphazardly discarded item that might have belonged to little more than an infant; a pacifier, a baby bouncer, an empty bottle; she was sure sheâd been thrown back into the fire, smoke so thick in her lungs it was impossible to breathe. âYou have a âŚââ Hollowed eyes bloomed disbelief as it slowly but surely sunk beyond recognition. Shit. Something akin to a laugh; beneath the surface it felt more like an internal crack; a heaving release of air that lacked every ounce of humor fell beyond the realms of her self control as the underlying truth of why she so desperately needed to see if he was okay; alive, shattered against her ribcage in the most melancholic surge of heartache. ââ Congratulations.â
Time stood still; almost entirely, save for the man who looked more like a boy without direction, and one sheâd known much better than the man heâd been opening his front door almost six minutes before hand. The taunting discomfort she suddenly felt held her still, uncertain whether sheâd just now encroached on a space she was no longer welcomed; crowded ever possibly by a woman thatâd stolen the warmth barely cold in her own departure, the mere implication that the same calloused hands thatâd traced her every curve had found someone elseâs and in turn, memory would serve to give him another to map out the stars across freckled skin in the waning hours that cracked dawn drew the unyielding pit in her stomach wider.. But it wasnât about her â it was never about her. Not her recovery, not her departure and not even the intentional return. It was never about her; her every choice served as a consequence for others, or so sheâd come to understand. A selfish woman had come to forget how to continue self serving while those around her begged otherwise. âYou thought.. No. Julian..â Timbre much softer than itâd been already as she crossed the room to once more, as nostalgic a translucent memory that placed them right here, almost a year ago to date, perched the edge of his couch, offering something of a smile that might have permeated convincing territory. âYou think Iâd go out without everyone in this damn city knowing about it?â If only for the fact that she knew her father would never allow the people she cared for so deeply to remain in the dark.
âDonât worry about the coffee, and⌠Iâll definitely skip the tequila.â This certainly didnât paint such effervescent pictures of the simplicity of merely dropping by. It held the weight of everything sheâd missed; everything sheâd walked out on for the skewed sense of self preservation Cinda had convinced herself was necessary.  âI know I told you Iâd be here, whenever you needed me,â but she hadnât been, and only now was she truly seeing what such a choice cost her. Despite being almost entirely unsure of where she stood with Julian, she reached out, lithe fingers curling around his own in a gentle squeeze of comfort. âand I wasnât, but I donât care if Iâm going to die here,â the slight arch of her brow the only allusion to any mocking sense of truth, âwhich itâs becoming almost alarmingly obvious with everything happening that I might, then..â  thatâs okay..â She swallowed thickly, âbut until then, Iâm not going anywhere, not again.â
           Hands were clasped together, obsidian hues bearing into calloused fingertips as her extempore flooded the room. The ire that flowed off him in droves and waves was a perpetual tryst, the flames of his own scorn daring to swallow him whole on a daily basis, hues doomed to present a lachrymose hint to how her sudden appearance had effected him. It was a tacit flourish, marred only by his stoic carapace waning under the gaze of Lucindaâs own ceruleanâs, nodding near woefully as if in pure understanding of why she so desperately needed to claw her way out of the confines of a city that had since become so suffocating. There was nothing poetic about the travesty that their home city had become, mutilated by terrorist values and an augury of death â Lucinda almost effortlessly claiming a spot as one of the many in the slew of victims. She had survived by any stretch of such hopeless elucidation of the word, yet the russet haired Breckenridge was hardly spared, her sanity a hairline curve of recognition after the traumatic events of a blood ridden Halloween past. âI know,â he quietly murmured, a nauseatingly saccharine smile conjuring on his countenance, the fragments of a wistful impression prevalent, âBut I wanted to.â Obsidian hues held a panorama of regret, gnawing his bottom lip in tandem contrition.Â
           âWhere did you even go?â Syllables bubbled over far before he could ever stop them, plagued with a temerarious disposition that lent itself to plights of archetypal word vomit. The pause after his inquiry was evident, the means of soaking in her own sorrow riddled lexicon aiding itself to their own mental reprieve; the entire room soaked in a bout of suppressed melancholy which was on the threat of bubbling over. âYou know Iâve never been one to have a proper train of thought.â A dry chuckle, the excuse horridly palpable in regards to his hot headed and brash regard â the impression that he was ever once snubbed hard to shake once bloomed in his viscera. âThe problem in that being that I would have never figured youâd answer.â A meager shrug summed up the finality of his words, the dance that continued to ensue between them exhausting.Â
          Her blithe sense of congratulations could offer a staggering punch to the gut, Julian near wincing as the simple sentiment tumbled gauchely from rosebud lips. A reticent expression swathed freckled visage, the means to pluck and pull all his secrets back from her a vertiginous dalliance all in itself; baring his own heart so flagrantly shoving the male into a regressed state in the next breath. Julian was a master at such guilt ridden deflection, each syllable of the word akin to gnawing on pieces of broken glass, inhaling every spec of blood as if it was all he could offer in retort. Despite the inherent virulence that loomed close, the male could wane under her quiet surrender that perhaps this was no longer her place to voice any spec of creed; the confines of his home having been shared with another for far too long after Lucindaâs blatant departure. Another, whom was only there to originally lance the sense of absence the sable haired woman had left; the news of a child another blow to an already viscerally damaged Rhodes â another life he could not bare to lose once it came to fruition. The deluded consideration that a baby on the way could have been the cessation to the blooming tryst he shared with Lola was vertiginously apparent; the sentiment that she was a mere form filling the cavernously barren side of his bed shared by many. Perhaps there had been far too many occurrences when he clutched to such belief, too, the example of why such sentiment was conjured staring him stark in the face now; the idea that Lucinda should have been and would have been there had she not run from everything she had once clutched upon so fondly evident in the fact that the trace impression of Lucindaâs fingertips upon freckled flesh still fresh when the mother of his child had initially stepped foot into his life.Â
           âI didnât know what to think,â he offered in pitied retort, the impression of Lucinda meeting a plausible demise a terror mired in quotidian detail. Such visceral perturbation manifested within him, the inner struggle to come clean or to let such ache for her perish at the forefront of his own cognitive dragging him down in face of the squeeze of consolation she offered him. Lucindaâs covenant will to be there for him this time around offered a cavernous pit to bloom in his stomach, tugged at digits that had since wrapped around his, pulling her atop his lap. Perhaps it was a decision which was drenched in replicated solecisms, Julianâs own proclivity to drown out sense of lament with senselessly lascivious contact a repeat complication in his life. It had been the tequila the first night that offered such staunch sense of bravery to cross such blurred line with Lucinda, brazen now as hands mapped a path to her sides, obsidian hues grazing over winsome countenance, elocution tender as if magnetically coaxed to her now, âI told you I wonât let anything happen to you.â A hand pried itself from the curve of her waist, trailing up to find home in the lunar curve of her jaw, allowing their foreheads to touch as if caught in a prime confession, âI promise I wonât.â Sentiment was drenched in candid finality, tipping her jaw to allow their lips to meet, strangely hesitant as if testing such assurance that she was there for him this time around, or rather, that this was a line he could cross once more; alcohol hardly marring any sense of ambiguous confidence he could clutch to â deepening the kiss under the guise of such deep rooted familiarity.Â
