gregxhennessy:
The ache in his lungs was unbearable. He needed to tell her… what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her. That without meaning to, he’d begun to lean on her, to look for her, to need her near.
Greg Hennessy had long found comfort in Senna Rogers. He had found himself leaning on her and needing her to get through everyday things. How she folded his shirts and cooked him meals after a long day’s work. How she silently cleaned the blood off the wounds that littered his body. Senna Rogers had become his home when he had none. She had shown him that he was more than the Irish brood he prided himself to be. She had made him a better man and with her, he found that there was so much more he was capable of doing.
And yet here they were sitting in their living room both of them with watery eyes. Greg pushed himself to his feet. He wanted to tell her. Needed to tell her that he was so grateful for all that she had done for him. That because of her he was alive at this very moment. That because of her he had learned to love again. Greg swallowed and let his eyes fall towards the ground. The silence was all he had as her words ran through his mind once more.
“I just don’t know if it’s possible.”
“Don’t know if what’s possible?” He had asked as he lifted her chin with his hand. She had been avoided him all afternoon. As if she had something heavy on her mind and when she finally spoke the seven world had tilted his world onto its axis. It was almost as if he had known where she was going with it before she even finished her sentence. Greg’s brow furrowed with worry as he looked down at her his question still lingering in the air.
“For you to love me and be you.”
“Senna,” Greg finally spoke after what felt like an hour of heavy silence between them. “What are you trying to say?”
He wasn’t stupid.
Gregory Hennessy knew exactly what Senna was saying. She was saying there was no way that they could do this. That they could try and keep his life with the Auditores separate from their life. That his desire to grow in the mafia world was infringing on their relationship. She wasn’t saying that she doubted his love, but rather that she loved him enough to know that she was holding him back.
He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t. That they could find a way to balance it all. That she could go off to college and he could go with the Auditores and everything would be okay, but he couldn’t. He wanted too and knew he should have but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t lie to her.
Not now.
Not ever again.
Greg stood up from the couch beside her and paced the floor. Three steps forward before turning swiftly and moving back towards her. Hands quickly grasping hers and pulling her to her feet Greg pulled her into his arms. He pulled her tightly into his chest allowing his arms to wrap around her petite waist and rested his chin on her head. His fingers intertwined themselves in her hand and pressed hard against the small of her back. He held on as if he was holding on for dear life because he couldn’t imagine a life without her.
He didn’t want to, yet he knew….knew that soon he would once more be alone.
Time was no longer on their side. If they were ever honest, it never was. Gregory Hennessy was the brooding, quick tongued, cheeky, older, much older, Irish lackey to her then uncle’s rising empire. He was tall and steady and while she was short, tongue tied, and clumsy. She chased characters in the novels that she read because she prayed on her knees every night that she would wake up and have what they had. He chased after the men her uncle and mother wanted. He was everything that she was not. He had a fire in his eyes and the fists to match it, the perfect Irish loyalist. She had a spark and her mind that let her run away. She ran away from a life that was all consuming; he ran towards. She kept her head down and he lifted his, daring anyone to test him. He was the manifestation of everything she ran from the moment she learned how but she still ran to him.
Home was the man wrapped in darkness who reached out for the sun. Home is now a reminder that a man wrapped in darkness would never truly be happy in the sun. “Gregory,” she said his name tenderly, to soften the tone of despondence. “I love you.” That much was true. She loved him enough to let him go. To let them both go. “I always will.” She looked up at him with a sadness in her eyes that would be eclipsed by content. The pain in her chest would subside and she will smile around him once more. There would no love loss. For how can there be when he was the first that she gave her heart to honestly and freely?
Her fingers that fit so well when intertwined with his slowly pulled away from his’. He needed her differently than she needed him. How the two needed the other was never a bad thing it was just no longer the right thing. He need the life that he knew and she needed to leave her’s behind. She smiled at him as her hands raised to cup his face in the palm of her hands. They would look back on this day and laugh. Here she was doing her best not to stand on her toes or fall over as she tried to bring him comfort. The last comfort he would feel from her as his girlfriend. As his Red. With more eloquence than judgment she spoke of what both knew to be true. Her thumb ran across his cheek as spoke, “I know what it means for you to be a part of the camaraderie and family that the mob brings. I have never asked and I never will ask you to give that up. You need that.” Her first words to him, the ones that set the tone of this entire conversation, had been the warm up to the ones that would soon roll off her tongue, take shape in her lips and carried on their breaths that they could both feel on their skin to his ears. “It is me you need to give up. It has come to that point in both of our lives where we must realize that what is best for both of us is to end this. We can both be happy without sacrificing parts of ourselves for one another. We have both sacrificed enough of ourselves for other causes.”
A reminder of all the ordeals the two had been through together. Like the scars on the both of them, their time together as one will always be etched on their skin. Their scar, she was sure, would be one of many that they would both smile at. It may take time but she had a feeling that time would for once me on their side. It would no longer have to choose which one it favored more. “I need to leave this city and mob related life behind as much as you need to stay with the mob.” Her words were soft as her hands released his face and moved down to his hand that was holding her close to him. “Let me go. Let us go.”
