I wrote this story several months ago but never posted it and then forgot about it for a while. I found it again this week and figured some of you might like it. And if you are wondering, yes I did reference Frozen in the last #unexpectedoneshot. Just go with it.
Feeling Frozen – A Taylor and Joe Drabble
Sometimes in the middle of a not so ordinary life, love smacks you in the face and says wake up.
She looks across the room at her friend, his legs kicked up on her coffee table with Olivia lying haphazardly across his lap. He’s taking a 10 second breather from the lecture he’s been providing her for exactly the last 26 minutes. 10 seconds to catch his breath before he spills out more words of painful wisdom and lessons that she’s acutely aware of but has conveniently forgotten.
She considers the words he muttered just before his brief interlude. Sometimes in the middle of a not so ordinary life, love smacks you in the face and says wake up. She knows the actual saying. She’s seen it written in beautiful script within at least a half dozen memes before. Hell, she probably has one of those whimsical memes saved somewhere in the endless depths of her phone. Likely having giddily saved it back when she believed in fairytale romances, or at least allowed herself to believe in them.
And then Adam happened and she found herself playing the role of Anna to his Hans and she quickly discovered that fairytale romances are 100% a fairytale.
“Are you even listening to anything I’m saying?”
Todrick’s shrieking voice snaps her away from the Frozen playback in her mind and back into the dark confines of her living room and her reality. She hadn’t even realized he was ranting again.
“Honestly,” she responds sheepishly and he shakes his head.
“You realize that a couple months ago, I sat across from you at some restaurant in New York that I don’t even remember now and I gave you some pretty accurate advice. Advice, may I add, that you took.”
She dips her chin. “I do realize that.”
“And yeah, I may not have the most amazing track record in the world when it comes to love but trust me darling; I know what the hell I’m talking about.”
Her chin dips again. “I have no doubt that you do.”
He throws his hands into the air dramatically causing Olivia to jump up and scurry away and Taylor to laugh when he tosses a “sorry about that Liv” back in her direction before he again places his firm gaze on her.
“Two months ago, you were vacant and broken and as much as you wanted to believe that Tom Hiddleston was filling the void you were missing, he absolutely wasn’t. I told you that. I told you Mr. Eloquent and Debonair Englishman wasn’t the one, no matter how big his Hiddlesconda was.”
She shakes her head, a subtle laugh escaping her lips. She remembers the conversation he is alluding to all too well. He had told her in not so subtle terms that it was time to stop using sex as a bandaid and to stop trying to be an actress because her performance was straight to Netflix worthy at best. At least to those who really get to see you he had tacked on when she had opened her mouth to argue.
“And here we are again, you sitting there vacant and broken and me trying to talk some sense into your crazy ass. But for totally different reasons.”
Yes, she knows that too. Completely. Utterly. Totally. And in excruciating detail. Because he is right, she is vacant and broken. But this time it’s not because she had erroneously covered the pain she was feeling with romps in the sack, whirlwind trips around the world and a one sided romance that she still feels bad about. This time her vacancy and brokenness is pretty much the opposite.
Because instead of throwing her heart out like she misguidedly did with Tom, she has kept it hidden and off limits. And now her attempt at being cautious is tearing her apart. Which she also, absolutely foolishly, won’t admit to.
She hears Todrick take a long, deep breath. “You realize that it’s ok to be scared? No one blames you for being scared. I don’t even think there is an accurate word to describe how fucked up your world has been over the past few months. But this isn’t you. You are someone who loves with your whole heart, even when it’s misguided and blind. You are someone who doesn’t shy away from or back down from love. And you sure as hell are more than a woman sleeping with a guy just to sleep with a guy.”
And there it is. The entire reason for Todrick’s melodramatic monologue. The sole reason he trudged into her house and onto her couch, complete with notes, complicated words and detailed examples.
“So you’ve handed your heart to the wrong men in the past. We all have. I’m pretty sure that I’ve tossed mine like a damn football to every possible asshole in the United States. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop tossing because one day, one of those idiots is going to realize what an amazingly spectacular catch I am and they are going to score.” She glares at him, shaking her head and he puts his hands up in front of him. “Ok, I know, very bad analogy. But damn girl, you get what I’m saying.”
He’s shaking in his seat. Literally bouncing up and down in either excitement or frustration, she’s not sure at this point but she’s leaning toward the latter. She knows he’s completely annoyed at her. At her utter lack of pretty much any words during his speech, at her inability to vocalize her desire for Joe to be more than the guy she has sex with, at the fact that she knows what she has figuratively standing right in front of her but she’s too damn scared to admit it. At least outwardly since she’s sure as hell admitted it inwardly more times than she can even count.
“Taylor, talk to me,” Todrick pleads, hands back in the air.
She keeps her eyes on him, her trusted and honest friend. She loves that he is candid with her, that he pushes her, even at times when she really doesn’t love it. Like now. Like this. But more than anything, she loves how he connects with her and reads her. He knows exactly what’s going on in her screwed up mind without her having to utter a syllable . . . . and both fortunately and unfortunately, he knows what buttons to push to get through to her.
And those are exactly the ones he’s been pushing since the moment he arrived and plopped down on her couch.
“It’s not easy Todrick,” she sighs.
He replies with a smile and a headshake. “Nothing is.”
She realizes, and likely has for some time, that she is not going to be able to continue her vow of almost silence with her pal. So she sighs again and then slings her head back against the chair, crossing her arms on her chest as she all but succumbs to Todrick’s pressuring words.
“I messed up so much before. I didn’t date for two years before Adam. Two years,” she emphasizes to the ceiling. “And then boom, he’s there and I’m wrapped up and I’m falling so fast and so hard and it’s perfect and beautiful and sweet. And then another boom . . . brick wall.” She stops, her voice suddenly hitting a brick wall as she thinks back over the time in question and over the actions of the man she had once thought she would marry.
Across the room, she hears Todrick softly clear his throat. “Go on.”
“It was so hard coming to terms with the fact that Adam was never going to be the Adam I first met ever again. He wasn’t going to suddenly sweep me off my feet and make me fall in love with him like he did in the beginning. But even harder than that was coming to terms with the realization that my name being Taylor Swift is the reason he couldn’t love me anymore.”
“Taylor,” Todrick says, prompting her to slide her head to the side and move her gaze to him, “some men were not designed to be able to handle strong and successful women. And that man is evidence of that. Do not fret on what Mr. Ego gave up. Consider yourself lucky that he did.”
She nods, her head still against the back of the chair. “I know. I thank my blessings daily that I finally wised up and was able to get away. But it still doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt that he turned on me. Not to mention that I don’t thank my blessings daily for how I got away.”
Todrick leans forward, slapping his hands onto his knees and causing a loud echo to bounce off the walls of her home. “So, we are not even going to talk about Mr. Hiddleston today. We’ve already done that. We’ve previously established what he was and what he wasn’t. And we’ve already hashed and rehashed the mistakes you made with him.”
“Exactly. Mistakes. Mistakes that I didn’t realize at the time I was making.”
She sits up then, scooting her rear back into the chair and once again planting her arms across her chest. She’s acutely aware that she likely looks like a pouting schoolgirl but she does it anyway. Somehow with the lecture she’s been getting, it seems appropriate.
“Ok Swifty, if you want to focus on the potential of you making more mistakes, let’s do that. Because you are making a big mistake by being so careful not to make mistakes with Joe. That man is not Adam whatever his last name really is or Tom Hiddleston. You have been crazy standoffish and held him at arm’s length for long enough. Are you not tired of fighting this? Let. Him. In. And don’t say you don’t want to because I know you do. I’d be worried about you if you didn’t.”
“You should be worried about him turning into Hans if I do.”
She watches the look of confusion etch across Todrick’s face followed quickly by a look of amusement. “Hans? Are you talking about Hans from Frozen?”
She nods forcefully. “Yes, yes I am.”
Todrick’s howling laugh bellows through the room, smacking against walls and slamming into windows. Even when he’s done, it’s still there pinging in her ears. “He is kinda handsome like Hans I guess.”
“You are missing the point entirely. Hans turned out to be Prince Not Charming.”
“And Anna was a bit crazy and neurotic and pushy and sang songs about snowmen. And, let’s point out, that she was fickle.”
Taylor snaps her finger before pointing it at her friend. “Exactly.” And then back to her chest. “Anna.”
She can’t help but smile when she sees Todrick lower his head, placing his fingers on his temples and rubbing. “Dear Jesus this is not where I was expecting this conversation to go. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that we are veering into Disney fairytales since, well, it’s you but still . . . .” He raises his head to look at her again. “So let me see . . . you are saying that you expect Joe to turn into a pumpkin or something if you decide to actually tell him what you truly already feel about him.”
“Wrong fairytale and another strange analogy but . . . . well.” She places her hands palms up in front of her.
Todrick shakes his head again, another smile emerging on his lips. “You know he isn’t. Part of me thinks that is what really scares you. That you know how amazing he is and how perfect he is for you.”
She lowers her head then, letting his words sink in. With a toss of her shoulder, she relents. “Maybe.”
“So because you’ve kissed a few frogs in the past, you’re going to not allow yourself to have something that could be magical?”
She shrugs again. “Could is a scary word.”
This time its Todrick’s turn to shrug and nod. “Yes it is. But could have been is scarier. And you know that.”
Taylor bites at her bottom lip, lowering her eyes as she considers his words. She knows they are true. Every syllable of them. And she knows he is right. Because right now, she is smack dab in the middle of being terrified of the fairytale prince she’s subconsciously painted Joe to be in her head turning out to be a villain at the same time she is terrified that he is absolutely as perfect as she believes he is and she will do something to mess it up.
“Do you want him to just be someone you sleep with?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Then why don’t you tell me how you feel about him so you can practice telling him how you feel? And in more than one or two words since that’s pretty much what you’ve given me since I got here.”
Todrick’s voice is calm now. Not nearly as animated or dramatic as it was earlier and laced with pure concern and support. She pulls her eyes to his and smiles faintly.
“What do you want me to say . . . . that he’s perfect, and amazing and he makes me want to believe in love again even when I’m completely frightened. That my heart keeps telling me that I was meant to meet him, that I’m supposed to love him, that I absolutely do love him.” She takes a sharp breath, rubbing her hand down her weary face before she allows the words that have been so heavy on her heart to finally flow from her lips. “That I love that he challenges me but also that he doesn’t judge me and that he isn’t pushing me . . . that he’s waiting on me and accepting that I’m a crazy mess and I love that he hasn’t ran even when I’ve pretty much told him to run and gave him just about every reason to do so.”
“So tell him that.” She raises her head slightly to meet Todrick’s gaze and she watches as his smile increases. “Didn’t Anna end up with the right guy in the end anyway?”
She laughs softly. “Kristoff.”
“Awww Kristoff,” he singsongs, “just when Anna thought her fairytale romance was done, the real Prince Charming emerged.”
Shaking her head, she bites again at her lip. “I should have never sung Little Mermaid songs with you and let you know about my Disney fascination.”
“Everyone wants a Prince Charming, Taylor, myself included. So don’t fucking throw yours away just because you let an Egotistical Hans who wanted your kingdom and a Marvel villain who wanted your soul taint your idea of love.”
Titling her head to the side, she grins. “That might be a little harsh saying Tom wanted my soul.”
“Whatever,” he says with hands thrown up, “it sounded good and you know what I’m saying. Tell him. Tell the boy. Oh.” Todrick perks up in his seat, his eyes wide. “You got to . . . . . tell the boy.”
Her eyes fall closed, knowing what he’s doing. Knowing that he’s making up his own lyrics to Kiss the Girl and he’s about to start bellowing them out. But alas, she is saved by the ring of her phone.
She grabs at it, smiling instantly when she sees Joe’s name on the incoming facetime call and clicking to answer just about the time that Todrick plops down beside of her, squeezing himself into the small sliver of space left in her chair.
“Hi Joseph,” he sings before she can even say hello, “fancy you should call now because we were just talking about you.”
“You were,” Joe says on the screen, raising his eyebrow and grinning. She can feel the flutter in her heart as she watches him. The butterflies taking flight and swimming about.
“We were. And singing about you too,” Todrick adds just before Taylor plants her hands on the side of his face and pushes.
“Todrick was just leaving, weren’t you?” She glares at him, nodding her head with widened eyes.
He smiles knowingly, nodding as he jets his head back into the camera space and looks at Joe on the screen. “I was. But it’s always good seeing you Joe. I’m still waiting on you to find me a strapping and handsome Brit.”
“I’m still looking,” Joe interjects, laughing.
Taylor pushes Todrick again, this time giggling as he rises up and steps away from the chair she is in.
“Kristoff, Taylor, Kristoff,” Todrick croons as he gathers his jacket and phone and starts heading toward the door with Taylor watching him.
“What was that all about?”
Joe’s voice brings her eyes back to the phone screen and she scrambles for words. “He’s watched Frozen too many times. He thinks you look like Kristoff.”
She watches his eyes narrow in confusion but his expression is purely amused. “Ok . . . . So you were talking about me?”
She waits a few seconds before she nods. “Yes.”
“Can I ask about what,” he says softly, his gentle blue eyes so delicate on her.
She watches them briefly, allowing her mind to roam back over Todrick’s words, over her own and then to the way her heart is feeling at this very moment. To the way it is beating wildly, fluttering and skipping. All due to the man whose face lights up her phone screen.
She takes a deep breath and smiles before tilting her head to the side.
“Todrick wanted me to realize that sometimes in the middle of a not so ordinary life, love smacks you in the face and says wake up.” When his eyes narrow once more she smiles and takes the first breath of her new existence with him. “I’m awake now. And there are some things I need to tell you . . . .”
As she speaks, finally saying words like need and want and love to him, she thinks to herself that she was right after all. Fairytales are simply fairytales and Prince Charming’s don’t really exist.
And when she asks him with bated breath if he wants her too and if he’s willing to build on what they have behind a veil of privacy and protection and his brilliant smile provides her his answer, she solidifies that thought in her head.
She has waited far too long and too foolishly for love to give her a fairytale when all she really wants is what he’s all too willing to give her. An ordinary life with an extraordinary love.
Later, she’ll thank Todrick for his epic monologue and forced awakening while queuing Frozen up on her iPad to watch on her long flight to her new life. And when he laughs and says he will take a small bit of credit for unthawing her frozen heart, she thinks of Joe and what she’s silently felt for him for so long.
Her heart was never frozen. It was simply hidden.
But he had consistently kept it warm as he patiently waited for her to reveal it.
He’s the strong and solid Kristoff to her flighty and messy Anna.
Yes, she smiles as the plane takes off bound for him; it’s time to write their own version of a fairytale.
Hello new followers! I’m assuming the majority of you came here for Taylor and Joe fics but you’ve probably already figured out, I also write a Taylor/Chris Evans series called Unexpected. I started writing that story before we found out about Joe so please know that 1) I love Unexpected and 2) I love Taylor and Joe’s relationship so you will see posts of both.
Just in case you are interested in reading fics other than the one that brought you to my page, I have a masterlist of stories and it can be found here. You probably have to be on a computer to access it though.
Extra special kudos to @kanuck7 and @holyground89. Love you both.
Silence – A Taylor and Joe Drabble
She’s learned to embrace silence. To hear the words in the quiet. To let her heart connect with the solace. And she’s learned just as much beauty exists when silence stretches between them.
She loves the nuances recognizable only in the stillness. The way a house creaks as if it’s stretching its wooden muscles. The way water ripples in a soothing flow into a brook. The way the birds chirp, the frogs croak, the crickets hum to create a peaceful symphony against a nighttime hush.
And then there’s the pristineness when the silence is silent. Not a minute sound to be heard. It’s then that she feels as if she can hear her own thoughts. It’s as if she can hear his. They talk with their eyes, with their smiles and expressions. It’s something they’ve shared from the beginning. From their very first locked gaze across the crowded room. He spoke to her then. Loud and clear without a syllable being uttered. She’s believed since then that their hearts were already familiar with each other. She compared it once to a melody waiting for its lyrics. He had been the lyrics to the melody of her heart, of the music of her life that she hadn’t heard until him.
She had read before that confidence is silent, insecurities are loud. And she always held a firm confidence in them. In him. Before him, them, the silence spoke differently to her. It wasn’t confident and calm, it was loud and angry. It was laced with stony looks and rigid lips and unspoken words that were bitter and resentful. It was insecure and fragile, ready to break with the slightest utterance. It was not at all like the silence she embraces with him.
She finds herself thinking often of their moments, a smile piercing her lips each and every time. She thinks of the laughter they’ve shared, the silly moments, the touches and whispers in private, each holding a special place in her heart. But today, she thinks of the stillness. The lightness. The quiet.
I had wanted you to kiss me that night she had told him in text one night after two too many glasses of wine and a tearful admission by phone to Abi that she had made a mistake with Tom. You had to break his heart to save yours was all her best friend had said and she knew she was right. She had to break his to salvage any part of hers. Any tiny sliver of it.
She had been so confused, so wrapped up in swirling emotions that she hadn’t allowed herself to process just exactly what she was doing. She had jetted off to Rhode Island, to Nashville and Suffolk and Rome. She had let Tom encompass her in a cocoon of attention, sweet words and endless devotions. He had provided her everything that Adam had ceased to do but nothing her soul had needed. And he wasn’t the one she had wanted but couldn’t have.
She had told Joe that too in another text after another sip of wine. And then when she realized her own admission, she had typed out another. But I’m so thankful and grateful for your friendship. She was, even if part of her still hurt a little every time she heard from him and had from his very first text soon after she allowed Tom to race her away from Adam. That message had said it was nice seeing her at the Gala and offered a wish of good luck with Tom. It had instantly thrown her back to the night in question. To their eyes locking just as they did the first time they had met. And just like before, they had conveyed a message of longing and desire. It had screamed at her, as she knows her own gaze likely did to him. But he has a girlfriend she had screamed back at herself just as Tom stepped in and asked for her hand.
But they had somehow created a friendship based on quick chats and simple texts. He had listened to her talk about Tom, tell of his attempt to pick up some of the pieces of the heart Adam had shattered and then he had listened even more when she called him from Australia and she had whispered how she still felt shattered and broken. He gave her support, had told her she was strong and would work through it all. He did everything a friend should do and it took her far too long to realize that it was Joe that was picking up more of her pieces and putting her back together.
But after her three tipsy texts that lonely night, he had grown silent. Even then, her heart wasn’t alarmed. There was something different going on even if she didn’t know exactly what that was. She had felt content, at peace with herself and her decision. And when he showed up on her doorstep two days later, the silence that stretched between them spoke volumes. He had stared at her as she held the door open, letting minutes pass as his eyes told her what he was there for. Her. And when he stepped inside, she could swear she could hear both of their hearts beating in the quiet. Wordlessly, he slipped his hand onto her waist and pulled her into the kiss she had told him she had always wanted.
He would continue to silently put her shards back in place, sometimes having to twist and turn it to make it fit. Even when she would pull back and rip the piece from his hand, he would just wait patiently until she was ready for more mending. Her arms distance would eventually change to fully immersed and she let him softly stitch her wounds and kiss them while they healed.
She remembers the first time she truly allowed him to make love to her. When she didn’t permit her head to stop her heart from fully embracing the idea of him loving her, of him choosing her. She had allowed him complete access to her body from the moment he showed up at her door but she had limited his access to her heart, telling herself repeatedly it was too fragile for anyone’s unprotected touch. But he had torn down her walls and built up her heart and that night, she had given herself to him in totality.
She smiles to herself, offering a quick glance to her side, as she recalls the exact moment she decided to let go. He had had her on the edge for a half hour, taking her to the brink before he’d pull back and start over again. It had been dirty and feverish, their hands and mouths all over each other. And then he had stopped completely, sitting back on the bed and locking his gaze on her. His sapphire blues reached right for her heart then, asking her to let him in, to stop holding back. She could see his emotion there and she could feel his love. He didn’t have to say it, it was infinitely apparent.
She moved up to him then, placing her hand on his cheek and leaning forward to rest her forehead to his. She answered his plea with a kiss and then opened herself up to him. What was once raw and rampant was now soft, gentle and passionate. His mouth met hers with every move and when they pushed each other over the edge, he held her to his chest so she could hear his heartbeat. A tear would slip from her eye in the still because she knew at in that instant that she was where she was always meant to be, that he was the one she was meant to be with.
She glances over at him and he knows instinctively, pulling his gaze to the side and smiling back at her. He doesn’t say a word and neither does she. Their beautiful, loud, silence, the likes of which she shares with no one else. And as she dips her chin and her smile widens, she thinks back to the intensely forceful moments they have shared without a note spoken.
When she reached across the space between them in the car and calmly rubbed her hand up and down his leg just moments after running into Tom at a restaurant in London. She could sense his discomfort. Their relationship was new, they were still busily discovering each other, and she knew he likely was concerned with how seeing her ex made her feel. She was aware that she probably added to that concern and discomfort when she tensed up when Tom spoke and with how her voice cracked when she finally found words to say to him. But Joe hadn’t asked her, he hadn’t needed to. Not when they slipped out of the restaurant and she immediately slipped her hand into his and her head onto his shoulder. Not with her rubbing her hand up and down his leg and then resting her hand on top of his when he moved it from the steering wheel to her thigh. She didn’t need words to tell him that she was completely his. She didn’t need to voice that her reaction to Tom was simply because she wasn’t expecting to see him and was unsure of his reaction, not hers. She was telling him then with her touches, with her intense connection to him and only to him. And when he looked at her and she saw his discomfort and concern replaced with the smile that she was head over heels for, she knew that he had understood her silent conversation.
There have been many moments just like this over the years, ones where simple touches, gentle smiles, knowing glances or warm embraces conveyed more than words ever could. Difficult moments, heartbreaking moments, moments of happiness and joy and moments of utter peace.
Moments that took her breath away.
She had been sound asleep when she felt him snuggle up against her back. She was exhausted, her body famished. The night before had been amazing, exhilarating. The final stop of her reputation tour bringing forth an array of emotions along with extreme fatigue. She had sang and danced and relished in the smiles and cheers of the fans surrounding her. And she had hugged every single person she came in contact with after, thanking them for taking the time out of their lives to travel the world with her and make her tour sensational.
Joe stayed one step behind her through it all, giving her her time. Giving her that moment that was so long in the making. He knew what that tour meant to her, he was aware of how hard she had worked to make it mesmerizingly memorable. And she knew though that he was patiently waiting for his time. For the time that she was his and only his again and he didn’t have to share her with 60,000 fans every few nights.
He had kept his arm around her shoulders the entire drive back to the hotel and then wrapped his arms around her and held her close when she crashed into the bed. But the second she felt his warmth against her that next morning, she could sense something was different. She could feel something was special.
He kissed her from behind a few times, his lips meeting her shoulder, her ear and her cheek before she turned her head to catch his lips. And then he snaked his arms around her waist and, without a word, held the ring up for her to see. In that moment, her heart had stopped; her breath became trapped in her chest. She could sense his smile. She could feel his heart pounding wildly against her back. And when she slowly raised her hand and he slipped the ring onto her finger, she knew there could be no more perfect of a moment.
She never said yes. Not with the word at least. But she said it with her kisses and her touches and her smiles. She said it when she wrapped her arms around his neck and he tightened his around her waist and they made breathless, intense, silent love. She said yes alright. Over and over again she said it. Her body to his. Her heart with his.
And that morning had led to the night of their wedding. Where he held her hand in his between their swaying bodies, his other hand resting at the small of her back with their heads tilted together. She had known there was music playing but she couldn’t hear it. She had realized there was chatter going on amongst the guests surrounding them but none of it made its way to her ears. All she heard was him. His heart talking to hers, his breathing in unison with her own. It was their moment. One shared, felt and understood between only them. Again, no words being necessary.
Her eyes graze upon his skin once more. His jaw is set, his gaze outward. She doesn’t have to wonder what he is thinking; she learned long ago that she never need worry about his silent thoughts. When before, with others, silence translated to trouble. With him, it’s calm. It’s steady and strong. It’s a deep conversation from his soul to hers.
Within their serenity, and without any other movement, he reaches across the space between them and takes her hand in his. She looks down at their cupped hands as he squeezes it, the gesture bringing forth another memory to the forefront. This one, one that is emblazed for eternity in her heart, one that she clings to even in its despair.
For while their silence radiated in moments of happiness, it also provided a comforting embrace when happiness had escaped them.
He had found her alone, sitting on the cold floor of the hospital. It’s where she had chosen to sit, the floor strangely seeming to match her feelings far more than the bed just a few feet away.
She had kicked her mother out an hour before and refused pleas from friends she knows are just outside to allow them to come in. She didn’t want anyone . . . . but him. She didn’t need anyone but him. Not then, not with the emotions stirring within every inch of her body, breaking her, destroying her.
He had been filming even though at that moment she couldn’t even remember where. And he had jumped on the first flight back to her when he had heard. And when he walked through the door, finding her there, she broke down. Tears streamed down her cheeks with reckless abandon, clouding her vision, washing over her lifeless body.
Joe fell to the floor beside of her, pulling her against him so tightly that she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. And then he cried with her, rubbing his palm down her hair as their tears flowed. He’d kiss her occasionally, letting his lips linger on the side of her temple as he clutched her fiercely, protectively.
It was a scene that lasted for an hour, maybe more. To this day, she’s unsure of how long they sat on that frigid floor, their hearts mourning together, his warm hands and gentle touches trying to mend her shattered soul. His steadfast embrace telling her that he would hold her up, he would keep her strong, they would recover. Together.
When she had finally found the strength to lift her head off of his chest and meet his gaze, she told him the words that she couldn’t muster from her lips. Unspoken words like our baby and I’m sorry. She knew there wasn’t anything remotely appropriate that she could say of their devastating loss. Three months into their excitement, their world had been shattered and no amount of sympathy and pleas of how common miscarriages were could console her.
But as a tear slipped down his face and he reached down and took her hand in his, a gentle wave of solace began creeping a slow journey through her. He squeezed his palm against hers and then leaned his head to touch hers. And with these simple and strong gestures, he told her they would get through this together, they would endure and remember and try again.
And they had. Endured and survived. Recovered but always remembered. And when she had nervously told him she was pregnant again, he had smiled and pulled her into his arms, kissing her head and lips over and over again. His laughter had told her of his happiness, his embrace later telling her that he understood her fears, his hand in hers confirming that he would stand beside of her always.
The same process would happen two more times. After the birth of Nicholas and with her pregnancies with Liam and finally Grace.
Her eyes go back to the man sitting quietly beside of her. Content. Happy. And she thinks back on the days each of their blessings cried their first cries. The room had always went silent other than those soft sobs, her body growing warm with emotions of love and elation as she watched him lift each newborn to eye level, smiling broadly as he examined the newest Alwyn. He would place the smallest of kisses on each of their noses before he’d turn to her, the love in his eyes screaming its existence and then he would place each in her arms. She had three beautiful moments where she thought her heart was bursting at the seams, where she would feel such an enormous amount of love for her children and for the man who helped create them. She doesn’t recall either of them uttering a single syllable during those moments but she remembers exactly how they felt. She remembers exactly what they said. That their family was growing in size and in love, the second, third and fourth child providing another step in their recovery while helping them always remember the first. And while those words were never uttered, they were always known.
There were other moments. Beautiful, glorious moments like when they sat upon this very same porch, in not the very same chairs, watching their little ones splash around in a sprinkler Joe had sat up minutes before. Their laughter and grins spoke volumes as the scene played out, their hearts singing of joy. Or when they had held hands and sent them off to school year after year. They had silently loved through nicks and scrapes, dances and proms, broken hearts and declarations of teenage love.
And their silence had provided comfort in some not so glorious moments but ones that still held beauty even in the sadness. The warmth of hugs and rests of heads on chests during the passing of loved ones, the way his hand felt like a lifeline when their last baby was no longer a baby and set off to conquer the world on her own.
Their tranquility. Beautiful and peaceful. Wordless but speaking volumes. It is one of their trademarks, one of the many ways that sets their relationship apart from any other she had ever experienced. She knows there is no fear in it, no worry about what negative thoughts lie unspoken within it.
It is confident and unwavering.
It is content and peaceful.
It is golden.
And today, as she looks upon his face again, noting how even with a few extra lines on his forehead, he still makes her heart flutter, she knows this is yet another quiet memory that will be forever placed in her heart. Them, sitting together on the porch of their home, his hand mended tightly to hers, as their grandchildren frolic in the yard before them. Their silence still beautifully golden even in their golden years. Their love not needing of vocal devotions or monologues of commitment, it beautifully perfect in its tranquility.
Her heart warms as her smile lifts and her gaze lingers on the man who helped her create the life she always wanted. Who, to this day, loves her so fearlessly and feverishly that she can’t fathom a greater love to ever exist.
The man who continues to be the unspoken lyrics to the melody of her heart, etching words upon her soul every single day. Quietly writing the eternal golden song that only they can hear.
Their silence always loud and clear since that first moment across a crowded room . . . . .
To a lifetime of moments full of the love she once used to dream about . . . . .
And in living them discovered there really aren’t words to describe a love like this . . . . .
There really aren’t words that could ever describe a love like theirs.
I’ve been toying around with a Taylor and Joe one shot that I started and stopped writing ages ago. It’s nothing significant and it’s probably more of a drabble than one shot. But....if you are interested, I’ll likely post it sometime today.
There is something to be said of contentment. How your heart feels, your head, when you are at peace with yourself and your life. When you accept happiness and love, accept what’s been in front of you waiting for you to grasp it. When you finally wake up in the morning with the woman you adore by your side. When you’re finally able to have what you’ve been silently wanting for so long.
That’s where he is. His head clear, his heart full. All of the demons, the echoes, that have plagued every aspect of his being dissipating the instant he had her in his arms. If he didn’t believe in the healing power of love before, he certainly does now.
But, he admits, he also believes in the exhausting power of it. The past few days providing him with losing sleep while meandering through his conflicted mind, to losing sleep as he spilled his soul on the couch in hopes that she was hearing anything he said, to losing sleep because of his incessant need to indulge in her and their delayed revelation of their need of each other.
They’ve talked and kissed, cuddled and made love. They’ve cooked dinner while dancing around the kitchen and laced their fingers together during long walks on the beach. They’ve relished in being together, immersing themselves into each other and sopping up every second of their time after missing so much of it before. They’ve slept little and loved much and now his weary body is showing the effects of it.
He can hear the water running in the shower; can hear her humming a song that he doesn’t immediately recognize. It makes him smile, hearing her and knowing she is nearby, without the threat of her disappearing or him leaving her again, without the cloud of the friend zone looming overhead.
He’s lying on the couch, his muscles and bones sore from exhaustion, his eyes struggling to stay open. The irony not lost on him that just a short time ago he was in the same position on this same couch but in a much different situation. The anxiety and desperation that coursed through him then nowhere to be found now. Thankfully.
Very thankfully.
Moving his arm up, he covers his tired eyes with his forearm and places his other hand on his torso. His body seems to relax instantly with the welcomed darkness provided, his eyes no longer so heavy, his mind settling into a peaceful lull.
He can hear the cats and Dodger moving about the house but he’s too comfortable to see what they are doing. And he continues to hear the soothing sound of the water from the shower and Taylor’s gentle hum. It’s beautiful and relaxing . . . .
A pressing warmth settles against his chest, pulling him out of his tranquility. He knows without question what is it . . . . . or better yet, who it is, his body reacting without fail. It’s a sensation he is familiar with, one he experienced every time she is near from pretty much the moment they met, but one that he now doesn’t have to hide and ignore.
His eyes are still closed as his arms slide around her, locking her to him, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat. She giggles as she snakes her hands underneath him and then nestles her head between his and the back of the couch.
“Taking a cat nap,” she questions, her warm breath tickling his ear.
He shakes his head slightly, lids still down. “Just resting my eyes.”
Her knee falls just in between his legs as she settles comfortably on top of him. “Am I squishing you,” she asks softly.
“No. You feel perfect right here,” he responds as he moves his head an inch and plants a kiss on her forehead before tightening his arms around her.
Contentment, he thinks as he takes in the moment. Contentment. Happiness. Love. Everything. All right here in his arms.
His lips find her skin again and he feels her body soften even more, melting into him, merging as if they are one. He loves everything about how this feels.
“This is all I ever wanted,” he whispers, finally opening his eyes and tilting his gaze to look at the woman in his arms. His woman.
“What,” she asks, her voice so delicate it feels like it could break amidst the silence surrounding them.
“This. Us like this now and forever.”
He watches her smile, a tender look of gaiety settling into her expression. “Now and forever,” she agrees.
He removes his hand from her waist then, letting his arm rest against the seat of the couch as he raises his palm up. She knows what he’s asking for, her hand, and she slips it out from under him, placing it in his. He twists his fingers through hers and then pulls their locked digits to his mouth, kissing her soft skin.
“I don’t really want to leave this,” she whispers again, after a few seconds.
He knows what she’s talking about. Their pending departure from Block Island, away from the quiet solitude and back to the hustle and bustle of their real lives. They’ve allowed themselves to get lost in the distance and isolation, completely oblivious to the outside world and the commitments and explanations that await them there. He’s also readily aware that they haven’t really talked about those things yet.
He moves his fingers within hers, up and down, squeezing and releasing. “We can stay here longer if you want. I don’t leave for Atlanta for a couple more days and I’m sure that the owner would be ok with us staying. I’ll even go beg Brandon for more time if I need to.”
She snickers faintly. “He doesn’t hate you, even if it seems that way. He’s just protective that’s all.” Taking a deep breath, she continues. “And as much as I love the sound of that, I know that you want to see your mom before you leave and considering I’m new to this girlfriend role, I’d hate to get off on the wrong foot with her.”
“She adores you,” he laughs, “I think even more than she adores me. So you’re good. But she did warn me that I’m not allowed to return there without you so I’m thinking you need to go with me once we head back.”
“Aha,” she giggles, “so I have Momma Evans to thank for pushing you to Block Island?”
“No, you have Momma Evans to thank for pretty much pointing out how unbelievably blind I had been but I can promise you that by that time, I already knew that I had to find you.”
Raising her head, she rests her chin on his chest, her gaze dancing onto his, those brilliant blue orbs literally seeming as if they are dancing about. She smiles. “Well I’m glad you found me. And I look forward to thanking her for opening your eyes a little more. But first . . . . I want to stay right here a little bit longer.”
Tipping his chin down, he meets her lips for a kiss. “You can stay here as long as you want.”
He holds her hand as it rests on her leg during the drive from Point Judith to Sudbury, Taylor assuring Brandon she would be fine as they left the ferry station. Her bodyguard had left for Watch Hill, Olivia and Meredith in tow, as Dodger piled into the back seat of the car. Occasionally, from the corner of his eye, he can see Taylor roll her head to the side and look at him, her view resting there for a few seconds before she smiles and returns her gaze to the road they are travelling. He squeezes her hand every time he sees that smile, his lips never failing to mimic hers.
He remembers the last time they were in his car. The morning after their revealing night of Never Have I Ever, when he took her to his house so they could ride to the sunrise on his motorcycle. He had been so intent then on making yet another of her childhood wishes come true, not knowing at that time how many chances he’d get to do so. Now though, he knows he will get many and he’ll do whatever he can to make everything she’s ever told him of her wishes and dreams come true.
They pull into his mom’s driveway a short time later and he leans over and places a peck on Taylor’s cheek before he asks her to let him go in first. “Why,” she asks and he laughs.
“Because she said I wasn’t allowed to come back without you,” he chuckles again, cementing his statement with a mischievous wink.
With Dodger at his feet, he walks into the side entrance and into the kitchen. He knows without a doubt that he will find his mother there and he does.
She’s standing at the counter, knife in hand and throws a glance his way when he enters.
“Nope, get out,” she orders, turning around briskly, waving the knife precariously in front of her, “do not tell me you are coming in here without that woman. You get your ass back out there and find her and grovel or beg or dammit kidnap her if you have to.”
“You want me to kidnap Taylor Swift,” he asks, knitting his eyebrows together, “do you know how insanely hard that’s going to be not to mention pretty illegal.”
She lifts her hand, and the knife, higher. “I don’t care how insanely hard it’s going to be. Or if you go to jail for it. You love her. You messed the hell up. You need to fix what you broke. And don’t come back here until you do. I wasn’t playing when I told you that before, Christopher.”
He tosses his palms up then, keeping his face solemn, and walks back toward the door. “Come on Dodge,” he yells before he throws the door open and Taylor steps into view.
The smile that radiates on his mother’s face is instant and obvious and she pitches the knife that she’s been holding back onto the counter and moves across the room, wrapping Taylor in her arms.
“Oh he did something right,” she proclaims as she suffocates his girlfriend.
“He did,” Taylor laughs, adjusting her body to fully take on his mom’s embrace, “after doing several things wrong.”
Her gaze flows to him then, providing him with a wink and a grin, the action sending butterflies swimming through his belly and a soulful laugh from his chest.
He rubs his chin and tilts his head from side to side, feigning a hurtful reaction to her blow. “Yeah I deserved that.”
Taylor moves to him then, sliding her arm around his waist and pinning herself to his side. “I can’t claim to have been perfect in all of that either. And I guess you could say that I did leave you after the first time we slept together . . . though you were awake and kinda prompted me to leave.”
“The first time,” his mother interrupts, not allowing him to press Taylor’s meaning behind him prompting her to leave.
When both he and Taylor’s eyes move to her, she bursts out laughing. “Oh don’t worry, I already knew that. You have a brother that doesn’t know how to keep secrets or keep his mouth shut. I’m fairly certain his text to me said did you know Chris and Taylor have hit the sheets?”
“Hmmm,” Chris sighs, not at all surprised by his brother’s lack of discretion but wishing that unsavory trait didn’t belong to him, “I’ll have to chat with Scott about that.”
“Well you will have that opportunity. He’s on his way here with Stella. Apparently your sister is having a pampering day and conned Scott of all people to babysit. Of course, that means he’s going to bring her here for me to babysit.” Lisa moves her gaze to Taylor, smiling brightly. “But she’s gonna be pretty happy to see you. And I am too. I’ve known for a long time that you were supposed to be with Chris but I also knew that he needed to really figure that all out himself. I’m beyond glad that he did.”
“We both did,” Taylor says and he tightens his arm around her shoulders, nudging her against him even more. She glances up at him and meets his smile before she turns back to his mom. “So,” she bellows, stepping one step out from him and clapping her hands together, “How can I help?”
His brother and niece arrive an hour later, Stella’s eyes growing as wide as saucers when she spots Taylor. His heart continues to grow fuller as he watches Taylor bend her knees, spreading her arms open to allow the young girl to run into her embrace. Scott, meanwhile, just stares at him, his grin smirklike, his nod telling him that his brother approves of this moment, of his woman but also seems to scream what took you so long?
They eat dinner in the backyard with Stella squeezed in between himself and Taylor and occasionally he reaches behind her, placing his palm on Taylor’s back and rubbing it. And when Stella grabs Taylor’s hand and pulls her toward the trampoline in the corner, he stops their movement by grabbing her other hand and pulling her to him. His lips meet hers and he feels her smile into them before Stella wins out, tugging her away in a sprint.
Scott tosses him a beer and he moves one of the chairs to face the scene taking place with his niece and girlfriend, his brother doing the same.
“You can’t stop kissing her and touching her,” Scott laughs as they watch.
His words bring a smile to his face and a chuckle from his throat. “I’m making up for lost time.”
“For all the times you wanted to kiss her and touch her and couldn’t,” Scott adds, “even though I know you kissed her and touched her a few times when you weren’t supposed to.”
He nods, his smile widening as he turns his head to look at his brother. “I guess you could say that . . . . and, by the way, thank you for telling mom about it. She told me about your Chris and Taylor hitting the sheets text.”
Raising his beer, Scott tips it at him, his grin mischievous and telling. “Oh is that the only one she told you about? There were others.” He takes a quick draw from the bottle and then moves it to rest on his leg. “I also said something about Cap trying to steal Loki’s girl and that you needed to put your big boy Captain America panties on and actually get her. Glad to see you finally did.”
“Well they aren’t panties,” Chris snickers, “but I did finally realize that the friend zone wasn’t where I needed to be. And apparently she didn’t want me there either.”
Scott nods slowly. “Should make for some pretty interesting Avengers time coming up . . . . and maybe some more interesting time within the Marvel fandom.”
His eyes move back to Taylor and Stella as Scott speaks, his smile dissipating. He watches the duo jump wildly on the trampoline, Stella’s small hands within Taylor’s, their feet seeming to never touch the bottom at the same time. He hears Scott clear his throat before his words start flowing again. “I’m sure I’m not saying anything that you haven’t already thought of but you know how your fandom is . . . . and you know how Tom’s fandom is. And the Marvel fandom. They can all be a little bit, what can I say, wackodoodle.”
Turning his head toward his brother, he stares at him for a few moments, Scott meeting his glare and reading into it. “I like her. I like Taylor a lot and I’m crazy glad you two are finally together and can stop making longing googly eyes at each other. But I just want to make sure you are ready for what it means to be dating Taylor Swift . . . and to be dating Taylor Swift when you essentially stole her from Marvel’s favorite villain.”
He shrugs. “I’m gonna get some hate. I don’t care.”
Scott nods in return and then lifts his bottle back up, tipping it again toward the trampoline. “Yep. You are. But Taylor . . . . . she’s gonna get more. Bank on it.”
“Weren’t you the one who pushed me to admit that I had feelings for her,” Chris spouts, suddenly confused by his brothers warning and honestly, a bit offended.
Throwing his hands up, the bottle dangling in his fingertips, Scott shakes his head. “Don’t get defensive. I’m not saying I don’t think you two should be together. Anyone with at least one eye and half a brain can see that you two are meant to be together and I’d give just about anything to get what you have. I’m just telling you to be ready for the storm and be ready to be there for her when she needs you to be . . . like when your fans who think they are married to you or your fans who think you should be married to Sebastian attack her. And that’s your fandom alone. She’s gonna also face Tom’s and you know that. For the most part, they won’t blame you. In their eyes, you’re Captain America and fairly untouchable. They will blame her though . . . . . because you know the things they already say about her.”
His mind shifts back to Leo’s party then. To the words he watched Taylor hear, to her reaction to those and later to her telling him what being associated with her would probably mean for him. It causes a pang to swim through his heart and lodge there, stabbing over and over again.
“I love her,” he says simply, tossing his shoulders up, “it took me far too long to admit that to anyone but you. And now that I have, I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to be everything she needs. I don’t care about what anyone’s fandom thinks or what the media will inevitably say. I love her. That’s all that matters.”
Scott smiles then, his chin dipping in a nod. “And she loves you.”
“And she loves me,” Chris laughs, “took her a fair bit of time to admit that too but she did and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anyone harm that or harm her.”
“That’s all I was eluding to big brother,” Scott grins, “that you finally fought to get her now you need to always be prepared to fight for her.”
“I will,” Chris says just as he feels the push of a tiny body on top of him.
He lets out a dramatic “ow” as he places his bottle down and wraps his arms around Stella.
“What were you two talking about so seriously over here,” Taylor laughs as she steps in front of them, catching her breath after their sprint from the trampoline.
“He was being stickily disgusting in telling me how much he loves you,” Scott cockles.
“Guilty as charged,” Chris bellows as he moves his hands to his niece’s stomach and starts tickling.
Soon, Stella begs both Evans men to jump with her on the trampoline and then begs even more for them to play hide and seek around the backyard. Taylor joins them, with Chris stealing kisses from her anytime they come near each other, not at all willing to stop kissing and touching her on this day. Or ever.
They eat slices of Lisa’s famous apple pie with mounds of ice cream on top and Taylor joins his mom inside to pile dishes into the dishwasher. When his dad arrives home, he tosses a wink at Chris and a welcome towards Taylor before he gathers his granddaughter up for a game of basketball in the driveway.
Chris finds Taylor standing on the patio, her radiant smile directed at his family frolicking around the yard.
He slides his hands around her waist and she leans back into him. “Your family reminds me so much of mine . . . . minus the nieces and nephews of course.”
“Hmmmm . . . . I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” he chimes in as he places a kiss on her hair.
“It’s a good thing. Your family is amazing. I feel so at home with them. I always have. And I think you will feel that way about mine. Or I hope you will at least.”
“I know I will,” he replies, clenching his hands firmly on her stomach as she nestles into him.
“So are you going to tell me what you and Scott were really talking about earlier,” she says after a couple of silent minutes.
He sighs, tapping his lips to her head once more before he answers. “He was just making sure I was ready for whatever gets thrown our way.”
He expects her to tense up in his arms but she doesn’t, instead she seems to relax even more into him. Content. “And are you?”
“I just had to face you when you were angry and hurt and when I was pretty sure I had lost you forever . . . . I’m fairly certain nothing can be scarier than that.”
She tilts her head to the side then, smiling as she glares up at him. “Have you met Tom’s fans?”
Shaking his head, he laughs loudly. “Remember when you had me stuck in the land of pining friends and told me that I should probably consider what being near you would mean? I told you then that there was nothing anyone could say that would change my mind about you. And now that I’m out of the land of pining friends and I get to kiss and love you freely, I can assure you that there is nothing that will ever change that.”
Leaning back, he gently tugs at her arm, pulling her around to face him. “I’m not scared of the real world, Taylor. I’m not scared of facing Tom or the fans or anyone else. I wasn’t when I was just your friend and I’m definitely not now that I’m more than that. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
She lays her head against his chest. “I don’t ever want rid of you.”
“Promise,” he chuckles.
“Pinky promise,” she responds with a soft giggle, “but can we forget the real world for just a little bit longer. You’re leaving for Atlanta soon and no one outside of our families and our pets know about us yet. I kinda want to soak up all I can before . . . .”
“Before what,” he questions when her voice falls off and her gaze turns down.
He can tell she’s thinking, probably running scenario after scenario through her head. He tightens his arms, pulling her against him more. She grins at his action but doesn’t bring her eyes to meet his. She does, however, continue. “Before whatever Scott warned you to be ready for happens.”
Shaking his head, he places another kiss on her head, knowing this is probably the hundredth time he’s done so today. “First, I’m ready. Second, yes. I’m more than happy to forget the real world for longer. I’m also more than happy to focus solely on you for as long as I can. I know I still have some things to make up for.”
His words spring forth another gentle giggle. “So do I,” she whispers, her view finally moving to his, “though not quite as much as you.”
Her bellowing laughter tells him that whatever thoughts were shuffling through her mind earlier are gone so he allows his own chuckle to mingle with hers. And when his lips find hers again, he hears his brother’s shout behind them.
“Good grief, get a room.”
They both laugh more as they rest their foreheads against each other and he moves his hand down to mingle with hers. When she steps back and then takes a place at his side, still hand in hand, he sees his mom and brother making their way towards them. Stella maintains her play in the yard, running around with his dad chasing her.
When his eyes catch his mother’s mischievous smile, he knows exactly what is going to happen next and he readies himself for it.
“Yes please get a room,” Lisa chimes jubilantly, confirming Chris’s guess, “you two have wasted way too much time already and none of us are getting any younger . . .”
“Especially you Chris,” Scott adds, his smirk returning.
“ . . . and I think it’s about time for one of my sons to actually give me a grandchild.”
He shakes his head animatedly, sighing at the not so shocking words being exposed. “Mom.”
“Mom what,” she continues as Scott steps in behind her, his expression indicative of his overwhelming amusement with the situation, “this is my job. I am supposed to push you two to get busy giving me grandkids.”
He tightens his fingers within Taylor’s, somewhat afraid to even look at her to see her reaction to his mother’s plea. “The only thing you are going to push, dear mother, is Taylor away.”
Lisa reaches for Taylor then, placing her hand on her arm and squeezing there. “Dear son, if you bedding her and then running away didn’t push her away, I doubt your mother’s desire for more little feet running around will.”
He hears her then, Taylor’s laughter joining that of his brother, loud and boisterous and happy. He feels a lightness immediately settle into his heart and through his body.
Taylor tilts her head toward him, shrugging her shoulders up one time. “She has a point,” she laughs.
Taylor’s twinkling, amused eyes are still on him when his mother speaks up again. “This one is the keeper, Christopher,” she emphasizes, “and while I rarely agree with what your brother says, I’m backing him on this get a room idea.”
“Well I didn’t exactly mean I wanted them to give you grandkids,” Scott interjects, “I’m just kinda tired of them not being able to keep their hands off of each other.”
“You all are too much,” Chris moans, tipping his head back with a fake groan, “if she runs away because of you two, I will never forgive you.”
Taylor tightens her hand in his and he pulls his head back up to see her sinful smile. “I’m not running anywhere. Besides, that’s what you do, not me.”
The howls of laughter that take over his parent’s backyard are almost deafening and he shakes his head in defeat, a glorious happy defeat. “Are you seriously joining in with their antics?”
She smiles. “Yes, I’m seriously joining in with their antics. Would you rather me be uptight and distant or would you rather your family accept me?”
His mother slides her arm around her then. “Oh honey, you can believe me when I say we accepted you a long time ago. Pretty much the second Chris walked you into that box at Fenway. There was no doubt in my mind right then that you were supposed to be there with us and absolutely with him.” Leaning forward slightly, his mom stares at him. “And as much as I love spending time with you and I’m elated that Chris brought you here since I wasn’t sure you’d give him another chance, I know that he wants to spend time with you too. And I’m pretty sure you already know that I’m all for that.”
“We don’t need to rehash that,” he groans again, his grin conflicting the emotion of the noise escaping his chest.
It’s at that moment that he thinks they have been saved by Stella, his vibrant young niece bounding giddily across the yard. His mom steps away from Taylor to capture her in an embrace.
“Where are you going Uncle C,” her tiny voice beckons.
“I’m going back to my house near the beach,” Taylor answers for him, “and your Uncle C . . . .” She glances at him. “Well he’s going to go with me there so he can visit.”
“Oh like we did before,” Stella asks, eyes wide and spirited.
Beside him, Taylor nods. “Yeah kinda.”
Stella’s eyes grow even wider and he can’t miss the spark of excitement that ignites in them. “So I can come?”
This time, it’s his mother who is answering, falling quickly over her words. “No Stell, you and your uncle Scott are going to stay here tonight. Your grandpa already bought stuff to make s’mores and chocolate chips for pancakes in the morning.”
“But I want to make s’mores at Taylor’s house, like before,” she whines, first giving a pleading glance to his mom before she turns to his girlfriend. “Please, please, please . . . it’s been so long since I’ve seen Olivia and Meredith and I miss them.” Her puppylike eyes move to him next. “Please Uncle C.”
His shoulders feel tight as he moves his head from side to side. “Stell, I can let Dodger stay here to play with you if you want.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lisa adds, her gaze bouncing from him, to Taylor and then to Stella, “and you and I can take him on a walk to the park and you can play on the things there. You always like that, right?”
His budding actress of a niece plays her favorite role then. That of the heartbroken child. And this time, she plays it directly to Taylor. “I really really want to see the cats. Please let me go with you. I’ll be a good girl.”
Just like before, he can anticipate what is coming next and when he sees Taylor bob her head beside him, he knows he is right.
“Ok sweet girl, you can come. I’m sure Mere and Liv would love to play with you too.”
“Taylor,” Lisa pleads, “she will be fine here. She can come some other time.”
With her fingers still laces with his, Taylor squeezes and then turns to face him. “It’s fine. We’re all here now and she wants to go and it’s not like I’m going anywhere so we will have plenty of other opportunities to be alone.”
“And start procreating,” Scott cackles and Taylor shakes her head, laughing.
She keeps her beautiful blues on him as her smiles peaks even more. “Besides . . . . maybe you can just fall more in love with me tomorrow morning when Stella and I are making breakfast.”
“That is so gross it’s sweet,” Scott chimes again as Chris stares down at Taylor, drinking up every ounce of his amazing woman.
Before he can say anything, Stella is at them, wrapping her tiny arms around both of their legs, before she sprints off with a yell of “I’ll get my stuff.”
“Guess you’re not getting any grandkids tonight,” Scott laughs and he breaks his gaze to look at his brother, shaking his head in disbelief.
Scott shrugs and then lifts his palms up, shrugging. “What? I mean I guess you could try for a quickie job in the bathroom or something but we all know Stell is going to weasel her way into bed with Taylor and you are going to get kicked to the curb, brother.”
“That house is big and she will eventually have to sleep so there are plenty of places you two can get busy, if you know what I mean.”
“Mom,” he yells, shaking his head once again.
Lisa’s amused expression tells it all. “What? You two make me wish I was young and frisky.”
This time, both Chris and Scott toss their heads back as exasperated groans escape from them both. “God, mom. I did not need that visual. Ever. Like literally ever.”
He finds Taylor shaking her head and laughing when he turns his gaze to her. She places her fingertips on her chest, heaving as she finds her voice and spouts out a few words. “Well if I’ve learned one thing today,” she draws in a deep breath, “it’s that I know who your sons got their verbal inhibitions from.”
“Oh that’s from me for sure,” Lisa agrees, tossing her head to the side, toward his dad, sitting calmly on the patio, his grin indicative of his overhearing their conversation but his mouth expectedly closed. “As you can see, Robert is the quiet one.”
“The good one,” his dad adds with a nod, “though I will say that I’m game for another grandbaby.”
“Good grief,” Chris says as laughter beckons around them once more. He tightens his grip on Taylor’s hand and begins to pull her away. “C’mon, let’s get Stell and get out of here before they start picking out baby names.”
Taylor laughs but then stops her movement, pulling her fingers from his to turn around and throw her arms around his mom. “Thank you for today . . . . for welcoming me . . . . and for pushing him to Block Island. I’ll be eternally grateful for your role in this.”
Within the hug, he can see his mom’s face soften, her lips lifting into a smile. A beautiful, genuine one. “Darling, I can assure you that if he hadn’t gone to find you, I not only would have kicked his ass, I would have went there myself and confessed his love for you.” She falls back from the embrace, her eyes soft on Taylor. “Unfortunately, sometimes my children can be as stubborn as me but I’m glad that in this case, Chris realized what he had done and what he was losing. I only had to give him a little push instead of that kick in the ass.”
Taylor smiles, tossing her gaze back to him quickly before returning to his mom. “Regardless, I’m thankful.”
Stella chatters the entire two hour drive to Watch Hill, talking about the cats and Dodger, about her favorite Kidz Bop songs and Youtube videos. Chris smiles at the interaction between his niece and Taylor, admiring the way Taylor never seems to tire of the youngster’s endless discussion and never-ending questions even as he does.
They eat s’mores almost immediately upon arrival and Taylor has to plead hard to convince Stella that it’s too late and there is too much chill in the air for her to swim tonight. Tomorrow, she assures with a quick glance to him.
It takes more convincing that it should, finally ending with a promise from Taylor to let Stella “swim” in her tub upstairs after she plays with Olivia and Meredith and they dance a few rounds of Just Dance using the Nintendo Switch Stella slipped into her bag before leaving Sudbury.
He finds himself sitting back and taking it all in, watching the joy shine on both of their faces as they dance and play, as they have discussion after discussion about absolutely nothing important at all. He doesn’t really join in, content with just watching, his mind etching memory after memory of the moments, of the adorably sweet and heartwarming interactions between the niece he loves and the woman he loves. His mind also occasionally roaming to the future and painting pictures there. Ones he infinitely hopes come true.
He carries Stella upstairs at one point and into the bathroom just off of Taylor’s bedroom. He places a quick kiss on her temple as he leaves the room and kicks his feet up on her bed. His gaze grazes over the room, his first time being in it, lingering and smiling at the pictures on her nightstand and then on the guitar perched in the corner. Olivia jumps up on the bed, nestling in beside of him, just as his ears perk to the conversation taking place in the bathroom.
“You like coming here, huh?”
He hears Stella splash wash. “Yes! And I like your other house too. The one where we watched Up and Dodger tried to eat all the popcorn. And I love, love, love Olivia and Meredith. I want them to live with me.” Smiling at her words, he shakes his head, the expression on her face obvious in his mind even though he can’t see it.
Taylor laughs, sending warmth shimmying through his body, and he hears the continued sound of the water splashing about. “Well, maybe one day they can come and visit you,” Taylor says, her voice mellow, “Can I ask you another question?”
“Yeah,” Stell responds quickly.
“Do you like it when I’m around? When I’m with your uncle?” Her question peaks his interest and slowly pulls a smile to his lips.
He listens closely for Stella’s response, chuckling to himself when he hears it. “Yes,” she exclaims loudly, “I have so much fun with you. You play with me and you sing with me and you let me give hugs to your cats.”
“That’s important isn’t it,” Taylor giggles to another exuberant “Yes” from Stella.
It’s quiet for a few seconds, except for the sound of pouring water, until he hears Taylor’s voice again. “So tell me Stell, would you want me to be around more often?”
“Yes.” Stella’s voice is all but a yell, quirking a grin further onto his lips.
“Good,” Taylor says after, her voice filled with happiness, “because I want to tell you something.”
“What?” He rises to a sitting position in the bed, listening intently to the conversation that he is fully involved in without being a part of.
Taylor’s voice is soft, sweet and calm. “Well Stell, I wanted to tell you that I’ll probably be around more than before because I love your Uncle C.”
“I do too,” Stella quips, without missing a beat and without fully understanding what Taylor is saying. It brings a laugh from both him and Taylor.
“I know you do,” Taylor continues, still calm and steady, “and he loves you. But the way your Uncle C and I love each other is different.”
The sound of water splashing continues but doesn’t cover Stella’s voice. “How?”
He hears Taylor take a deep breath and he imagines that she is contemplating, choosing her response carefully and in a way that his young niece will understand. “Remember the movie we watched before? Up? You remember at the beginning when the girl and the boy meet and become friends and then they grow up together and spend time together?”
“Ellie and Carl,” Stella slips in, “Ellie was the one who wanted to go to Paradise Falls.”
“Yes and Carl wanted to take her there because he loved her. They loved each other. Carl eventually loved Russell, which is kinda how you and your Uncle C love each other, but Ellie and Carl loved each other in a different way. Enough to want to always be together, no matter what.”
Listening to her words does something to him, clutching hold of his heart and sending a wave of emotions through his cells and muscles, digging into every inch of him. There was something beautiful about her describing their relationship like Ellie and Carl’s, something that made him want to make sure to give her something like the fictional relationship she compares them to. Solid and strong. Unwavering. Eternal.
“Like Belle and the Beast?” Stella’s words bring him back to reality and he laughs at her question.
“Yes, like Belle and the Beast.”
“And grandpa and grandma,” she continues.
He can virtually see Taylor’s nod, the grin on her face. “Yes, them too. And I would say your parents but I know most kids think their parents kissing and hugging is gross.”
“It is,” Stella says, punching her words with the sound of her throwing up. When she stops the sound effects, she keeps on. “But it doesn’t bother me when you and Uncle C do.”
Taylor’s giggles fill the room. “I’m glad to hear that.”
He hears more splashing, this time louder, and he knows that Taylor has likely helped his niece from the bathtub. “But don’t be like Anna and Hans. He was mean,” Stella’s voice bemoans emotionally.
Taylor laughs again. “Oh he was. So you need to tell your uncle he needs to be more like Kristoff and not Hans.”
“Yeah,” Stella emphasizes.
Before he knows it, a nightgown clad Stella bounds from the bathroom and jumps onto the bed, her tiny feet moving quickly as she stands up and starts toward him. “I know, I know,” he cockles just as she plops onto his belly, “I won’t be like Hans.”
“You better not be,” Taylor adds, his gaze finding her just as she moves onto the bed herself.
She leans towards him and he starts to do the same but both of their motion is stopped when Stella pops in between them, nestling her little body into the blankets of the bed and her head into the mountain of pillows.
“Let’s watch Up,” she proclaims loudly as Chris looks at Taylor and shakes his head, exasperated.
At some point, he gives up on even thinking he may grab a second alone with Taylor, accepting his crushing defeat exactly the way a man should. By tossing Taylor the saddest of puppy dog looks while carrying Stella out to the terrace.
They had finished Up a few minutes ago and Chris had tried, in vain of course, to convince Stella that she should sleep in any one of Taylor’s several cozy beds in other cozy rooms. Instead, he had wound up tossing his hands in the air after Stella’s heart wrenching plea to sleep on the terrace with them, like before, and Taylor’s ultimate acceptance of this plea.
So he carried Stella into the chilled Rhode Island night with Taylor beside him, her arms full of blankets. He set up the lounge chairs in much the same position as they were before and accepted his fate as the third wheel to Taylor and Stella’s slumber party adventures.
They pointed out constellations and talked about the sounds the waves were making and then made plans for Belgian waffles with maple syrup and Canadian bacon for breakfast, Chris obviously making a quip about the international theme of the meal.
It took far more time than he anticipated for his young niece to finally cozy up next to Taylor and drift off to sleep, the still of the night settling in amongst them, cloaking them like a warm throw.
He lies back onto the lounge chair, his view up toward the sky, watching as red lights flash on and off up above. “Who is on that one?”
Taylor’s laugh tells him that she knows what he’s asking, that she remembers their conversation in this very place what feels so very long ago where she told him about her always wondering who is on the planes that fly overhead.
“Hmmm,” she replies softly, careful not to wake Stella, “Let’s go with Haley Bennett and Julian Edelman.”
He chuckles, rolling his head from side to side. “I was going to say let’s not but I’m actually ok with the thought of those two flying far away from here.”
“You wanna know something,” Taylor asks, looking over Stella to eye him. He nods.
“When Julian brought me home after the game that night and I told him that I was tired and he didn’t need to stay, he shook his head and then put his hands on his hips and then he said something.”
He peaks an eyebrow, preparing himself for what may come next. “What?”
“He said that he hoped that guy opened his eyes and realized what an amazing woman he was letting get away. I was still living in a land of denial then so I questioned who and he said you. Then he said something about you being lucky but that maybe if you never realized how lucky you were that maybe I’d let him be the lucky one.”
“He won’t be lucky,” he scoffs, shaking his head vehemently, “Edelman will never touch you.”
“I think you’ve said that before,” Taylor laughs, still trying to keep her voice down.
“I’ll say it a million more times if I need to. I opened my eyes, I realized how lucky I am and he’s not getting lucky with you. Ever.” As Taylor’s laughter intensifies, Chris moves his hand to his head, rubbing there. “Now I don’t know if I can ever cheer for the Patriots again.”
“Oh stop . . . I told you before that he was a gentleman and really, you should probably thank him too because I have no doubt now that you seeing him hitting on me eventually led to everything coming to light.”
He glares at her . . but with a playful smile on his face. “I will not thank him for flirting with you.”
“It was just a suggestion,” she giggles, tossing the one hand not wrapped around Stella’s shoulders up.
When Stella starts to squirm beside her, Taylor looks at him and smiles brightly. “Shhh….”
He returns his gaze to the sky, to the stars now shining slightly brighter than before. Another plane flashes its way through the darkness followed closely by another. He wonders, ever so briefly once more, who could possibly be aboard them.
Then, without warning, his mind shifts. To earlier in the day. To the words that Taylor had uttered but he hadn’t had a chance to question.
“What did you mean,” he says, glancing at Stella and then to Taylor. “When you were talking to mom earlier and you said that I had prompted you to leave after our night together in Boston. What did you mean by that?”
She seems briefly surprised by his question but then smiles softly, her eyes relaxing onto him. “I meant that I didn’t want to leave. You told me that Tom had called and, honestly, I should have been elated but all I could really think about was how much I wanted to stay. It was such a weird feeling for me because I had waited for months for Tom to finally respond to me in some way, I had been wanting it so badly, and here you were telling me that what I wanted had finally happened and I just wanted to crawl back into bed with you.” He can feel his mouth falling open slightly at her revelation, her words shocking him . . . and making him wish that she had done just what she had wanted to do. “And then you said that about being lonely and I told myself you were probably right, that was probably why it happened and why I was feeling that way. I was clinging to you because I was lonely and Tom wasn’t near. So I left. But I missed you. And that’s why I texted you and invited you and your family back here. But even then I kept telling myself I was just lonely and nothing I was feeling would still exist after Tom came. Obviously I was wrong.”
He shakes his head, her words still lingering in his ears, in his mind. “We weren’t very good at communicating were we? I was giving you an excuse for why we slept together even when I didn’t believe it myself and you weren’t telling me what was going with you either.”
She mimics his movements, tossing her head. “I don’t think it was that we weren’t good at communicating. We were, just apparently not about the stuff that mattered. About how we were feeling and what we were thinking. We tried too hard to toe that friendship line. Sometimes failing miserably with our actions but still not saying the stuff we should have been. But none of that matters anymore. You’re here. You know how I feel. I know how you feel. And we won’t fall victim to our own confusion again. Now we just need to make sure we always say what’s on our minds and what we are feeling.”
His eyes move to Stella when she squirms again, this time thrashing her body around and snuggling it up against him. He chuckles. “Apparently, I just need to take Stella’s advice and be your Kristoff.”
“Nah,” she scoffs, adding a wink, “I’d much prefer being the Ellie to your Carl.” She raises her finger, a grin emerging. “But if I tell you somewhere I am dreaming of going to, you better get me there before I die or I will haunt you. And if you decide to go there by yourself after I die, I will haunt you even more.”
“Wow,” he bellows, howling with laughter, “I’ll consider myself warned.”
He’s still laughing, Taylor doing so as well, when he lowers his eyes and his view onto his niece once more. He places his hand on her head, pushing strands of hair away from her face. “By the way, I’m sorry my mom was pushing the grandkid thing already. Just consider it part of her Boston charm. Or Boston pushiness, whichever you prefer.”
Taylor leans back against the chair then, pulling her gaze from him but keeping a gentle smile encased on her lips. “I want to have kids, Chris. I mean, not at this second so your mom is gonna have to wait a bit, but I don’t mind the idea of having kids and I definitely don’t mind the idea of having kids with you. So don’t apologize. She didn’t bother me. And I won’t tell her you said she had Boston pushiness.”
He shakes his head, his cheeks growing sore from all the laughter and happiness of the day, so much of it courtesy of the woman near him.
She looks at him after a few seconds of silence, a few seconds of him taking her face in. “What,” she asks softly.
“I was just thinking about how much I love you, Miss Swift, and how freaking amazing it feels to finally be able to tell you that whenever I want.”
She dips her head. “Good. Because I love you too and I’m glad that I can say it anytime I want. Forget our communication issues before, I want us to be able to say whatever we are thinking and feeling whenever we want.” Her smile widens. “So tell me something else you are thinking.”
He chuckles. “Awww, let’s see . . . .” He looks up quickly and then moves his view back to her. “I’m thinking how much I’d really love to have my way with you on this terrace, the way I wanted to but didn’t tell you the two nights we spent out here before.”
She nods, her smile reaching her ears. “Ok. Tell me something else.”
“I’m thinking about how much I hate that I have to go to Atlanta in a couple days and how much I’m going to miss the hell out of you while I’m gone. And I’m thinking about how I loved watching you with Stella today and how much I know I’m going to fall more in love with you in the morning when I watch you two cooking breakfast. Even if I don’t really understand why you are discriminating against American breakfast foods.”
“Shut up,” she says, tossing her head back against the chair in laughter.
“Well I don’t . . . but now it’s your turn Swift . . . so tell me what you are thinking.”
Taylor sighs, pulling her leg up on the chair before she lays her head to the side so she can eye him. “I guess that’s only fair.” She places her finger on her lips, tapping it there. “Let me see.”
“I’m thinking that I might change Belgian waffles to French toast but that really doesn’t help with the whole American breakfast food thing.” He rolls his eyes, snickering, as she continues. “And I’m thinking that as much as I love spending time alone with you and the thought of you having your way with me, I’m pretty happy just being here on this terrace with you and Stella. And maybe I’m thinking that I’m really going to miss you too when you go to Atlanta and that part of me wishes I could go with you but I don’t know that jumping back into the real world with that big of a bang would be a good idea, especially with you going there to film a Marvel movie. I’m quite possibly already the most despised of all the Marvel villains and I’ve accomplished that without being in a movie. Which, I might add, is talent.”
She laughs, probably more loudly than she intended, and he can’t help but join in. Even with the anxiety he has no doubt that she feels about what will be said about her when their relationship is revealed, the fact that she holds some ability to laugh about it amazes him. And makes him love her even more.
Leaning back against the chair again, she raises her gaze to the darkened night sky. A few seconds pass by before he sees her gin reappear, this time, tinted with a hint of mischievousness.
“I’m thinking one more thing too,” she says, her gaze dancing on him, “I’m thinking that I was right about what I said before.”
Knitting his brows together, he dips his chin. “Oh yeah, what is that?”
She waits a few more seconds before she finally turns, that sinful grin growing wider and wider before she clears her throat and speaks up.
She winks. “That I really do miss that beard.”
Her words produce a boisterous laugh from the depths of this belly and he shakes his head so hard that the stars twinkling above seem to form lines of light.
Fighting for his voice after a few seconds, he finally spits out some croaking words in response. “Is that a challenge to make sure you don’t miss it?”
That sinful, mischievous, stunningly gorgeous grin appears once more and she shrugs. “Maybe.”
Reaching across the space between them, and over Stella’s somehow still sleeping figure, he rubs his fingers into her shoulder, massaging. And when she licks and then bites at her bottom lip, he responds with his own lick of his lips and then his own telling wink.
Since the last two chapters of Unexpected were so serious....I'm going to give you a (mostly) lighthearted #unexpectedoneshot tomorrow to kick off the one shot game.
Just a little side note....if you are sending me ideas for one shots, please know that I will jot down the ones that intrigue me but I’m not going to respond to the messages because I don’t know at this point what will be used and what won’t be used.
Oh, and while I won’t make you, it might be easier for you to message me on this fic blog rather than my normal one.
Did you know that the Unexpected journey started a year ago? It was this time last year that I started talking to @kanuck7 about this crazy idea of writing a story pairing Taylor and Chris because 1) I am a fan of them both, 2) they have such similar/amazing personalities and 3) I had had a dream of a specific scene from the story. She was totally on board with the idea so I started toying with a prologue and on May 10, 2017, I posted that prologue. Little did I know what that story would turn in to and what it would lead to.
What you all probably don’t realize is that this story is much more than just a story to me. It’s been a journey that has led me to two of the most amazing friendships I’ve ever had. I had been Tumblr pals with @kanuck7 for a while before that Unexpected conversation and early on in the brainstorming for the story, she had recommended that we pull in @holyground89 because she is from Boston and would be beneficial to telling the Boston parts of the story. Now, I had also known @holyground89 for a little bit but we hadn’t really ever talked in depth but I was game for any Boston insight I could get. We started our own little Tumblr blog where the three of us tossed around ideas, posted pics and talked about our lives. It didn’t take long for both of them to become not only integral to the story but also integral to my life. I do not know if these friendships would be where they are today if it weren’t for Unexpected and, for that, I will be forever grateful for the story, to Tumblr and also to Taylor and Chris. :-) And I’m beyond excited that I will finally get to meet them in Nashville in August (along with @floofyangelhairedboyfriend, @hauntedromantics and @it-feels-like-a-perfect-night, who have also been amazingly supportive). I cannot wait for that step in our Unexpected journey. And I also want to make sure that all of you know that while I was the writer of and the person who posted these chapters, these two provided SO MUCH. Some lines that you have read or concepts you have loved were ones they tossed out and they were invaluable to the process from day 1. It may be my page that you deliver your love to, but they deserve a great deal of it too.
As I’ve said before, Unexpected has been a labor of love. I’ve had moments where I didn’t like writing the story and moments where I adored it but I’ve always loved the story itself. I realize that this story isn’t for everyone. I can write a Taylor and Joe one shot and get far more likes than I do for Unexpected. I get that though because this story is fictional and not everyone is going to love this pairing (though you should). But those of you who love the story, passionately love the story and know it probably better than I do. I’m always amazed at the anons I get where readers have picked up on little moments or recall something from chapters before that I had forgotten about. It’s part of the reason why I was so adamant about providing lots of tiebacks in chapter 13 (how many of you caught that Taylor’s journal entry is the exact same words that started the entire story?). You, the readers, are amazing. Your dedication astounds me. And while there were times I wanted to scream with being asked so much about when chapters were being posted, I know that your love of the story is why you asked and your love of the story is one of the biggest motivators I had to keep going even when life and stress were causing delays and issues. So thank you.
Now, I know that you probably don’t care much about what I wrote above because you just want to know what is going to happen with the story. So, here is your answer. Chapter 13 is the final chapter of Unexpected as you know it. But Chris and Taylor’s story is not finished in my mind, or in the minds of @holyground89 and @kanuck7. So, their story will continue to be told in the form of one shots (you can thank @holyground89. for the #unexpectedoneshot idea). These one shots will span a large expanse of time, will be told from different POV’s and may even come from guest writers. There may be 5 of them or there may be 50 and they will explore lots of different topics, including some that you all have thrown out before.
So, Unexpected is done but the storytelling is not and I’m quite excited about all of the #unexpectedoneshot possibilities that await us and for us to continue this journey together.
It’s been omnipresent all night. The voice in his head. The one that appears and reappears so often in his life, often at the most inopportune times. But now it’s not alone. It’s joined by another voice and then another and another, each spilling words and phrases until it all becomes nothing but jumbled noise piercing his mind.
He knows what’s about to happen but he knows he is powerless to stop it. He closes his eyes, clenching them so tightly that the darkness becomes filled with specks of white light and then he takes deep breaths, three or four sharp inhales followed by slow and steady releases. It’s his attempt to control the inevitable, his attempt to silence some of the noise and chaos.
But instead, the volume only increases.
His mind feels as if it’s on fire, burning and searing with vengeful phrases and regretful thoughts. But then it feels like its racing, speeding along wildly before it slams into a wall of words only to jet off again. There are sounds of alarm, shouts of what he is doing is wrong, that leaving her is wrong. There are screams of affirmation, roaring Tom’s name alongside warnings of his heart breaking. They bump and twist, knot and squeeze.
They debilitate.
That’s the thing about anxiety. Or at least this anxiety. It’s all consuming. It’s a punch to his gut. A clamp to his heart. A weight to his chest. It makes him feel as if he can’t breathe, that he can’t think coherently, that he is paralyzed. It provides a physical manifestation of anguished feelings and emotions. It limits and prohibits. Hinders and destroys. It breaks.
And then there’s another exclamation shooting through.
That maybe right now, it’s deserved.
He felt it the moment the elevator door opened into the lobby of the Four Seasons, the bright light smacking him in the face just about the time his entire body became overcome with a sense of loss and dread. He felt it as he sat in his car, his hands on the steering wheel, going nowhere, his heart still inside, upstairs, lying in bed.
With her.
But those feelings would be joined instantaneously with others. Loss and dread stoked with clear confirmation that he was protecting his heart and that protection comes at all costs.
At some point in his mental battle, he had made it home and had absentmindedly rubbed his hand atop the head of his whimpering dog and his way into the shower. He smelled of her. He could still feel her fingers dragging along his skin, could still feel the warmth of her lips on his chest and shoulders. He clenched his eyes shut as he scrubbed and then rested his forehead against the marble wall of the shower when he succumbed.
There was no washing himself clean; there was no ridding himself of her. She was attached to every nerve ending, embedded in every pore. She was wrapped around his waist and buried in his head. And permanently etched in his heart.
And it was that thought amongst the thousands of others that broke him. That sent him spiraling over the edge amid tears and punches to the wall. And he allowed himself to wallow there for more minutes that he even bothered to recognize.
He loaded Dodger up after, knowing that even with complete and utter exhaustion of his body, mind and soul that no rest would ever come to him. Not with the voices screaming in his head and Taylor weighing so heavily on his heart. Not with being so wrought with anxiety, regret and every other emotion known to man.
The drive was a blur, a mindless mess of fog only salvaged by the instinctual nature of the body knowing what to do and where to go. Taking him miles away from her in search of any hint of solace in the only place where he’s ever found it.
His eyes are still clenched shut when he moves his hand to his temples and rubs. The room around him is silent but the noise in his head is still deafening. He takes another breath, trying to ward off the anxiety attack that looms all around him. Another. Then another.
It’s not until he feels Dodger’s fur tickle his free hand that he finally feels the racing in his heart start to slow. He opens his eyes and waits for the white specks to disappear and his vision to clear. Beside him, Dodger moans again and he runs his hand down his back.
“It’s ok buddy,” he reassures his dog and he notes the hoarseness in his voice. His words fall like a block to the floor, not even sounding appropriate to him, but he tries his best to force a smile to Dodger anyway.
The dog whines again, this time louder and more pained and for the first time since he arrived here, he remembers that even in the silence, he’s not alone in the room.
He glances at his mother when he hears her clear her throat. She’s standing against the counter, arms folded across her chest, a coffee cup in one hand and a concerned look upon her face.
She didn’t question anything when he arrived on her doorstep, simply unlocking the door and stepping back to allow Dodger and then Chris to stroll past. He’s done this before. When his anxious mind takes over his life and comfort is only found at the table he grew up at with the woman who loves him unconditionally carefully watching on. He’s well aware that she’s concerned, watching his outward representation of his inward struggle likely increasing that concern. He’s also well aware that she’s abundantly prepared to aid him as he deals with the anxiety that he’s faced over and over again in his life. But . . . . as aware of these as he is, there’s also a knowledge in the back of his mind of what his mother will say when she finds out why he is fighting the battle he is at this moment.
“Your coffee is gonna get cold,” Lisa says, nodding at the mug sitting untouched on the table in front of him.
He mutters a quick “yeah” along with a confirming nod but doesn’t reach for it.
“Ok,” she stammers, “and I see that you are now beardless.” Instinctually, he lifts his hand to his chin, rubbing there. “Must have been an eventful night,” she continues and he offers yet another simple “yeah.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees his mom shrug and then push herself away from the counter. She takes a couple steps before she plops down in a chair across from him. “So, are you going to talk to me?”
He shakes his head. “Not now.”
“Ok. Normally I would expect my son to explain to me what he was doing when he shows up at my door without any sort of warning looking like some sort of lost puppy but,” she hesitates briefly, tapping her finger on the side of her mug, “considering the events that took place at the game last night, I think maybe I at least know some of it.”
He scoffs, shaking his head. “You have no idea.”
“Well let’s see,” she begins, tapping that finger once more on the mug, “you left with Haley and Taylor left with Julian. If I were a betting woman . . . which I am . . . I’d say that’s not exactly what you wanted to happen. Actually, considering the wild look in your eyes when Julian whisked Taylor away, I’m pretty certain that’s not what you wanted to happen.”
He shakes his head again, lowering his eyes as he clears his throat and searches for his voice amongst those still shouting in his mind. “It’s not what I wanted to happen,” he stumbles over his words but pushes through, “What I wanted to happen did end up happening. And that’s the problem.”
“Care to elaborate,” his mom states, her accent thick as it always is when she’s dealing with him in this state.
The tug of war inside continues even with this simple question. It’s not such a simple decision in his foggy mind.
“Ma I don’t know . . .,” he starts to say before his voice hitches and his eyes move to the phone perched near the edge of the table.
Without even seeing who the incoming text message is from, his body reacts, his heart once again beating uncontrollably against his chest. His hands suddenly clammy and his throat raw.
Subconsciously, he knows who it is. The woman he left alone hours before. The woman whose body he ravaged and whose hands hold his heart even now. The woman who he picked up his phone to call a minimum of ten times since he left her only to give in to the chaos inside.
Even now, with his eyes glued to the screen of the phone, the battle ensues. He wants to grab it and see what she has said or to call her and tell her exactly how he feels about her but then . . . he wants to protect his heart, to harden his resolve in confirmation of his actions.
“Christopher,” his mother says softly and he reluctantly pulls his gaze up to her, “get out of your head.”
With eyes back on the phone, he picks it up. Tentative and deliberate, knowing he is not at all prepared to see whatever Taylor has said.
He scans her words, his chest heaving and falling with each one, each jabbing its own wound into his already pierced heart, each causing more noise to sound off in his mind.
He reads . . .
I realized I was in love with you when Tom came to see me in July. The moment I opened the door and saw his face, I wanted it to be you. That was the moment I chose you. I have waited and hoped you would choose me too but when I woke up alone this morning, with only your words at the bottom of a picture, I realized you weren’t going to. I need time to stop loving you. Knowing how I feel I can’t just be your friend right now and I hope that maybe one day we can be again. If that’s what you want and if I can ever feel like I can trust you again.
In an instant, his whole world plummets. He reads over her text again, and then again, his heart falling each time, breaking and shattering in the fall only to shatter into more pieces with each passing read.
She loves him, he says to himself, she loves him and he walked away from her. She loves him and he left her two simple meaningless words scribbled on a tiny picture in her hotel room. She loves him and she thinks he doesn’t love her.
The confusion subsides long enough for him to feel his pull to her, his yearning and desperate need to hear her . . . to somehow fix this mess that’s in his head and heart. If that’s even possible.
“Fuck,” he utters, pushing the chair out so fast that it slides back against the wall. He pays it no mind though, taking a few steps and punching his finger onto his phone.
It feels like a lifetime before he finally hears the shrill tone of a ring. Placing the phone to his ear, he paces, completely ignoring the concerned glare of his mother still seated at the table.
“C’mon Taylor, answer,” he says frantically, his legs moving him back and forth across the room at a similarly frantic pace.
When her voicemail beckons through the phone, he hits the end button and then quickly taps on her number again. “Please . . . . fuck,” he pleads with his fingers now moved to his forehead, rubbing against his temples as the noise in his head is quickly muted by a jabbing pain there.
Her voicemail beckons again just as he spouts another “fuck” and tosses the phone onto the table, watching it slide until it stops near his mother. It’s then that he acknowledges her presence again, stopping his movement and placing his gaze on her. Her worry is written all over her face.
“What is going on,” she asks, the first time she’s directly posed the question since his arrival.
He clenches his eyes shut again, moving his head from side to side slowly as he considers how to answer and with a hand strewn through his tousled hair, he finally opens his view back to her. He says the only words his hazed brain can muster at that second. “I fucked up so bad.”
He’s aware that his words are no surprise to her. After all, she’s been watching the battle he’s been waging with himself since he arrived. So he expects the next words out of her mouth. “Ok, go on,” she says firmly, with a nod and a cross of her arms on her chest.
Instantly, his mind shifts to pictures of the events of the previous night and last few hours and he feels the knot that’s been ever present in his stomach start to tighten like a noose. He grabs at the chair still against the wall and pulls it back to the table, wincing at the screeching noise it makes across the floor.
When he sits, he takes a labored breath and stares down at the table.
“I was with Taylor last night,” he begins, not raising his head, “I went to her hotel after dropping Haley off. I was so angry at her for leaving with Julian.”
“Angry or jealous,” Lisa asks abruptly and he shrugs without looking at her.
“Both. We got into an argument and then she kissed me and then . . . . . I have wanted this, wanted her, for so long. And I had her. Every single bit of her.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees his mom move her head. “And,” she prompts.
He clenches his eyes shut as the pain of what happened not so long ago stabs into him. He clenches harder, the pain he is feeling now evident on his face. He fights for his voice. “And then this morning,” he forces as the light sears back into his opened eyes, “I started telling myself that it was all a mistake. That she’s in love with Tom and that she was giving me just one night, nothing more. I was so scared she was going to wake up and say that. So I wrote her a note on a picture saying I’m sorry and I left.”
“Christopher,” Lisa sighs and Chris leans his head back, moving it from side to side.
“I know mom . . . fuck.” His roaring voice reverberates through the room, “I was so damn wrong. That text.” He points to the phone, his hand shaking in his own anger. “Taylor telling me she loves me, that she fucking chose me and that she’s not with Tom but that now she knows that I will never choose her. Because I walked away from her.”
“You walked away from her without telling her that you loved her.”
He throws his hands up in the air as he once more pushes the chair out and begins pacing the floor. He rubs exasperatedly down his face, his palms fiery hot on his skin. “Yes,” he all but screams. He moves his hands to his waist and his chin toward the ceiling. “I didn’t tell her because I didn’t know how. Because I was so damn scared of her still choosing Tom. But she didn’t choose him. But she also didn’t tell me before.”
“She did tell you.” Lisa’s voice is soft but her words surprise him. He turns to her. “She told you last night. You are so blind child.” With a tilt of his head, he narrows his gaze. “How did you not see how hurt she was to see you with another woman at the game? Did you not look at her at all? Did you not see her?” She leans forward, shaking her head from side to side. “Taylor left with Julian because she couldn’t stay with you. Because you were with Haley. He was her escape. Because it was as plain as the nose on my face that her heart was breaking and she would have used any excuse to get out of there.”
His eyes fall again, the noise slowly returning to his mind, paining him. “She left with Julian,” is all he can muster.
“Chris . . . . you need to remember that she didn’t come there with Julian Edelman. She didn’t come there to see Julian Edelman either. She came there to see you. I don’t know how you didn’t see that. Everyone else in that room did and they saw her eyes and her face when she realized Haley was there. And then Haley didn’t leave your side.” Lisa shakes her head. “Chris, Taylor told you last night how she felt. It was written all over her. And I know she left with Julian and I know that you thought she was still with Tom but had you opened your eyes for one second and actually looked at that woman, you would have known how wrong you were.”
“I didn’t see it,” he whispers.
“You didn’t allow yourself to see it. You were so caught up in what could go wrong that you couldn’t see what was so evident in front of you. Then you sleep with her and you leave her.” Lisa takes a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly as she shakes her head. “And a note Christopher. Really? You left a note saying you were sorry. You couldn’t have waited for her to wake up and tell her how you felt? How is she supposed to feel after that? How would you have felt? Because all of the fears that you’ve let eat away at your mind as something that might happen is exactly what happened to her. What you did to her.”
“I know,” he blasts through the abundant dissonance, throwing his arms out and continuing to wear his path in the floor.
Lisa watches him for a few moments and he knows that she is reading the emotions on his face and throughout his body. Then he sees her dip her chin. “Sit down.” He stops, looking at her. “Sit down Christopher.”
He does as she asks, pulling the chair back to the table and dragging his body into it. He puts his hand on his chin and his gaze back on the phone near his mother. Taylor’s text returns to his mind as he does.
“You’ve got to stop this. You’re letting the echoes in your head dictate your heart and you are going to lose that amazing woman because of it.” His gaze falls farther and he nods his head, listening to her words. “I understand how complicated this situation has been.”
“You can’t really understand,” he whispers, “I never intended to fall in love with her and then I did but there was so many other things going on.”
He doesn’t have to look to know that his mom is agreeing. “Maybe I don’t fully understand but I can imagine what it’s been like for you. I’ve seen how you are with her, how you have been with her. I’ve seen how you wince when Tom’s name is brought up and how you reach for her at times and then pull back. And I know that Jenny was there for a while too. But I can also imagine what this has been like for Taylor because I saw the same things in her that I saw in you. And I know there is bound to be a whole lot more that I didn’t even see.”
“There is . . .,” he confirms.
“Do you remember what I told you when you and Jenny broke up? That conversation we had where you were so deep in your own head because you couldn’t figure out what was holding you back from fully committing to Jenny? And I told you that there isn’t always an explanation.”
He nods, “Yes.”
“Well I was wrong. Because there was an explanation for what was holding you back. And Taylor is that explanation.”
He shakes his head again. “I didn’t even know Taylor then.”
“I know,” Lisa replies, “but she was the something different I said was waiting for you.”
A memory of his conversation with his mother that day resurfaces and he relives her saying the words she is referring to. In this very kitchen, her hand busily stirring a pot of sauce, she had told him that sometimes you have to accept that what happens is the way it’s supposed to be and that perhaps it happens because there is something different out there waiting for you.
“Do you remember what else I said,” Lisa asks and he squints his eyes, their conversation continuing on replay. “You said your heart was foolishly protecting itself from being broken and I said that maybe it was saving itself for the one that’s supposed to have it.”
“But now I’m back to that,” he stammers, lifting his gaze back to her, “back to saying my heart is protecting itself from being broken. I’m running from Taylor the same way I did from Jenny.”
“No you’re not,” she contends with a strong headshake. “You walked away from Jenny because you knew what you felt was wrong. You walked away from Taylor because you know what you feel is right and that scares you. But you don’t need to be scared. Because she’s the one that’s supposed to have your heart and the one that was waiting out there for you. She’s the reason why it felt wrong with Jenny. And trust me son, if you don’t let go of those echoes and right this wrong that you’ve done, you will never forgive yourself. The only thing standing in your way right now is you. There is no Jenny or Haley. No Tom or Julian. No fear that she doesn’t feel the same way about you that you do about her because she does and you now know that now. You both have left way too many words unsaid and made far too many missteps. But right now, it’s all on you.” His jaw clenches and he nods as he watches her eyes soften. “Right now you are the one who has to right the wrong. Don’t let her go on without knowing how you feel. Don’t let her only remember you leaving her alone. I know that you’ve said that you couldn’t understand how Tom could ever let her walk away . . . . . and then you walked away without even giving her a chance to stop you. Right your wrong.”
“And if I can’t,” he asks softly, the anxious thoughts teetering on the edge of his mind.
“Do you love her,” Lisa asks, her eyes steady on him.
He nods. “Yes.”
“Then you have no choice but to try. Forget the noise and the doubts in your head, Chris. Focus on your heart. Focus on Taylor and how you feel about her. She deserves to know that and you both deserve a shot at something beautiful. Scott and your sisters and I have seen that beauty between you two from the beginning. You can’t just let that slip away without trying to get it back.”
He nods, abundantly aware of just how right she is. Even within the chaos, he knows that and realizes just how beautiful what he and Taylor share is. At least now he can acknowledge it without thoughts of others complicating it. At least now he can, even if now is too late.
He pushes the chair back slowly this time, taking a couple steps around the table until he reaches his mom’s side. Leaning down, he places a quick peck on her cheek and then retrieves his phone from its position in front of her.
Lisa laughs slightly when he turns back around and starts heading toward the door. On cue, his dog that has been strangely missing through his entire conversation with his mother bounds back into the room and joins him at his side.
“And Christopher,” Lisa yells just as he reached the door and turns the knob. “Don’t come back here without her.”
He’s shaking his head when he glances back at her and smiles. “I won’t.”
Twenty minutes later he is over halfway back to Boston and busily sorting through thoughts in his head. The noise and negativity strengthens at times but with each emergence, he draws in a breath and pushes it away, propelling his mom’s statement of not letting the echoes dictate his heart forward and drowning out the chaos. Occasionally, Dodger leans his head across the small space between them and places it on Chris’s leg and he knows that his dedicated pal is sensing the internal struggle he is processing through.
It’s as he is sifting and sorting through thoughts, emotions and memories that he realizes exactly what has been right in front of him all along. Taylor attempting to tell him about Tom, to tell him the truth about what had happened and most likely, what she felt for him. But each of those attempts was met with a roadblock. A wall. An obstacle. An unfortunate miscommunication or slip of tongue. An assumption that something was what it absolutely was not.
He holds so tightly to the steering wheel with his right hand that his knuckles go white and he moves his left elbow to the edge of the window, raising his fist to his mouth and biting at it. She had called him when he was in Los Angeles. When he thought she was with Tom but now knows was just after she turned Tom away. She had called randomly but then suddenly halted her conversation when he had told her that he was at dinner with Jenny. The first roadblock.
Another memory parades through his mind as quickly as the road passes beneath him. Facetime in South Africa. She had pressed him about his breakup with Jenny, the remembrance of what he told her when she did stinging him with the knowledge that he has now. I didn’t think it mattered he had said. He didn’t think it mattered to her is what he meant but now he realizes how he implied that telling her wasn’t important and how she likely interpreted his thoughtless words as his reneging on the deal they made on her terrace in Rhode Island that they would explore what was going on between them if their relationships failed. The second wall.
He bites at his fist harder. Before he came back to the States, she had told him that she had something to talk to him about. Face to face, she had said. But then when she was ready to say what she wanted to say, her voice was stopped with Haley’s appearance. And with Haley clinging to his side in the Patriots suite, she had whispered that there was no use to say it anymore. That it would only bring heartache. Obstacle three.
Dodger rubs his head along Chris’s leg as memories of the night before barrel like a train back into his mind and he thinks about when she had stopped him and said that they needed to talk, remembering specifically for the first time what he had said just before she did so. He had told her that she was going to make him think she was in love with him. And she is. He fights the tears starting to burn into and blur his eyes when it dawns on him that that was exactly what she wanted to talk to him about. Not about how much of a mistake they were making and how she loved Tom. She wanted to tell him how she loves him. He had effectively silenced the words he had wanted so desperately to hear her say . . . . and he potentially silenced them forever when he went back on his own promise to her that he would talk to her today. Roadblock. Wall. Obstacle. Missed opportunity four.
The miles fly by and he begins to see the Boston skyline in the distance. His thoughts though remain focused on Taylor and the memories of moments that she told him so much without telling him a thing. But he had failed to hear her. The kisses and touches. The painting. The request of him to surprise Leo followed by the revelation that night that she was jealous of the woman who had flirted with him and that she had pictured him as her one.
She had told him that she thought he was perfect. Shared up close and far away sunrise kisses. She had worn his shirt and his necklace and loved and cared for his dog like he was her own. And then she had walked into an event with Haley by his side and told him with broken eyes and a broken voice that she obviously wasn’t a threat to his costar. He, however, had failed to notice any of the brokenness until now. Had failed to realize that it wasn’t Tom or Julian that she wanted . . . . it was him. Even after she showed him she wanted him with her body wrapped around his, he still failed to understand.
He failed her. Him. Them.
And now, he’s broken both of their hearts in his misguided attempt to spare his.
“I’ve really messed this up, Dodge,” he says, keeping his eyes on the highway.
With his head still on his leg, Dodger whines and Chris nods. “Now we just need to find her.”
It takes him ten more minutes to navigate the familiar streets and pull his car to a stop in the valet lane of the Four Seasons. He tosses his keys to the man nearing the vehicle as Dodger jumps out beside him. “I don’t know how long I’ll be but I’ll pay you generously if you keep it close and get it to me fast if I come back out within a few minutes.”
“And if you’re in longer than a few minutes,” the man yells loudly as Chris and Dodger near the entrance.
He turns back to him and grins. “If I’m in longer than a few minutes consider it a good thing, park it somewhere and I’ll still pay you generously.”
He feels the glares the instant he and Dodger walk in the door and he raises his hand to a concierge as she approaches him. “I know. No dogs.” Even with the acknowledgment, he continues on, Dodger prancing confidently at his side.
It’s only when he arrives at the penthouse elevator that he stops. The man standing just outside the doors is the same one who escorted him the night before and he almost feels thankful for this.
“Is she still here,” he asks, tilting his head upward. When the older man stalls, he speaks again. “Listen, you know I was here last night. I had a beard then but you know it was me. I am begging you to tell me if Taylor is still here.”
“I’m not supposed to,” the man stutters and Chris clenches his eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again.
“Please.”
The man looks from Chris to Dodger and then back to Chris before slowly shaking his head. “No, she left a while ago. Looked pretty upset.”
“Fuck,” Chris winces and then turns his body, looking around the busy lobby, “and I doubt you heard anyone say where she was going?”
He knows the man likely doesn’t know and it’s confirmed when he shakes his head. “No.”
With a tip of his head to the side, he looks into the empty elevator. “Can I go up? We know she’s not there so I can’t do any harm can I?”
The man’s eyes widen and he places his hands palms up in front of him. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not,” Chris asks, forcing a grin, “I’ll only be like 5 minutes. You can go with me if you want. Then I’ll leave and you won’t ever see me again.” He changes his statement when he sees the man’s knowing half-smile. “In person again.”
The operator glances behind him quickly before providing a fast tilt back of his head. “Five minutes,” he says.
Chris wastes no time getting into the elevator, followed by Dodger and the man whose job he knows he is putting on the line.
He offers him a thank you and a few other words of appreciation on the ride up but he says nothing in return. And when the door opens to the penthouse and Chris spies a cleaning cart holding the main door open, he tosses a fifty dollar bill to the man. “Five minutes.”
He’s inside within seconds, his gaze frantic as it rakes and roams over ever surface of the room. He can hear the maid cleaning in the bathroom, his mind moving to the mess likely left there from Taylor shaving his beard the night before.
He shakes the memory, moving quickly about the large open room until his survey falls to one small object sitting on the counter. The same counter he left his single I’m sorry scribbled on her picture. The picture is now gone, this object taking its place.
His heart aches at its recognition.
Taking a few timid steps to the counter, he picks it up and brings it to eye level. The necklace that he left her in Watch Hill. The one she’s worn since then. The only thing that was left upon her body when he made his escape this morning. A painful realization sets in again. He had failed them.
He clutches the small necklace in his fist, clenching his eyes just as tightly and then slips it into his pocket, feeling as if it burns a hole there as he does.
“What are you doing in here,” a voice beckons, forcing his eyes back open and a turn to face the maid.
“Sorry I forgot something,” he says quickly, his voice faltering, before he pushes his legs forward, back toward the door.
He’s just about there when, from the corner of his eye, he sees another object lying on the floor. He ignores it at first but then something pulls his gaze back to it, something pleads with him to see what it is.
It takes just two long strides to reach what appears to be a card lying haphazardly on the carpet. Leaning over, he picks it up, revealing the familiar blank back of a post card. But when he flips it over, a tremble rips through his body.
Block Island it reads in bold letters across the top.
“Block Island,” he says softly as he remembers Taylor’s entry regarding the same place in her Q&A A Day journal, remembering the words she had written about wanting to return there.
Within him, he knows without a doubt that is where she is, where she is escaping to.
Folding the postcard, he holds it in his hand and bounds out the door, returning to the elevator that took him away from her hours ago . . . . this time, he hopes, taking him to her.
He glances down at his dog sitting obediently at his feet. Dodger looks out at the water, the expression on his face one that Chris has never seen. He looks focused, or as focused as a dog could possibly look. Like he’s on a mission. It’s appropriate, he thinks, his dog so focused on his mission to find Taylor. He knows that his trusted pet loves her just as much as he does.
“So do we have an actual plan Dodge,” Chris says, leaning forward onto his thighs and clamping his hands together.
Dodger turns his head slightly, a small whimper coming from him.
“Block Island isn’t that big but I’d say there are quite a few houses on it. The question is which one is she at?” Dodger whimpers once again and Chris raises his view to stare out at the island as it comes into clearer view. “I guess we will go by them all until we find the one, huh? I have a wrong to right.” Moving his eyes back to Dodger, he lowers his chin. “And an apology to make.” When the dog tilts his head and whines once more, Chris raises up and chuckles. “Yeah, I know. I have a lot more to say than that.”
They head straight to a rental company the moment the ferry docks, Chris telling the desk agent that he doesn’t care what kind of vehicle he gets as long as it gets him around the island. He smiles and whispers the word “hopefully” when she asks him if he’s visiting someone special.
The search begins right after. The pair driving and looking, occasionally stopping at a house or cabin and knocking on the door. He ignores the surprised looks and wide eyes of virtually every person they come across. For a brief second he considers that one of those people may run to their phone and tweet or snap that they had just seen Captain America on Block Island and perhaps that would somehow get back to Taylor but then he pushes that thought from his head. He knows that likely the reason she came here in the first place is to disconnect from the world and he knows that even if she somehow did find out he was looking for her, he would continue the search anyway.
This isn’t a mission he can afford to fail at. Not with his heart and his future on the line.
The sun is going down and dark clouds are starting to fill the sky when he pulls onto a small gravel driveway with a sign that reads Peace & Tranquility. He can’t see any buildings from the start of the drive but he figures one has to be somewhere on the road.
“Where in the world does this one go,” he says to Dodger as the small road starts to peak upward ever so slightly.
He gets his answer when it evens back out and an expanse of land, beach and ocean comes into his view. It’s stunningly beautiful with the waves crashing in the distance and two pristine structures sitting just near the beach but it’s also scarily ominous with blackened clouds moving quickly overhead, seemingly twirling in the sky above the water.
He drives on, noting one lone vehicle parked to the side of one of the cottages. A silver SUV with Rhode Island plates. A rental he checks off in his head, just like pretty much every other form of transportation on this island.
When he pulls to a stop near the house without the vehicle, he notices Dodger stiffen up, his eyes straight forward. “You worried about the storm bud,” he says, patting his head, “this can be our last one for the night and then we will find somewhere to stay and something for you to eat and we will start again early in the morning. That sound ok?”
The dog makes no noise, instead keeping his eyes pinned on the house ahead.
Chris turns his head, following Dodger’s gaze and a quick pang jets through his heart. In the window, staring back at him, is a familiar white cat. He closes his eyes and shakes his head, his mind telling him that it can’t be Olivia. Taylor hadn’t had either cat with her in Boston, not that he had seen anyway.
But then another thought. Oliva and Meredith had likely been in Watch Hill and there’s little doubt in his mind that an upset Taylor would seek solace in her prized pets. And that cat in the window right now is no doubt one of them.
“This is it Dodge,” he says softly, a knot tightening in his stomach, the same seemingly doing so in his heart, “time to face the music and get her back.”
With those words, he feels his entire body start to seize up. He has no plan. He hasn’t even considered just what all he needs to say to her. All he’s been concerned about is finding her and now that he has, he doesn’t have a fucking clue how to actually get her back.
“Just tell her everything,” he whispers to himself.
He unwinds his fingers from the steering wheel, just now noticing that he’s been clutching it so tightly, and opens the door. He waits for Dodger to jump out and then closes it shut.
Dodger runs immediately onto the porch and stops at the front door but he hesitates, his body still adjusting to the strange feelings shifting throughout it. Taking a deep breath after a few seconds, he stuffs his hands into his pockets and walks onto the porch, noticing Olivia’s stare the entire way.
He can feel the unsteadiness of his hands as he shifts them back out of his pockets and raises one to knock on the door, the sound of the soft pound sending an equivalent pound to his heart.
The seconds that pass feel like hours but he hears nothing from inside. Lifting his shaking hand once more, he pounds a little louder. Dragging seconds go by with the only noise coming from the wind picking up around him.
He steps back, finding Olivia in the window. “Where’s your momma at Liv,” he says with the cat tilting its head and then standing up and moving closer to the side of the window, staring now at Dodger at his feet.
His gaze is back on the door, trying to figure out his next move, when Dodger jumps up and sprints off. Chris’s eyes catch him just as he turns the corner around the house and disappears out of view.
“Dodge,” he yells as he forces his legs to move again and runs down the steps, following his dog’s path around the house until he stops just as the ground underneath him begins to lead into sand.
A rumble of thunder cracks in the sky and he can see a flash of lightning ignite miles back over the ocean and he begins to rake his eyes along the beach in search of Dodger. It takes him a few seconds to find him, several yards down the beach, his trusted companion now standing just feet away from a figure standing in the sand.
His body reacts immediately, recognizing Taylor’s figure even with her back turned and the distance between them. The emotions coursing through his veins are set on edge, his mind milling a mile a minute. He can feel his breathing intensify, his hands become clammy.
He keeps his eyes on Taylor and Dodger as he walks. His dog continuing to keep his distance, his rear sitting in the sand still a few feet back from her.
There’s another blistering burst of thunder and another distant lightning strike and the clouds are performing a magnificent and eerie dance in the sky just out from the woman he’s making his way to.
He stops near Dodger, absentmindedly placing his hand on the dogs head and petting as he eyes Taylor. She’s still standing straight, her arms clutching a thin white sweater around her body. He can see a peak of a black dress revealing itself underneath the sweater. His gaze roves to her bare feet and back up to her hair blowing in the wind of the incoming storm.
She’s magnificently simple and magnificently beautiful.
He takes two tentative steps forward and then clears his throat. “Taylor.”
Her shoulders stiffen immediately and he can tell that she’s drawn in a sharp breath. Her turn to him is slow and agonizing; the seconds making those he suffered through on the porch seem easy and making the mess he put his mind through this morning seem effortless.
She shakes her head when she sees him, her swollen eyes glazed over. “Go away,” she says through broken syllables.
His response is equally slow and deliberate, his head moving from side to side and he clenches his jaw, unclenching just before speaking. “No.”
He knows immediately that his response doesn’t sit well with her and she lowers her chin and her eyes, shaking her head vehemently. “Go away,” she says again, her voice strong and angry this time.
His response is the same. “No.”
She’s walking then. Her eyes falling to Dodger as she stomps past him in the sand and he turns on his heels to follow her quick pace. “Go away, Chris,” she yells just before tossing a quick glace back at him and then returning to her headstrong march ahead, tossing her arms into the air, “why are you here anyway? Is there a position we didn’t try last night?” She throws another glare toward him. “Coming for your blow job now? What is it? Because I’m now readily aware that you only want me in your bed . . . not anywhere else.”
Another crash of thunder and jolt of light encompasses them but they both march on.
“Taylor,” he cries as he grabs for her arm and she instantly jerks it free, “you know that’s not true.”
“Do I,” she screams.
He groans. “I don’t fucking know if you do but I’m here to tell you it’s not. So please stop and let me tell you.”
He’s frustrated at her frustration and he mentally scolds himself because this is not how he would ever want this to go and he knows this is absolutely not going to fix the mess that’s been made.
She picks up her pace as she rounds the house and plods onto the porch.
He lightens his approach then, lowering his voice. “Taylor please let me explain.” But his words smack into a wall, or in actuality, a door as Taylor tracks inside and slams the door shut behind her.
At his feet, Dodger whines but he just stares blindly at the door in front of him for a few moments and then leans his right arm against it, placing his head on that same arm. “Taylor, please. I know I fucked up . . . . . god, I know that. But I’m asking you to please talk to me. Please.”
He’s met with silence from the other side of the door and a thunderous explosion of noise from the sky. To his left, the wind starts to whip a swing hanging from the porch ceiling, causing a back and forth squeaking noise.
“Taylor,” he pleads again, already knowing he will receive no response. He waits briefly before his voice beckons again. “I’m not leaving, Taylor.” Stepping back, he takes another breath. “I’ll be waiting out here until you decide to talk to me.”
Again, he receives stillness from inside to contrast against the ominous agitation brewing in the sky outside. He glances to it as he moves to the swing, Dodger moving with him. Hues of black and gray hang overhead with a fog-like sheath of rain approaching quickly.
He sits as another blast of thunder echoes followed almost instantaneously by the speckling pound of rain smacking the ground and structure. The wind tickles his skin, forming goosebumps and Dodger moans.
Minutes go by with the storm moving in, the intensity of the rain and wind picking up, causing much of it to spray onto the porch and onto him and Dodger in the swing. He moves his position, scooting closer to the house and throwing his hand up to wave at a staring Olivia now back in the window.
When Dodger begins to grow wetter and his whines increase, Chris raises his voice. “I know I deserve this, Taylor. I get it. But Dodger doesn’t and he doesn’t know how to talk so will you just consider letting him in. He’s a bit spoiled and probably thinks he’s going to melt in this rain.”
A few more seconds pass and his head perks up when he hears the creek of the door. It’s open only slightly, just enough for Dodger to slip in but it doesn’t close after he does. Instead it remains in the same position for a few fleeting moments and then he watches as it opens fully and Taylor steps into the frame.
“I’m not talking to you,” she says, her eyes now even more swollen but also steady on him, “but I’m also not cruel. You can come in too.”
It’s a start, he thinks as he hastily gets up, hoping she doesn’t change her mind and slam the door back in his face. He’s pleasantly surprised when she doesn’t but she also doesn’t bring her gaze to him as he walks inside, keeping it down even as she closes the door behind him and then walks past him.
He watches her move without moving himself, his eyes focused on her as she goes to Dodger, whispering something to him as she pats his head and then Dodger going with her when she moves along.
They go into the kitchen and he can see her dig something out of the refrigerator. She pops the top off of a container and pours what appear to be strips of chicken onto a plate before laying it on the floor in front of his pooch.
She glances at him then, a flicker of a second, and turns to toss the container in the sink before she walks back into the living room where he is. She plants her feet firmly on the floor and her hand on her hip when she stops. “How did you find me?”
Lifting one shoulder, he keeps his view pinned to her. “I went back to the hotel looking for you and found a postcard for Block Island on the floor in the room.” He can tell by the look on her face that she’s confused. He shrugs again. “And then I remembered seeing an entry in your Q&A journal about coming here before.”
She shakes her head before pulling it down. “I should probably ask you why you were reading my journal or why you went back to the hotel but I’m not.” She turns her view to the window just as thunder shakes the house. “I suppose you didn’t look at the weather forecast before you came here. It’s supposed to storm all night. Fortunately for you, I love your dog so I won’t kick you two out. But there’s a ferry that leaves the island in the morning so you should make sure you’re on it.”
He completely ignores the last part of her statement, choosing instead to focus on the first.
“Do you remember the first time we were in a storm together,” he asks, a small grin on his lips.
Taylor shakes her head as she lowers it again. “Chris, stop.”
“Mamma Maria’s, cannoli and we kissed in the elevator.”
He knows she remembers but he reminds her anyway. He can tell by the expression on her face that she’s remembering their stormy night as well. But just as quickly, her expression grows stony and she steadies her eyes on him.
“There’s blankets and pillows in the hall.” She shrugs. “And maybe some food in the fridge. But I’m going to bed. It’s been a pretty difficult day and I just want it to be over with.”
Her last words are meant to hurt him and they do, piercing into his heart like a thousand tiny pin pricks. And for the briefest second, with her eyes still on him, she seems to regret her words. Like she can tell that she’s inflicted a bit of pain onto him, but then she stiffens up, turns and walks into a room just off from where he stands, leaving the door open just enough for Meredith and Olivia to slip in and out of.
Lying on the couch twenty minutes later, he crosses his ankles on the arm and plants his hand underneath his head. He stares up at the ceiling, watching the ceiling fan there shake as thunder rattles the house and listening as the rain sings a song as it hits onto the roof.
Dodger, being the traitor he still is, slipped into Taylor’s room the moment he finished eating and the cats soon followed as well. He’s alone in the room and pretty much alone in the house, knowing that his presence isn’t welcome.
When the wind and rain start to lull, his mind starts to roam. Dancing over memories of the past few months, his heart reacting to each and every one. Sweet kisses with a terrified Taylor atop a ferris wheel, s’mores and water fights, facetime popcorn with his niece.
Each memory beautifully etched for posterity in his mind.
Rolling his head to the side, he looks toward the partially opened door.
“Taylor, I don’t know if you are awake or even if you can hear me. I know you said that you didn’t want to talk to me and honestly, I don’t blame you.” He moves his eyes back to the ceiling. “But even if you won’t talk, I hope you will at least listen.”
He takes a deep breath, noting the way the noise of the rain disappears into the background. He’s unsure if it’s really diminishing or if it’s just that he’s no longer hearing it as loudly amongst the words he needs to say plaguing his mind.
“I’m an idiot, Taylor.” He shakes his head, still atop his arm. “I’m a scared and foolish idiot who hurt the one person that I never wanted to hurt. I was consumed with thoughts of you choosing Tom, of you deciding that what we shared last night was wrong, that I never even considered that maybe you were choosing me. Maybe you already had.”
Moving his arm out from under his head, he rubs both of his hands down his weary face and then reaches to grasp the thin blanket resting at his waist.
“I opened my eyes, Taylor. I know now what you’ve been trying to tell me. I know that you called me in LA to let me know that you didn’t take Tom back and I know that you tried more times than that to tell me too and every single time, my words or actions stopped you.”
Twisting his head to the side, he looks at the door again. He can hear no movement or noise at all coming from within and part of him tells himself to just stop talking, that she probably isn’t listening anyway. But part of him wills him on.
“I swear to you had I known any of that . . . . had I had any idea that you felt anything at all for me, I would have never left you this morning. I would have stayed there and kissed you awake and held you for hours . . . like I wanted to do. But instead I let my head get the best of me and I told myself you were going to break my heart instead of telling you what I should have been saying all along.” He sucks in a long breath, his mind racing, and then spills that breath along with his words. “And at the risk of sounding very much like No Strings Attached and knowing that’s probably not a good movie to reference right now . . . . . . I love you, Taylor. And maybe it’s too late or maybe you no longer care and hell, maybe you’re not even hearing this right now but I’m saying it anyway. I love you. I’m in love with you. And I have been for a while now.”
He rubs his hand down his tired face once more and drills his gaze back into the ceiling. “Taylor, there is nothing about you that I’m not in love with. And I don’t want to be with Haley or with Jenny or anyone else but you. And I don’t want you to be with Tom or Julian because, quite honestly, the thought of either one of them touching you makes me fucking crazy. And has for a helluva long time. Now it’s my turn. My turn to touch you. My turn to love you. And I promise you that I will and I do.” Another breath is taken in and then slowly let out. “So please forgive me,” he says, his voice softer, pleading. “Please know how unbelievably sorry I am and how I’d give anything to go back and to not walk out that door. I love you and I’m not just saying that because you said it, I’m saying it because it’s 100% true and 100% what I should have said to you long ago.”
Outside, the rain quiets completely, the storm now drawing near its end. Chris turns his head to look toward the silent room, keeping his gaze there for a few moments before he returns it to the ceiling. He moves his hands to his chest, clasping them together. “So I guess you’re probably asleep,” he says, “but I’ll say it again just in case you’re not. I’m sorry . . . and I love you. And I will do absolutely anything to prove that to you.”
Not surprisingly, his words warrant no response, not even the slightest of peeps being made. And in the utter solitude, he allows himself to acknowledge his exhaustion. Physically. Mentally. But most of all, emotionally. The rollercoaster of thoughts and emotions, the battle with noise and chaos and the words he just spilled out taking a toll on him in a way nothing has before.
He closes his eyes, promising himself to continue his pursuit in the morning. Rested and ready and, hopefully, without the extreme noise of the silence that encompasses him now.
He’s not sure how long it took him to fall asleep, just that he spent what felt like an eternity staring at the dark ceiling in the utter quiet. He’s not even quite sure if he’s really awake but when the hint of bacon that he had thought he smelled sifts strongly into his senses, he lifts one eyelid and looks around.
He sees nothing so he opens his other eyelid and pushes his back up from the couch. His body aches and creaks and he reaches his arms out in front of him to try to stretch out some of the soreness.
He breathes in another whiff of bacon as he throws his legs over the side and forces himself into a standing position and stretches more.
When his body finally loosens up and his morning fog starts to subside, he begins to follow the scent, moving not too far until he reaches the doorway to the kitchen. He stops there, leaning against the frame as he takes in the scene inside.
Taylor’s back is to him as she stands at a small, old stove. There are two pans in front of her. A cast iron one with strips of bacon sizzling inside and a larger silver one with pancakes just starting to bubble on the open side. Looking up from their positions at her feet are Dodger, Meredith and Olivia.
It’s a picture that tugs at both his heart and his lips and brings a specific memory rushing back to his thoughts.
“This reminds me of when I realized I was in love with you.” His words stop her movement but she doesn’t turn to face him. “When we were at your house in Rhode Island and I found you in your kitchen cooking breakfast with Stell, Ethan and Miles. I stood in the doorway and watched you with them. How carefree you were, how comfortable they were, all the laughter and smiles and that moment, that picture, felt so right. It felt so right because it’s a picture that I’ve had in my head for so long of my future. Watching the woman I love dance around the kitchen making breakfast with our kids. From then on, you have been the woman in that picture, the woman in my future. I admitted to myself that day that I was in love with you.” He shows a painful smile, knowing it’s only to himself. “Unfortunately, I didn’t admit that to you that day.”
Pushing himself forward, he steps into the room, watching Taylor’s back as he does. “Why didn’t you wake me up to go catch the ferry?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.” Her voice is scratchy and unsteady and he wonders if she’s been crying.
He hesitates briefly, watching her more, her back still to him. He can see the tension there. “Did you hear me last night?”
A couple seconds pass before she answers with two small dips of her head, the action sending a strange mixture of happiness and fear through his heart. She had listened to him, had heard his naked words, finally revealing his full self to her. But the fear of the unknown, of how they felt to her, seizing his body and striking a chord of worry.
Moving to the counter nearest her, he places his left hip against it, leaning and crossing his arms across his chest. He starts to speak, to ask her how she felt, but when he sees her open her mouth and then bite at her bottom lip, he doesn’t.
He recognizes what she’s doing, fighting a battle in her head, and so he waits, simply watching her until he hears her clear her throat and then reach above the pans on the stove to turn the burners off.
She turns to him then, placing those blue eyes that first caught his attention on the plane to Paris back on him. He realizes this is the first time she’s truly looked at him since he arrived here.
“I have never in my life felt with anyone the connection I instantly felt with you. Even on that airplane to Paris . . . everything just felt easy and effortless. But then Paris was over and you were gone and I just chalked it up to you being the kind of guy everyone gravitates to.” Glancing to her right, she bites again at her bottom lip and lowers her eyes without lowering her head. He can tell she’s thinking of her next words and he lets her do so. “Then we met again and we connected again and, just like before, it felt so different to me. It’s difficult to even explain but it felt like we complimented each other, like we were two pieces that fit together so perfectly. But we were both attached to other people so I kept telling myself that we were only supposed to fit together as friends. I had many guy friends and you were just going to be another one.” She looks down at the floor then, a delicate smile forming as she notices Dodger standing directly beside of her and she pats at his head.
Her voice is barely audible when she lifts her head back up and speaks again. “But you weren’t just another one and somewhere along the line, I realized that. So when Tom came back wanting another chance, I knew I couldn’t do it. And I didn’t. I decided to choose you.”
Removing her gaze again, he watches the heavy rise and fall of her chest and the look of discomfort that paints upon her expression. It’s a few agonizing minutes before she seems to find her voice again. “I kept thinking you would choose me. Even before the game and before you came to my hotel, I thought that you would. I was hoping that you would. And then at the hotel, you said you’d choose me over Haley.” She smiles softly but then it falls off. “I was so happy, so sure this was it. This is what I had been waiting for and hoping for and trying to talk to you about. And we had this amazing, perfect night. I thought we had connected on this intense level that was so different than any man I’ve been with before. But then I woke up alone.” She tilts her head to the side, her pain evident in her glassy eyes. It stabs at his heart. “And I thought . . . Taylor you’re so stupid. He didn’t show up because he was choosing you, he showed up because he didn’t want Julian choosing you. That he wants to sleep with you but not love you.”
“That’s not what I wanted,” he says slowly, firmly.
“But it’s what I thought. It’s what I could only think when my heart felt like it had been ripped apart and thrown away.” She takes a sharp breath before she turns back to look at him and he sees the delicate emotions cascading through her vibrant eyes. “You had promised me you would stay and talk to me and I was finally going to be able to tell you what I feel for you and that I had chosen you instead of Tom but you didn’t give me the chance. And part of me gets it . . . . part of me can look at it from your perspective and see that I maybe hadn’t tried hard enough to tell you and that you thought I was still in love with Tom. And that’s the part of me that’s saying that I should forgive you and that I should just love you like I already do.”
“Taylor,” he says and she raises her finger up, clamping her eyes shut.
“Let me finish. Please.” She opens her view to him, a tear slipping down her cheek and falling onto her shirt as she does. “The other part of me is so shattered. Is so scared. Because you still hold so much of my heart and now I’m terrified of you crushing it.”
With a headshake, he pleads. “I won’t crush it. Believe me.” His gaze bores into her, begging. “Do you remember what you said to me in Paris?”
“I said a lot to you in Paris,” she responds quickly, lowering her head.
“You said that love isn’t easy but if it’s right, it will happen. And there wasn’t anything easy about this but we still fell in love, it still happened. Because it’s right.” When he sees her shake her head, her mouth falling open, he continues. “Taylor, love isn’t delivered in some perfect gift wrapping. It’s fucking messy. It hurts. But when it’s right, it’s right. And we are right. Why did you run from Tom? Why? Why did I push Jenny away? Because what we had with them wasn’t right. As right as we thought it all was, it wasn’t. We are right. We were meant to cross paths on that plane and to spend the night roaming the streets of Paris. And we were meant to meet again in Boston. We were meant to feel what we both feel.” He leans his chest down, pulling her eyes to his. “The love we both feel.”
Standing back up fully, he runs a frustrated hand through his hair and then stifles his gaze back on hers. “I am the other river you were meant to go to. And you are the something different that was out there waiting for me. We sat together in Paris and talked about childhood hopes and wishes. Growing old with someone, having big family birthday parties and picnics, going on road trips and having houses with white picket fences and swings hanging from trees. Our hopes and wishes were so similar because we are supposed to share them together.”
He takes a step forward, expecting her to immediately take a step back, but she doesn’t.
“If you want me to beg you, I will. I will get on my knees and fucking beg you, Taylor. Because I am so sorry for being so blind and for leaving you. Because I love you. I. Love. You,” he emphasizes. “I choose you. Only you. You have to believe me.”
Her eyes bore into his, searching and reading, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she does. “Believe me,” he whispers again. When she doesn’t respond, he rests his head against his back, running his hand through his hair. He considers his words, a million I’m sorry’s and please forgive me’s swimming about, and then pulls his head back into position, his eyes back on her. “I know I failed you, Taylor. I failed us. I know that I was weak and let my head overpower my heart. My head is sometimes messy but my heart . . .” He reaches down, gingerly slipping his fingers into hers and brings her hand up to place on his heart. “My heart is not. And it’s yours. It’s been yours.”
He watches as her expression shifts, edging on confliction. “What if your head gets messy again,” she asks, her voice teetering precariously.
Taking a deep breath, he shakes his head and lays his gaze firmly onto hers. “When it comes to you, it won’t. My head is clear now. Clear about how I feel about you, how I want you. And you want me too. Before, I thought I was giving you what you wanted but I know now that I was wrong. I know that I should have fought for you the moment I realized I was in love with you. I was wrong not to. But I’m here . . . . and I’m fighting. And I just need you to fight too. Hit me if you want to hit me. Yell at me. Tell me what a fucking idiot I was to leave you. Get it all out so I can show you how much I love you . . . and that I’ll never leave again. I’ll fight for you. From now on. Always.”
“You broke my heart,” she whispers, her simple words not simple at all. Not to his heart.
“I won’t ever again.”
“You left me,” she adds, taking a deep breath before she does.
He shakes his head, pressing his palm on top of the hand he’s still holding over his heart. “Never again.”
Dipping her head once, she stares at him, exploring his eyes, his face. He knows she is still reading him. Seeing if she can recognize the truth written in him. He pleads with her through his eyes, begging as he’s done before.
Taylor’s mouth falls open slighting and he can tell by her breathing that she’s about to say something but her words are halted by the sound of a loud rasp at the door. Taylor jumps slightly, pulling her gaze away and toward the noise in question.
Rolling his head around, he groans. “I’m really starting to hate knocking.”
His words bring a timid smile and he can feel a slight perk in his heart. “I have to get that,” she says softly as she turns and starts walking back toward the living room. Dodger falls in step quickly behind her and he takes a few steps himself until he reaches the couch and watches her open the front door.
Brandon’s eyes find his the moment the door swings open, his face hardening on the spot. “What are you doing here,” the stony bodyguard asks with no hint of amusement.
Chris looks from Brandon to Taylor, keeping his eyes on her. “Begging. Pleading. Groveling. Anything she wants.”
From the corner of his eye, he sees Brandon’s face soften the slightest of bits and then he turns to look toward Taylor. “Do you want me to make him leave?”
Slowly, painfully slowly once more, Taylor shifts her body to look fully at Chris across the room. Her eyes are still glassy, still tinged with unshed tears. The lone streak from the tear that fell moments before still etched in a red line down her cheek. She’s broken. He knows. And he’s the one who broke her. But he’s also the one that is here to do nothing but fix that break that he caused.
He pleads with her . . . with his eyes and his expression again . . . not to have Brandon kick him out. Silently continuing his plea for his chance to right his heartbreaking wrong.
She takes a deep breath, piercing her lips to let it fall back out and then shakes her head. “No. Its ok, Brandon. But thank you for checking in.”
Brandon watches Chris for a few seconds, finally dipping his chin and stepping back before advising Taylor to call him if she needs anything.
“Or if you decide to throw me out,” Chris adds once he is gone.
She nods. “Or if I decide to throw you out.”
He shakes his head. “You aren’t going to do that.”
“Why aren’t I,” she quips, titling her head.
Taking a step, he holds his hands out at waist level. “Because you know that what I’ve been saying is right. And because you know in your heart that I am incredibly sorry for hurting you and that I will do everything in my power to never hurt you again. And . . .”
He takes another step forward, stopping just in front of her.
“And . . .,” she prompts, eyes on his.
Shuffling forward, he tentatively moves his hand up, placing it on her waist and sliding it until he reaches the small of her back. “And because you love me too,” he whispers and pushes his hand onto her skin, her body moving closer to his. “Give me a chance, Taylor. Give me a chance to prove everything I’ve said to you. I won’t let you down. I promise.”
When he rests his forehead to hers, she finally allows the faintest of smiles to pierce her lips. “You were right earlier . . . . you are an idiot,” she says, moving her body even closer to his, “and I’m still angry and hurt at what you did yesterday morning. And my heart is still a little tentative and there is a pestering voice warning me not to believe you.” She lifts her head but doesn’t remove it from his, this position allowing her to look directly into his eyes. “But maybe I’m an idiot too because I do believe you . . . and I do love you. Even when I shouldn’t, I do.”
Her words tenderly anchor directly to his heart, lifting away the weight that has been heavy there. The confusion and oppression that has been so prevalent within his body and mind now vanquished and forgotten.
“You’ll never have another reason to question whether you should love me or not,” he whispers, his relief evident in his voice, “never.”
He finds her cheek then, cupping it as his lips reach for hers. She accepts them readily, brushing gentle kisses upon him before he deepens it.
“This is how the morning should have started yesterday,” she laughs when she breaks to catch her breath.
He nods, smiling. “It’s how it will start from now on.”
He joins her soon after to finish cooking breakfast, Chris taking on the job of frying bacon while Taylor flipped pancakes. Occasionally, he’d tap his hip to hers, lean down to kiss her cheek or swing her around to plant his lips on hers, finally having the opportunity to kiss her anytime and taking full advantage of all of those opportunities.
He holds her hand when they walk along the beach, the sun now shining warmly above them and causing the waves to glitter as they smash onto the shore. Dodger goes with them and she tells him about her taking his dog with her on walks along the beach in Watch Hill, going on to tell him about more of their adventures while he was in South Africa.
He asks her at some point about when she was in Nashville and left their facetime chat when someone came in. He had assumed back then that it was Tom and told her this, prompting her to throw her head back cackling as she revealed it was just Brandon coming in with an armload of groceries. She had got off the call to help him. He shakes his head, saying he should have known, Brandon seeming to have an uncanny ability to interrupt them at the most inopportune times.
That evening, after a call to his mom, he finds her sitting on the porch swing. Her hair is pulled into a messy ponytail, one leg resting under the other, the Captain America shirt he flung at her in Rhode Island the only thing covering her body.
Meredith and Olivia lounge on the swing to her left with Dodger sleeping peacefully at her foot. In her lap is the journal he skimmed through in Los Angeles, the same one that he saw on the dresser in Boston. She holds a pen up, biting on the top as she stares down at the open page of the journal.
He steps onto the porch, watching as she lifts her head, a smile emerging when she sees him.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he says as he moves to her, sitting on the side opposite her cats.
Her eyes moves back to the journal on her lap. “I thought about a lot of stuff as I was trying to go to sleep last night. What all you had said, what you were feeling and what I was feeling. And I also thought about you saying that you read my Q&A journal and I realized that when you did, you probably thought everything I had wrote in it was about Tom.”
He nods, clearing his throat. “I did consider that since I know he gave it to you.”
“He did,” she agrees, “and there are some things in here about him. But the majority of it is about you.” Titling her head, she smiles at him. “You see, after he gave it to me, I started carrying it with me so that I would remember to answer the questions every day. Sometimes though, I found myself writing quotes and feelings or potential lyrics or even random words as they came to me. So it kinda became more to me than just a question a day journal. And I noticed that after I met you, literally after first meeting you in Paris, pretty much everything I wrote or answered was related to you.”
His memory perks up; the entry he had read that confused him the most coming to mind. His own line from Before You Go scribbled in her handwriting on the date he had left Watch Hill.
If you’re committed to someone, you don’t allow yourself to find perfection in anyone else.
“So when you wrote the line from my movie in there.” He points to the book still in her lap. “You wrote it about me?”
She nods, her smile growing. “Yes. I wrote it about you. Because I had been telling myself over and over again that I was committed to Tom, that he was the one that I wanted, but I constantly found myself finding perfection in you. After you left Watch Hill that day, I watched Before You Go and you said that line in it and it felt this awakening in my heart. I was in love with you though it took Tom showing up at my door for me to finally admit that to myself.” She laughs, her cheeks rounding up. “It’s kinda funny now to think that your character in a movie is the one who said a line that started my realization.”
He laughs with her for a few fleeting moments before he sees her flipping the pages forward in the book, stopping on one specific page. On it, he can see where she has marked through all of the dates for years to come, leaving only the one from 2017. Around it, in small handwriting, are lines and lines of words.
She stares down at the page for a moment and then raises her head back up to meet his eyes. “I fell asleep on the plane after I left Paris. And I had a dream but when I woke up, I couldn’t really remember any of it. I could only remember this strange feeling in my heart and these words and lines that kept replaying in my head. So I grabbed this book and I wrote them down, not having any clue at that time why I was even doing it. I had forgotten about it until this morning. It had taken me forever to fall asleep after listening to you last night. But when I did, I had a dream. A familiar dream. And I woke up this morning realizing that the dream I had was the same one I had on the plane home from Paris. But this time, I remembered it.” Her brilliant blues sparkle when her smile lights up. “It was about you. And apparently, even then, even when I spent an amazing night with you in Paris, telling you over and over how Tom was my one, I knew he wasn’t.”
She lifts the book from her lap, handing it over to him and his gaze falls upon the words she had written just after their night in Paris.
You grow up watching fairytales. Whimsical stories that inevitably ingrain an image in our mind of “the one.” That perfect love. That perfect partner. The one who sets your heart afire, who makes you whole. It’s always there, always peeking out of the back of your mind, even when you think it’s not. Even when you tell yourself that fairytales aren’t real. That childhood expectation is always there. Always. Then, also inevitably and sometimes subconsciously, you set out trying to find that one. You kiss a few frogs along the way. You kiss a few you erroneously (and sometimes stupidly) think are the one. And then, likely when you least expect it, they waltz into your life. The “one” has arrived. And you’re happy and sad (c’mon, you know there are always obstacles before the happy ending) but you know in your heart that they are the one. What happens though when life gives you another gift. A curve ball. An event that takes everything you know about fairytales and how love is “supposed” to go and flips it upside down. An obstacle that is put into your path that maybe isn’t really an obstacle. What happens, when life gives you another “one.”
He can feel the tears stinging his eyes as he finishes reading.
“You were my other gift. My curve ball. The person who flipped my world upside down. It just took me a little while to realize you weren’t another one . . . . you are my only one.”
His lips find hers again. And again. Both lost in the magic that has seemingly always existed between them, even when they were both silently fighting to ignore it.
And when he remembers the object that has been resting in his pocket since the day before, he breaks from Taylor’s lips and reaches for it.
He pulls it up, twining the necklace she had discarded in her hotel room on the tips of his fingers before clutching it back in his hand and moving it to her.
“I think this is yours,” he says as he reaches behind her neck and clasps it there.
She stares down at the small trinket that he had bought for her at the carnival the night he kissed her atop the ferris wheel. The one with the tiny charm of the Eiffel Tower dangling from it. The one so symbolic of the first steps in their journey to love.
“You know, Audrey Hepburn did say that Paris is always a good idea.” She lifts her head, vibrant eyes upon him. “But our time in Paris . . . . I’d say that was a great idea.”
Leaning forward, he kisses her and then reaches for the Eiffel Tower charm on her chest, staring at it for a moment.
“Paris changed it all,” he smiles and watches as she does the same.
Taylor lays her head onto his shoulder then and suddenly, his mother’s voice flows through his mind, weaving and singing a familiar line. Sometimes life doesn’t give you what you want, it gives you what you need. He nods his head slightly, knowingly. Just when he thought he knew what he wanted, life gave him a fateful meeting and date with destiny in the city of light. The night Paris started to change his wants and needs . . . started to change his life.
He tilts his gaze down, etching this moment into his memory. The woman he loves sitting silently with him on the porch, their love no longer tested by others, by miscommunications or unspoken words.
Everything he needs now wrapped in his arms.
He nestles his cheek against the top of her head and smiles.
She eyes the waves, watching as they rise and shift before crashing onto the shore and then pulling back just to do it all over again. It’s a scene she relates to a dance between forbidden lovers. The wave pushing to and pulling back from the sand once and then over and over. Connecting only to be pulled away repeatedly, seemingly fighting against their destiny. Their meetings only brief, the wave taking back pieces of the sand when it is inevitably pulled away again. But yet, even when facing the hopeless, their undeniable connection fates them to continue their dance for all of eternity.
She takes a deep breath just as the water gets pulled back to the dark depths of the ocean, leaving the sand altered once again. It’s how she feels. Altered. Affected. Parts of her being taken away with each meeting.
As if on instinct, she moves her hand to her chest, her fingers finding the small, silver ornament that lies there and pulling it out as she shifts her gaze downward to rest upon it. She had found the necklace lying on her kitchen counter just after he had left, her heart reacting the moment she realized what it was, what it symbolized, and it’s connection not only to their shared memory of Paris but also to the picture she had painted for him and then tucked away in her bedroom before his arrival in Watch Hill. The same painting she had fought an internal battle within herself about during his entire stay, telling herself she should give it to him only to talk herself right back out of it. And when she had fastened the necklace around her neck, she had wished that she had placed it in his hand before he had gone away.
But she hadn’t. And now it still lies in the corner of her room, Chris completely unaware of its existence.
Chris, she thinks, allowing her eyes to fall shut and her heart to react to his name inside of her. Chris, the man who’s been on her mind without fail since his departure, and if she’s brave enough to admit it, long before that. Chris, the man who isn’t hers to think about, isn’t hers to miss, whose heart belongs to another. Chris, the man she shouldn’t be thinking of at this moment while another man is just inside her doors, no doubt preparing to try to win her back.
And even as she tries, as she’s done before, to push his name out of her mind and place Tom’s there, she fails.
She drops the necklace back against her skin when she feels a familiar tightness start to settle into her chest. The same tightness that has weighed upon her, pressed into her, since Tom arrived at her doorstep an hour ago. It was not at all what she was expecting to feel, what she had told herself that she needed to feel. Not at all a feeling that should be felt when the man you believe is the love of your life finally returns to that life after being absent from it for so long, after you’ve all but groveled for him to give you one more chance.
She thought she had prepared herself, telling herself repeatedly that the confliction taking place in her head and heart would vanish the moment her eyes met his and he smiled that debonair smile that has always sent her heart aflutter. That she was only barraged with thoughts of Chris because she hadn’t seen Tom in so long and that she wasn’t entirely sure of his intentions. She has just been lonely, has been scared of losing Tom completely and her friendly connection with Chris was only teetering into forbidden dance territory because of that.
She had told herself over and over that when she opened that door, the excitement and love she should feel would be there. That she would jump into his arms and accept his kisses like she had wanted before. That with his love returned, she could place Chris in her life where she’s always said he has been, as her friend, and Tom would take his rightful place as her one.
But what she expected to happen, what she told herself would happen, did not happen at all.
Instead of feeling exhilaration and happiness when she opened the door to Tom’s smiling face, her heart had fallen, replaced by the tightness and constriction that still rests there now. He hadn’t seemed to notice when he stepped to her, sliding his hand onto her waist and pulling her against him, whispering a “hello love.”
And in that moment, in what should have been the most beautiful moment of her life, one giant epiphany washed over her.
She was in love with Chris.
She is in love with Chris.
She felt like a wave had crashed into her, pulling her under and drowning her. Her breath, along with her words, trapped in her throat. Her entire body weakened by a realization that she hadn’t allowed herself to see coming and one that she didn’t even know how to process with another man now by her side.
Another man.
Tom, his arms around her and then his hand seeking hers as he led her into the house all the while Chris was all she could think of. All the while, her heart screaming at her for being so blind of what was in front of her all along. And now, her blindness has placed her in a predicament that she has no idea how to process with a man that she now has no idea what to do with.
She doesn’t remember most of what was said after his arrival. Small talk. She could feel his eyes narrow on her at times as she struggled to answer even the simplest of questions. How have you been? Have you been writing? How is your family? Her answers were short. Basic. Her emotions so muted that they had to be sending up red flag after red flag to the man sitting with her.
Occasionally, she would seek out and find her voice for a brief moment. Forcing what she knows had shown as a fake smile as she would ask him similar questions. Questions typically reserved for acquaintances she hadn’t seen in years or business associates she rarely speaks to. Not questions that should be asked of the man you have maintained your vocal love for as he sits near you for the first time in a very long time.
I’ve missed you, he would say with a squeeze of her hand, just before his phone would ring and he would apologize and excuse himself to speak to Luke. And when her eyes hadn’t fully met his and she couldn’t find the strength to grasp his hand back, she knew that she was setting off more alarms in his mind.
So she let him walk into her kitchen as she turned and walked onto the terrace, her gaze catching briefly on the lounge chairs still positioned beside of each other from her nights there with Chris. She walked blindly from there, basically moving on instinct, until she neared the edge of the property, her eyes locking instantly on the ocean crashing below.
Her eyes still locked there now. Watching the dance taking place, her dance with Chris now so clearly pictured along with it. The craving connection between the wave and the sand interlaced with the same craving connection she has for Chris.
She’s in love with him. In love with the man she told herself not to fall in love with after their giving in to temptation in Boston. The one she couldn’t keep out of her thoughts, even after calling Tom and finally hearing his voice and getting the one thing she had been wishing for. Even with Tom’s commitment to see her and finally give her a chance to sort things out, she sought Chris. She accepted his hand in hers, his arm around her shoulders, his lips on hers on that ferris wheel after his granting of her childhood wish. She accepted it all, wanted it all, and couldn’t stop herself from falling at all.
Without much of a thought of the man now inside. And that, she knows, tells her all that she truly needs to know.
But what she doesn’t know, what she has not more than an inkling of, is how Chris feels. Other than his admission that he felt something, she is only aware of his friendly inclination towards her. That he himself said that their many dances with temptation were merely due to loneliness. And that he had consistently stated his love for Jenny. Jenny. And she had watched him drive away, most likely back to Jenny, with her heart breaking but with a refusal to acknowledge any of it.
Not until Tom stood at that door. And now, regardless of whether Chris feels anything for her or not, she can’t deny what she feels for him. And she knows that she can’t keep that from the man who awaits her. The man who flew across an ocean to see her. The same ocean she is lost in now.
A wave crashes into the shore once more and she watches the water move along the sand before being pulled back again. This time, her gaze remains on the sand, grazing over the tiny indentations left as the wave is removed. Forever altered. Perhaps scarred. But still readily accepting of the next meeting.
And as that next meeting begins, she hears Tom clear his throat behind her, his face solemn as she turns. “I believe that we need to talk,” he says, his voice unsteady but still so beautifully eloquent.
Her gaze grazes over him, over the look of concerned hope that conflicts across his face. She knows it’s time to face the music, to tell this man that she’s loved so intently what she just realized herself even though she knows she is likely going to break his heart in the process.
With a pull of her eyes and a nod back toward the house, she forces out a simple broken question. “Do you want to go back inside?”
Tom tosses a quick glance over his shoulder before shaking his head. “It’s a beautiful day, why don’t we sit on the terrace.”
It’s not exactly what she would prefer, though she’s honestly not sure what she’d prefer but she tips her chin and takes a step forward, hesitating briefly as he falls in beside of her and slips his hand into hers. His attempt to calm her she’d assume, to grasp at the connection that they both know she should be feeling and both know that she is not.
He’s always been like this with her. Intuitive of what’s going on within her head and her heart. Always attempting to calm the storm when he knows it’s brewing inside her. It’s one of the things she loved about him, but now, she just wishes he wasn’t so intuitive, so comforting of her feelings.
Because it’s just going to make what she is about to do heavier on her heart.
Avoiding the lounge chairs, she guides them toward the table nearest the door and takes a seat. Tom sits directly beside of her and she immediately scoots her bottom over slightly, providing more space between them. He notices, she knows, but says nothing.
For a few moments, neither of them speaks, the silence enveloping around them deafening to her, clawing at her mind. Beside her, Tom keeps his view on her face, increasing her nerves as she pulls her own view to anything but him.
After moments of what feels like eternity, he breaks their silence with words that she expects but that still tear at her. “You broke my heart when you walked away, Taylor,” he says, his voice carrying in the breeze.
She nods her heavy head. “I know. And I’m sorry. I thought I was doing what was best for you.”
“What was best for me was you,” he replies softly, quickly, and she lowers her head, staring down at her hands now intertwined on her lap. “What is best for me is you. It always has been.”
“Tom . . .,” she starts but he interrupts, placing his finger up to hush her.
“You’ve already said so much in your letters and messages, Taylor. And in my wounding from your leaving, I couldn’t allow myself to appropriately respond to those. So please allow me to say to you now what I need to say and should have said before.”
For the first time since they started talking, she allows her eyes to reach his and she dips her chin ever so slightly, giving him the moment. “Ok.”
He doesn’t hesitate, his voice returning quickly. “I understand why you left. It took me quite a bit of time to understand it and accept that you truly thought you were aiding me and giving me what I needed.” He reaches across the space between them and places his hand on her leg. “It took me even longer to admit that even with the pain that your leaving caused, I still loved you and still wanted more than anything for you to be part of my life.”
She smiles weakly, a smile not even genuine to her, his words placing a knife in her heart and slowly turning it. “Tom,” she whispers but is again stopped by his voice.
“Darling, I can tell something is wrong. I felt it the moment that I arrived but I believe it’s likely because you have been unsure of what this meeting was going to be. I had not told you what I wanted to see you about. I had not allowed myself to tell you how I felt even though you had been telling me how you felt. I know something is wrong but I also know that whatever it is, we can make it right.”
With a tilt of her head, her eyes meet his and she bites softly at her bottom lip. “Tom, we can’t,” she whispers as she feels the sting of tears start to burn around her eyes, filling them before she even has a chance to stop it.
He shakes his head, a smile pinning his lips. “We can. I’m here now to tell you that I love you. I’m here now to tell you that I want to be with you. And I know that you want the same because you’ve said so many times . . . . many times that I apologize profusely for ignoring.”
Pulling her gaze downward, she rubs at her hands and nods her head. “I did say that. I believed that.” She moves again, now delivering a soft shake to her head. “Because it was true. But . . ..”
Tom scoots his body, positioning himself beside of her, facing her. Reaching in, he takes her hands. “But nothing. You are scared. I understand. I left you in silence for too long. That is my error.”
“It’s not that,” she says unsteadily, shaking her head once more as she continues to keep her gaze from him. Taking a deep breath, she tips her head back. “It’s not the same anymore.”
“Do you love me?” He squeezes his hands around hers tightly.
His question turns the knife in her heart one full turn and traps her breath in her chest. It feels as if she is suffocating, as if his question is choking her, breaking her.
She rises up quickly, pulling her hand from his and moving it to her temple to rub as she steps away.
Tom though rises right behind her, his hand grasping her arm and turning her around, pulling her to him and enveloping his embrace around her, locking her firmly in his grasp.
“Do you love me, Taylor,” he whispers, his breath warm on her ear, “I know that you do.”
Tears spill from her eyes without warning, trailing wet paths down her cheeks and onto her dress. “I do love you, Tom,” she says, “but it’s too late.”
Without opening her eyes, she feels him shaking his head and he tightens his arms around her waist even more. “Love, it’s never too late so don’t say that. In my pain, I have inadvertently directed pain onto you and I am so sorry. But it will not happen again.” He rests his forehead against hers but she keeps her eyes closed. “I am here and I am telling you that I love you. Do you hear me,” he says once more, his voice more forceful, “I love you.”
It’s then that she lifts her eyes open, gazing upon him with tear blurred vision as she struggles to say what she knows she has no choice but to say. “I can’t do this, Tom. I can’t.”
“Why,” he questions, bucking his arms into her back and her into his chest as he does.
She chokes on the words that stick in her throat, fighting against them to force their revelation. “Because . . . I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“For what to happen,” he questions.
She’s still firmly within his grasp, her eyes still on his. She pleads with him through them. “For me to fall in love with someone else.”
His arms drop from her instantly and he takes a step back, his wounded expression clawing at her. “You didn’t,” he declares, his voice solid yet hinting of the pain she knows he is feeling.
“I did.” She nods. “I never planned to. I never expected it to happen but it did. And it took you coming here for me to even admit it.”
Tom scoffs, stepping back again and placing his hands on his hips. He pulls his head away, looking toward her house and she watches as his jaw clenches. “So my coming here and declaring my love for you had made you realize that you love someone else.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, unable to find any additional words.
He shakes his head, his hands still firmly on his hips. “You are not sorry, you are wrong and you are confused.” She can see the desperation in his eyes when he turns back to face her. “We were magic, Taylor. You know that. You’ve said that. Over and over again you’ve said it.”
“We were magic,” she agrees, “we were amazing and beautiful and wonderful and I loved every second that I was with you. But we weren’t meant to be permanent. I know that now. We were destined for this serendipitous, but brief, moment in time to cherish and adore but not to keep, not to maintain. We aren’t forever. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that but I do now.”
He shakes his head again. “I won’t accept that. You can’t accept that. You’ve begged me for another chance, to listen to my heart as you gave me yours. And I did. I have. It’s why I’m here now. And you are simply scared to lose us again. That’s all this is, Taylor. That’s all. We are meant for more glorious times, we weren’t temporary. You know that and now you are just being scared.”
Tears pour steadily down her face and she sucks in a sharp breath. “That’s not what this is, Tom. I’m not scared. I’m telling you the truth, as difficult as that is. And honestly, I wish that it weren’t the truth. I wish I wasn’t in love with someone else and that I could accept you again. I wish that so much because it would be so much easier then.”
“Then do it,” he announces loudly, flailing his arms skyward, “accept me. You haven’t forgotten what we shared. How deeply we loved. How wonderful we were. There is no way you don’t remember that, Taylor.”
“I do,” she nods, “but I can’t let you back into my life without you being in my heart. There’s someone else there now.”
“Who,” he asks firmly, hands back on his hips as his gaze bores back into her like a laser. It unsettles her, prompting her to take a step back.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispers after a few seconds.
“It does to me,” he all but shouts back.
With vehemence, she shifts her head from side to side. “It doesn’t matter, Tom. It doesn’t even matter to him because he is in love with someone else, not with me. So there’s no use for you to be angry at him. If you want to be angry at someone, then be angry at me.”
“You’re pushing me away, again, this time because you love someone who doesn’t love you,” he says, his voice still unnervingly firm, “I’m here and I do love you . . . . . and you won’t accept that?”
She recognizes his grasp, his attempt to plead with her to be reasonable, to realize that she’s tossing away his love for one that is uncertain. But still . . . “I can’t lie to you. It’s not fair for me to take you back when I’m not in love with you. It’s not fair to you. Can’t you see that?”
He shakes his head, his eyes slowly starting to glaze over, pinning her heart. “No what’s not fair is you allowing me hope. Allowing me to come here thinking you wanted to be with me. You said you did. You said those words and said you loved me. Many times, Taylor. Are you going to tell me now it was all a lie because I know it wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t a lie. I felt all of that then,” she cries, her face distorted with her overflow of emotions.
His jaw clenches tightly, locking hard on his expression. “But you don’t now.”
Slowly, she shakes her head, her eyes pleading for some sort of understanding from him. “No.”
Again, he clenches his jaw, this time to the point that it seems to alter his entire stance. “And you’re going to throw away a good thing for a man who doesn’t give a damn about you.”
“What do you want me to do,” she asks, “lie? Tell you that I’m in love with you when I’m not. Be with you when I want to be with someone else.”
“You said he doesn’t want you . . .,” he scoffs.
She tosses her hands into the air. “He doesn’t. But I don’t want you anymore either. And I’m so sorry for that but it’s the truth, Tom. I can’t fake this. I can’t hurt you even more than I know I already have.”
He laughs ironically. “Repeatedly.”
“Repeatedly,” she nods, “and that’s why it has to stop. Because I have to hurt you now so that I can’t hurt you again.”
Tom turns away from her, running his hands through his hair and then lowering his head to the ground. “You’re going to regret this, Taylor. You are throwing away something amazing for nothing.”
“Maybe,” she whispers, “but I can’t give you something that I don’t have.”
Turning his head upward, he eyes her. “Do you realize how foolish you are? Destroying everything that we had for a man who loves someone else? Do you not realize how ignorant that is?”
“Yes, I do. I feel foolish and ignorant and maybe hopeless too. But you deserve someone who loves you. You would never be able to love me knowing what I’ve said to you today. Knowing that I love someone else.”
“I would certainly try,” he says, twisting into her heart once more, “because I can admit that I was foolish myself to let you walk away before and I don’t want to lose you again.”
Her lids flutter down, pushing more tears with them. “But I’m already gone. That’s what I’m saying to you. That’s why I’m pleading with you to accept what I’m saying and go. Save yourself some heartache because that is what I’m going to bring you.”
“You said that before,” he voices and she slowly opens her eyes and places her gaze on him.
“It was different before. I was in love with you and trying to save you from others. Now I’m trying to save you from me.”
“You’re making a huge mistake,” he says again, his expression broken but his words brimming with anger.
She lifts her shoulders and sighs. “I can’t lie to you. I won’t.”
He runs his hand through his hair again, moving his body and then pulling one hand down to place on his hip. He locks his view on her one last time and slowly, methodically, shakes his head. “I would say that I wish you the best . . . but right now I don’t. At this moment, all I want is for you to feel as heartbroken as I feel. I want you to know what it feels like to be shattered by someone you love.”
“I’m sorry,” she musters, with a nod and more tears.
“You are,” he agrees, “and this man that you love like a fool, he’s going to make you feel that even more. Because I’m fairly certain he’s going to shatter you like you’ve done me. And . . .” He lowers his gaze momentarily before putting it back on her. “I won’t feel sorry for you then.”
With that, she watches as he turns on his heels and heads into the door, her body jumping as he slams the door behind him.
And she stares at the door for seconds. Minutes. Knowing that she effectively slammed the door on them. Her heart though, already reaching for another.
She digs her toes deeper into the sand as the memory of that day washes over her like a wave, pounding into her head and her heart. The day that she broke one man when she finally admitted her love of another. A day that would ultimately lead to this day. To the day that Chris made good on Tom’s last wish for her.
A day that she didn’t see coming, not at all. But now, she wonders if she should have. Instead of making the moments she shared with Chris seem more than they actually were, she wonders if she should have simply seen them as what they were. Friendly interactions. Simple moments.
A wave batters the sand again, scarring it when it’s pulled back. And memories of times leading to today wash over her. Her meeting Scott in New York, of her giving him the painting to deliver to Chris. She had been so nervous but so excited, so aware of the possibilities but oblivious to the realities. Hoping her emotions in brush strokes would remind him of their night, of the connection she was certain of, that she was blindingly longing for. And then of her call to him in Los Angeles to tell him about her ending things with Tom, her heart breaking a little when he revealed he was with Jenny, when reality should have smacked her in the face but didn’t. At least not enough. She was drowning her sorrow in a bottle of Pino and a date with When Harry Met Sally when he would text her wanting to see her, her heart preventing her from even considering saying no and she let herself become a little more blind by what could happen rather than what was.
Another wave. Another memory. Leo’s party, his saving her from her emotional meltdown and their drunken revelations after, with her coming dangerously close to telling him how she felt for him even with her thinking he had another waiting on him. But she did kiss him on that dock the next day and she had thought he kissed her too. And he had, but obviously not as she was thinking he did. And she cried to Dodger that night, telling the sweet dog how much she loved his owner with Dodger nuzzling his head more into her with every word, comforting her in her ignorance.
Waves and memories continue. Their beautiful Facetime moments while he was away, her longing for the slightest connection to him across the miles. The way his arms felt around her when he came home from South Africa. The way she couldn’t wait to finally reveal the words to him that she’d long kept hidden, now that she knew that Jenny was no longer the reason to keep them apart.
But then Haley. Julian. And their fight and night after. Everything now ridiculously obvious to her, or at least so she believes. She had seen everything from only one side and had contrived emotions and feelings for him that he wasn’t feeling.
A wave thunders onto the beach, snapping her gaze to it as she watches its meeting with the sand and the way it rips itself back away.
And then . . . memories of this morning crash into her, lashing her like the waves of a storm and leaving her as devastated as the sand is after.
She closes her eyes.
She can feel the intense aura of soreness and stiffness that has settled into her body, causing her to wince with pain. But that pain and discomfort quickly vanishes as realization of the reason why she feels this way sets in and her wince is instantly replaced by a giddy grin.
She opens one eye, her view skewered by a few strands of hair that cover it and waits for her vision to adjust to the sunlight shining through the window before she pushes her hair away. She expects to find Chris lying beside of her, his naked body also sore and stiff from their nighttime rendezvous. But instead, she is greeted by the perfect white of the hotel sheets and a couple of pillows that have been haphazardly tossed from their original positions during their intensive lovemaking.
She moans a little as she pushes her weary body up and allows the sheet that’s been covering her to fall to her bare waist. Her moan then intensifies as she lifts her arms into the air, stretching them, the tightness seeming to lengthen out as she does.
“Chris,” she calls when her limbs fall back down and her eyes shift around the room. She gets no response.
With a turn of her head, her gaze moves to the bathroom, the door still open from their trek out of it last night. What happened in that bathroom and after warms her cheeks, telling her that her face has tinged pink without having to look at it. A beautiful, glorious pink she has no doubt. One that she’s more than willing to have appear over and over again with memories of her time with Chris bringing it forth.
“Chris,” she calls again, this time glancing at the clock and noting the time. When she continues to get no response, she lets her gaze roam to the floor, scanning it for remnants of his clothing. All she finds though is her own shirt, the one that Julian had given her and Chris worked to discard of. Effortlessly worked.
With his clothing missing, there is part of her mind that echoes a hint of worry, the slightest of concern, but she quickly pushes it away, replacing it instead with a more reasonable explanation. Given the time, she tells herself that he has gone to get coffee. Undoubtedly returning soon to wrap her in his arms and cover her with his kisses before she finally gets the chance to tell him what she’s been holding inside for so long. That she isn’t and hasn’t been with Tom. That she’s in love with him. That she’s been in love with him.
And after last night, she believes with all of her being that he’s in love with her too.
She can almost hear her muscles groaning as she tosses her legs to the side and pads slowly toward the bathroom. Her feet touch the cold of the tile floor as her eyes touch the bottle of coconut mango shave cream laying on its side on the counter with the razor she used to shave him directly beside it.
Her smile deepens and she can feel her body react to the memory of his fingers inside her as she sat on his lap in this room just hours before. Her core tingling, yearning to feel him there again. Knowing that she will.
And then, her smile grows even wider, reaching her ears, when she catches a view of herself in the large mirror spanning the wall and gets her first glimpse of the markings he left upon her. It sends a soft giggle from her belly.
She moves her neck from side to side and then moves her body, keeping her gaze toward the mirror to survey the hickeys and bruises coloring her skin. She counts six discolorations before she lets out another happy laugh and turns the shower on.
Washing quickly, she lets the water work out some of the achiness in her muscles and then she steps out, wraps her hair in a towel and does the same with another around her chest. She notes the utter silence of the penthouse when she moves into the bedroom but calls for him again when she starts into the living area.
“Chris,” she beckons, her eyes scanning the room but finding no trace of him.
What she finds instead, is a trace of something else. Something that immediately sends a gut-wrenching pang through her heart and begins to send the same dose of reality to her mind.
Lying where she knows two pictures were the night before is now one single picture. She steps to it, her heart beating faster as she does, and picks it up.
And in that instant, everything stops. Her breathing. Her heart. Her thoughts. Everything.
Her eyes scan over the two simple words that he has written at the bottom of the picture he snapped of her. Two. Simple. Heartbreaking. Words.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
The words he left for her. That he delivered to her to tell her of her foolishness, of how she made believe things that were not real. The irony not lost on her at all knowing those were the same words she delivered to Tom as she told him she didn’t love him.
I’m sorry. The words that send her to the floor, her body succumbing to them, her emotions devoured by them, her soul seemingly depleted.
The tears come as quickly as the realizations. That nothing is what she believed it to be. That he isn’t out to get coffee and on his way back to her. That he isn’t in love with her the way she made herself believe he was last night.
He’s gone. Gone.
Without a goodbye. Without an explanation or even an “I only wanted to sleep with you and now we should be just friends.” Gone. With two words cowardly written on the bottom of a picture.
I’m fucking sorry.
Leaning back against the counter, she pulls her legs to her chest and places her cheek against her knees. Her body begins to shake. From the cold of the room or the coldness of the moment, she’s unsure. What she’s not unsure of is how abundantly stupid she feels. How obviously blind she has been.
She had misread every clue she thought she had seen. Misinterpreted his jealousy. Misconstrued his kisses and his touches, his declarations of wanting her. When she thought she was giving him her heart, he was merely taking, accepting, her body.
The memories of their moments flood her, overtaking her, with scene after scene flashing with her painfully realizing everything she misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued.
Nothing was what she believed. And now she’s sorry. Every single inch of her is sorry.
The words Tom spoke to her in Rhode Island hit her like a sledgehammer. Foolish and ignorant. So blinded by her need of this man that she had obliviously convinced herself of things that were untrue, had attached meanings to moments that weren’t real meanings at all. They were fairytales. Fiction.
And that she knows it is all on her. She had set herself up to be destroyed, to be shattered, to have her heart broken. She set herself up to make Tom’s wish of her to feel those things come true when she fell in love with a man who loves her only enough to leave her. Who absolutely doesn’t love her enough to choose her. To want her. To need her.
At least as anything more than the friend he had always declared her to be.
She pushes back, tilting her head against the cold of the counter and stretching her legs out in front of her. Fiery hot tears stream endlessly down her face, no doubt leaving a wake of red streaks and blotches down her cheeks to match the discolorations already all over her body. Her bruised body mirroring her bruised heart.
Fitting, she thinks. So very fitting.
And as she shakes her head, an anger settling inside her belly and into her heart, she whispers the same two words he left for her to herself.
I’m sorry.
Sorry for blindingly falling in love with a man who never chose her and never will.
She shifts her head to the side, keeping her eyes on the ocean and for the first time noticing a slightest hint of chill in the air. No doubt a clue to the storm Brandon had warned her was coming during their drive here.
She had noticed his concern throughout the entire journey, the way his eyes would move to the rearview mirror every few minutes, checking on her. And she’s noticed it even more upon their arrival, his gaze dark on her when she escaped to the beach the second they arrived at the cottage, his calling for her every once in a while from the yard, making sure she is ok.
And before that. When he had found her broken and defeated, angry at herself and at Chris. He had asked her what was wrong but she couldn’t find the words to tell him, unsure if adequate words even existed at all. She had only asked him with choked syllables if he would drive her to Block Island. That she needed some time alone. That she wanted to be left alone. And that she needed to be with the ocean so she could think.
He had said yes immediately and went to work helping to pack her belongings while she found enough strength to get dressed. He was standing at the door, it wide open, when she emerged from the bedroom with her journal in hand.
“Do you want that picture,” he had asked, nodding his head toward the counter.
She walked back to it then, scanning her fingers over it for a few seconds before she lifted it up and tossed it in the wastebasket. She had no need of the proof of his words; it now scorched into her memory and heart, burning her soul.
And then she discarded of something else. Her heart gripping with pain as she reached behind her and unclasped the necklace from her neck.
Her eyes resting upon the tiny silver ornament one last time, cursing herself for thinking it was his gift to her to remind her of their night in Paris, to tell her that he held it as close to his heart as he did when it’s likely he had simply stumbled upon the cheap trinket and bought it without a thought. Without a meaning behind it.
With a shake of her head, she laid it down and clutched the journal back in her hand, walking across the room and out of the door without allowing herself another glance, without allowing herself to face the memories now ghosting throughout the space.
And Brandon had did as she requested, whisking her to Watch Hill to collect Meredith and Olivia before bringing her here. Away from the world. Away from the city that belongs to Chris. And to the only place she seems to find contentment anymore, where she seems to find herself.
To the ocean, the waves and the sand. It now talking to her more than it ever has before, more than it likely ever will again.
The sunshine caresses her pores, the wind blowing strands of hair into her face, but she barely notices. Her gaze remains steady on the ocean, on those waves and their forbidden dance with the sand. She can feel an unsettling feeling taking over her and her hand moves instinctively to her chest, her fingers seeking out the pendant, the charm that has provided her comfort and a connection to Chris since the day he left it for her. But it’s no longer there. Much like her connection and her comfort.
Much like her heart.
Behind her, she hears Brandon call for her once more. This time though, she knows he’s closer and she turns her head to find him walking across the sand toward her. She notices her cell phone in his hand.
“I didn’t know if you needed this,” he says, his eyes scouring hers, likely looking for any hint of a reaction.
She gives him none. Instead reaching up and taking the phone from his outstretched hand and placing it on her lap in front of her.
She stares down at it for a few moments, her mind racing, plagued with thoughts. And then she turns the screen on, finding her messaging app and Chris’s name within it.
She types a few words. Ones like “you broke” and “I can’t believe” but then erases them before typing a few more. “I’m sorry,” which she backs her cursor back through and “just friends”, which she does the same to.
She curses at herself, at the need pricking into her heart to send him a message in the first place. Knowing all too well that she owes him nothing. That, if anything, he owes her something. A text. A call. An explanation. Something more than the “I’m sorry” he’s given her.
But even with the cursing, even with the knowledge of owing him nothing, she still yearns to give him something. To give him some sort of idea of what she is feeling. The pain. The truth. And maybe that she does owe him honesty even if he doesn’t give it back to her.
She taps on the screen once more, her fingers moving quickly, word after word spilling forth until no more words emerge.
She hits send the instant she finishes and then stares at the sent message on her screen for a few seconds. Reading it once. Twice. Three and four more times. And then she turns the screen off, watching as it turns to black before she reaches it behind her, back to Brandon.
“And if someone calls,” he asks, careful eyes on her, his voice still so full of concern.
Contemplating his question for a moment, she slowly shakes her head. “He won’t call.” Knowing she doesn’t need to give him an explanation of who he is. He already knows.
Brandon stares at her for a few seconds before he turns and starts back toward the house. He’s halfway there when she feels her voice bubbling in her chest and she calls out to him again.
“Brandon,” she yells and waits for him to turn to her, “just turn it off.”
And with that, her eyes settle back onto the ocean. Back to the waves meeting the sand. The forbidden dance leaving the sand forever altered. Forever changed.
Just like she is.
But unlike the sand, she is no longer readily accepting of the next meeting.
No longer anxiously awaiting the inevitable return.
This time, their dance leaving her scarred. Altered. Changed.
So here is your first of a few posts coming over the next few days regarding Unexpected.
As you know, Chapter 12 was being written by a guest writer and would feature your lone glimpse into Taylor’s POV. However, over the past couple of months, the guest writer has had the most unenviable work schedule in addition to having surgery (and then having to recover from said surgery). So after some discussion, I stepped in a wrote Chapter 12. This chapter will still be your lone glimpse into Taylor’s POV. It’s still very much full of her input and I thank her endlessly for that. You will see though that Chapter 12 is shorter than most of the other chapters (it’s not short thought). But...don’t fret because chapter 13 is much longer than the other chapters (it’s the longest single chapter I’ve ever done for any story).
Anyway, you can expect Chapter 12 to be posted sometime later tonight. Then you can expect Chapter 13 to be posted sometime tomorrow night. After that, you will get more information on plans for Unexpected.
Unexpected Readers.....I received an anon this morning that has me thinking. The anon mentioned a song by James Bay (Incomplete) that reminded them of chapter 11 and they are so right! After, I started thinking of songs that remind me of the story and started jotting them down. Now it’s your turn. If there is a song that reminds you of Unexpected, DM it to me. I think I will make an Unexpected playlist.
