to take the pieces of what we had left and move forward. For a while, the whole community felt affected by the tragedy. But in the end, people have to go on with their lives. But when you’re the one that lost, you can’t. Not in the same way. Because you never forget. The only time they remember is when they see you. Somehow, impossibly, you need to make a life that’s about more than that. And it’s this terrible two-edged sword. People don’t just think of you. And when they do, they only think of loss. And you think of it every day. And then feel sorry when some days you don’t.”
He said nothing for a moment, the rain pounding on the ground, filling the silence. “I think about it every day.”
She looked around. At this place, removed from the rest of the world. Of course he thought about it every day. This was his monastery of pain. Designed, in many ways, to be a constant reminder of what he’d lost, free of any distractions or comforts.
Free of food that he enjoyed. Free of pleasure. Of any kind.
She could understand that. She had felt like perhaps they were entirely different people. That he was a man who’d lived an experience entirely different from hers. That seducing him was insane because he was clearly beautiful and experienced in ways that she wasn’t.
And that may be true.
He’d been married, after all.
Had loved someone enough to vow to be with them for the rest of his life.
For the rest of hers.
But at the base of it, down deep at their hearts, they weren’t different.
They were both scarred. Devastated by the loss that they’d endured. Parents... It was a terrible thing to lose your parents. Always. More terrible still when you were children and there were so many years, so much more time that you should have had. And particularly cutting because childhood was supposed to be magical. A time that was sacred, in some regards.
And theirs hadn’t been. It had been dark. And the kind of monsters that haunted other people’s closets haunted their regular, daily lives, great and toothy and visible. Those things that other kids saw in their deepest, darkest fears, they had lived.
But falling in love, and losing that person, that must be such a deep cut. People expected to have to lose parents eventually. And how to find a way to live without them. With a husband or wife it was different. One of you would lose the other eventually, but if everything went well... You shouldn’t have years and years of figuring out how to live without the other. And he did.
But he was too beautiful. Too compelling to be up here forever. To cut himself off from every good thing. She just wished that there was some way she could... She just wished...
She angled her head, lifted up on her toes and kissed him.
It was absolutely the most inappropriate thing to do to a man who had just said he thought about his wife every day. That he lived with the pain of her loss constantly.
It was wrong, but he seemed to accept it. Sipped the water from her lips and pulled her in close. He held her, like they might both break if he released her. Held her like she mattered. And she... She poured everything into the kiss. All of her sympathy, all of her sorrow. Sorrow that she had for him, but for herself as well. She felt absolutely helpless to do anything to fix this. To fix him.
And she wanted to.
Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be able to take them both back to a place where they were new.
Maybe if her parents hadn’t died she would be a normal thirty-one-year-old woman. She would have had lovers, maybe a few of them. She would be confident in herself and in her body. She would be equal to the task of having him.
And maybe he would be charming. Easy.
Maybe they could flirt. Maybe they could go on a date.
Instead, they were sharing a fractured kiss in the rain. And she felt like they were drowning.
Sinking into an endless well of need that she wasn’t sure they would ever escape.
Her clothes were sticking to her body, and so were his.
She pushed at the hem of his shirt, and he gripped the end of it, pulling it up over his head and taking his cowboy hat with it. His skin was slick and hard, and