92 (for the writing promp with the ones and only)
Mea maxima culpa for taking forever to respond (@pattarain I promise that I’ll get around to Prompt #63 soon). This is just a preview of a much larger and angstier scene that I’m still working on for the upcoming chapter. Hope you have some tissues handy!
“I don’t know if Warren ever loved the boys,” she confesses with such torment in her meek voice. “I mean, I know that he never loved me, but . . . I worry all the time that he never loved our sons either. And I blame myself for that, Brian. Because if they’d been anyone else’s . . . if I’d been the wife that Warren wanted . . . maybe then he could have loved them. Maybe then he would have been a better businessman, a better husband, a better father. But they were mine.”
“His shortcomings are not your fault, Margaret. They’re not your burden to bear. It wasn’t your job to redeem him.”
“I wish that I’d been able to give my sons what your parents gave you and your brothers,” she says, her voice so small and yet so heavy with remorse. “The most important thing I could have done for my children was to give them the right father. I know I didn’t have any say in the matter, but if I’d been free to choose, believe me, I would have chosen so differently. I just . . . I feel like I failed them. That no matter how hard I tried—and I really did try to be a good mother, to do everything right, to always put them first—nothing could ever make up for the fact that I hadn’t given them the best possible father. My God! How much better, how much happier would my sons’ lives have been if only they’d been born to parents who loved each other?”
She’s not even thinking about her own happiness right now, and it both breaks his heart and utterly enrages him in the same instant. How could she be so selfless? How could she love others so deeply and put their wants and needs so decidedly ahead of her own?
“And what of your own happiness, Margaret?” he asks. “How happy you could have been if you’d been married to a man who’d seen you for the miracle that you are?”
“I’m not a miracle, Brian,” she says, her voice catching in her throat as the tears well in her eyes. “I’m—”
A demon. He can tell by the way she chews her trembling lower lip that those words are racing through her mind. She looks at him with a pained expression, and he knows that the belief that had been instilled in her all those years ago—that the Returned are demons that can only cause pain—still runs so deep.
Looking back down at her hands, she shakes her head slowly and sadly, her voice so full of despair when she tells him, “I’m just not.”
He tucks her hair behind her ear, his fingertips tracing the shell of her ear with the lightest touch before he gently raises her chin and feels his breath being taken away yet again when he looks into those tear-filled, turquoise-colored eyes.
“I think you are,” he tells her with a soft smile. “I know that you are. I don’t think you’re a demon, Margaret. I never have, and I never will. I think you’re an angel.”
His words completely overwhelm her, and the tears course down her cheeks as he touches his forehead to hers. “I know that you don’t see Returning as a second chance. But I think it was. Just maybe not in the way that you think. Maybe the second chance wasn’t for you; maybe it was for me. I don’t think that there was anything missing from my life or that I needed to be saved in any way. But I know that you changed my life for the better, that you changed me for the better.”
He holds her tight, his fingers entangling themselves in her hair as he breathes her in as deeply as he can, and the storms inside him begin to calm. There is still so much that he wants to say to her, but he doesn’t know how to put it all into words. Those three little words could never fully articulate all the things he feels for her, and yet they still knock the wind right out of him every time they bubble up inside him.
“I love you,” he whispers into her hair.
She sniffles softly, but he can feel her smiling when she presses her cheek to his and the warmth of her breath radiates through him when she whispers into his ear, “I love you, too. You’re my guy.”
He can’t help but chuckle at the old-fashioned and sweetly youthful sentiment, especially when he remembers how his mother had used that same turn of phrase earlier today. “I’m glad about that,” he says, playfully nuzzling her nose with a grin, “because I absolutely love being your guy.”
They stay outside a little longer, stargazing and holding each other close beneath the soft tartan blanket. Their walk back to the house is unhurried, their movements as relaxed and romantic as a waltz. His feet don’t seem to touch the ground, and each time he steals a sweet kiss or two from her as they make their way across the lawn, the sound of Margaret’s muffled laughter against his lips causes this inexplicable and unrelenting sense of hope to well up inside him.
Like a couple of mischievous teenagers out past their curfew, they quietly sneak inside the house, taking the back stairs straight up to the attic.
In a cozy bedroom lit only by candlelight and perfumed with the invigorating scents of balsam and cedar, she stands so close to him that he can’t resist kissing the dozens of tiny freckles on her shoulders as they undress each other. They take their time changing into their pajamas, and he’s just about to put on his shirt when she stops him by placing her hand on his chest. Under slightly different circumstances, they would have most likely kissed each other deeply and then proceeded to make slow, sweet love together all night long. But there is no seductive intention in her touch, and the soft smile upon her lips lets him know that she simply craves the comforting warmth of his bare skin surrounding her as she drifts off to sleep tonight—nothing more, nothing less.
He kisses her hand and leads her towards the bed, where they lie down beside each other on top of the covers. He wraps his arms and the lambswool blanket around her, and when she kisses his chest with a contented sigh, he holds her even closer, even tighter. There is no distance between them, and their bodies nestle into each other’s, like two perfectly matched puzzle pieces finally locking into place.
