Goodnight

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:03 AM No Responses »
Jan 272012

Shannon had worked a full shift at the hospital, visited easily with his parents as they’d eaten dinner, showered and fallen apart from three intense orgasms that he’d drawn out of her with the patience of a saint over an eternally long two hours. His hands, his thighs, even his boxers were coated with her scent and her smell. He’d licked his fingers clean while she’d convulsed the first time, her eyes glazing over as she watched him. During and just after the second, he’d slid his fingers between her lips one by one while she obediently suckled them. This time, he let her sweet juices stay where they were. She was exhausted and slumped against him, naked, her heated skin warming his, and he needed desperately to keep her right there at his side.

But most importantly, her defenses were down.

Harry had a question for her, and he knew he was being a bastard to ask her now, but he wanted an answer while the walls that guarded her heart were still crumbled in little piles of rubble at her feet. He didn’t want her thinking about it, he didn’t want to have to argue and cajole. He just wanted an answer, even more than he wanted his own release. Even more than he wanted to watch her sleep.

“Why did you imagine that I was having an affair?” he said softly against her ear.

To his surprise, she noticeably stiffened. He’d thought she was too far gone for that level of consciousness, but it was a sensitive question. Just in case she got any silly ideas about sitting up, he tightened his grip on her and held her closer.

Her hand trailed over his chest and her palm rubbed his abdomen, until her index finger found his navel and thoughtfully circled it.

“It wasn’t one thing,” she finally said. “We weren’t having sex, not even like this, and we hadn’t had for … weeks, I think. It’s never been like that before, even when the boys were small.”

Harry felt his heart – no, his soul, his heart was working just fine now, thank you – lurch. Shame washed over him and he struggled not to get defensively angry and indignant. He knew Shannon understood what had been happening in his body better than he had. He knew how he’d felt the last months, how he’d held back, afraid of disappointing her, afraid of not being able to finish, embarrassed about the unpredictability of his body, blaming aging and stress instead of looking for a real reason.

“What else?” he finally growled, still struggling not to fling himself out of the bed.

“You really want to talk about this now?” she eventually whispered. She pressed her face against the palm of her hand and rubbed it a bit, subconsciously offering him comfort even as his muscles stiffened and his erection, seemingly permanent over the last hour, half-deflated to a low ache in his balls and gut. He let it go without a qualm, knowing that Shannon would be horrified if he came all over his hands anyway. He’d been forbidden by the surgeon from intercourse and Shannon clearly interpreted that to mean any sort of ejaculation. When she’d been kneeling on the bed, facing away from him, and he’d had three fingers pushing in and out of her quim while his other hand wrapped around her hair, she’d unintentionally swiped one desperate hand across it as she found a better position with her hand between his legs, pressing into the mattress. I’m sorry, she’d gasped. I don’t mean to make it worse, I know what the doctor said.

He’d grunted and tickled her clit with his thumb so that the words had died away and she’d moaned, squirming and holding herself in place all in one desperate moment. Harry would be having a very specific talk with that doctor, soon enough,  and specific enough that Shannon would want to bury her head and pretend otherwise, especially when she saw him later professionally. Still, Harry had every intention of making his interest and attachment to her plain. He had no problem with her colleagues knowing they had an active sex life; in fact, he’d much prefer it if they did know. Of course, he didn’t want anyone gossiping about them, but a little bit of it would keep the indiscriminate dicks in their places more easily.

His drifting thoughts must have confused her, because her hand stopped roaming. “Harry?” she asked.

“Yes, I want to talk about it now,” he returned, his mind focusing again.

“In the evenings,” she eventually said quietly, “You’d go into the study and shut the door, instead of working in the living room the way you always have.”

Why hadn’t he considered how difficult this would be to hear? There had been good reasons for that, things he would have to explain, things that would remain with him for the rest of his life. Things he hadn’t talked to her about – professional things – that he’d determinedly marked down to lawyer-client confidentiality, and then for Shannon’s worldly peace of mind. But instead of protecting that peace of mind by closing her out of the world’s atrocities, he’d been slowly chipping it away himself. Self-loathing threatened but he pushed it back and smothered it with a chilly inward look. He really was a bastard and it was definitely time to lighten the mood.

“Supporting evidence,” he returned, “But only applicable if there’s something concrete. Tell me the rest of it, plaintiff.”

“Building your defense?” she teased.

“Plotting an allocution that will reveal me as an idiot of the first degree,” he returned half-seriously.

“We weren’t having sex,” she repeated, “But…” Her voice died for a moment and Harry felt his insides stiffen in expectation and dread. “But you were,” she whispered then. “In the middle of the night. Alone. With your hand.”

Harry felt the blood drain from his head and he closed his eyes against the pain in her voice. He really was a bastard for starting this tonight, when she could have fallen asleep, spared from the emotional pain. But he wouldn’t have slept.

This one he would have to deal with now, or she’d toss and turn all night and it would follow her into her dreams.

“You know I couldn’t stay awake in the evenings,” he said after a minute and felt her nod against him. “But I’d wake up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. You’d be there, right beside me, warm and silky and soundly sleeping. I could touch you a bit and then… well, sometimes I would need to come, like it was goddamned morning woody when I was twenty. Why I couldn’t do it in the evenings when you were there looking at me with your soul in your eyes I couldn’t have explained, but there was no way for me to go back to sleep without doing something, and waking you from well-earned and needed rest seemed selfish. So I did a few times.”

“Not every night?” she mumbled after a long minute of silence.

“More like three times in three months but I can’t say for sure how often. Probably because we weren’t having sex, so after I’d slept for awhile, my body would be rested and my dick would get enough blood in it to start thinking again.”

Harry felt her lips move, a bit too cautiously for his taste, into a smile. He wished she could be free with him again – confident enough to be free in her reactions and her words, not to mention her body.

“We’ll talk about the rest tomorrow,” he said, stroking her cheek and kissing the top of her head.  ”Go to sleep now.”

She sighed, half-obedient already simply from exhaustion. Demanding control of her orgasms might have a pleasant effects on her in other contexts as well. Harry didn’t want to manage every second of the day, but he suddenly found the notion of her looking to him for guidance and reinforcement oddly appealing. It was, he thought, something to ponder in the dark stretches of the night. It was preferable to sinking into a morass of guilt and self-recrimination, at least.

“Don’t you need to wash up?” she mumbled, the words slurring as she slipped away.

He smiled into the room, reaching out with his free hand to flip off the light. “No, love. You smell and taste delicious – why do I need to wash it off?”

“Okay,” she sighed.

“Tell me goodnight, sweetheart,” he murmured, his fingers at her ear.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” she returned, but he was sure she was already asleep, because the slur had turned to a husky moan.

Yes, he’d think about her, confiding in him, telling him things, talking about the inane parts of life like recipes and laundry and chores and coffee. She’d be on her knees between his legs, her head on his naked thigh below his shorts and her arms locked about his knees. She used to sit like that, twenty years ago during law school, when he’d had a single comfortable chair in the room he rented and a pile of books to read. She’d sat like that for hours as he’d read case histories. They’d positioned the chair so she could watch television, turned down to essentially silence, and he’d scrawled notes in the margins on the tiny end table that they’d ended up breaking when he’d sat her on it one day and fucked her against the wall so hard that one of the legs had cracked.

But Shannon on her knees at his feet? He’d like to try that again. Only this time, she’d be wearing nothing but her wedding ring, her remaining curls tied back tightly in a white ribbon and that sparkly pink polish she liked on her toes and fingers.

That day would be a good day.

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What’s a G-Spot?

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:07 AM No Responses »
Jan 262012

I was a sheltered seventeen year old virgin and a high school graduate when I first saw a gynecologist.

I had terrible menstrual cycles as a teenager, and they were getting more painful. It was so bad that at times I could hardly stand up straight or walk, despite being fairly in shape and rather vertical and obsessively busy the rest of every month. I was going 200+ miles away to college, among people my mother didn’t know. She was determined to make sure I had everything I needed, and then some, and worried as obsessively about me as I did about missing classes, bad grades and exams. So when I said that I thought I needed to see a doctor about the pain before I left, she agreed, made the appointment and took me. It wasn’t about my sexuality or my reproductive health, it was about my comfort and my safety. After telling the gynecologist all of this and more, she asked him what could be done to manage the pain. Without birth control, she specified. According to her, I didn’t need that.

His answer? She could go read a magazine until after he’d examined me and then they would chat. She could go to the waiting room and wait.

Seriously? It was the first time I’d ever seen a doctor alone.

He actually told me that I could be  honest, that what I said would not be communicated with my mother, an idea in those pre-HIPA days that I found completely novel. He said if I needed birth control, he could write me a prescription and I could fill it at college, and he’d give me freebies to use until then.

I said honestly I was still a virgin, and in experience I was even more innocent than merely virginal. I’d been kissed and had my hand held across the middle console in a car. I’d been french-kissed, even, and had my earlobe bitten a time or two. I’d been held close and there had been cuddling, but I didn’t share details. We talked about  how I was leaving for college in a month, turning eighteen in a few days, and had been dating a guy seven years older than I was since the day I graduated. (He first asked me out on the day I graduated, didn’t know I was still 17, long story, should tell it sometime.) He quizzed me enough to agree that I had a fairly coherent grasp of how sexual behavior could be risky, and how it could be pleasurable, and that I should absolutely say no if it wasn’t pleasurable. In those years, AIDS & HIV were still called ‘gay’ and supposedly confined to drug users and men who had sex in bathroom rest stops along I-70. The doctor, however, made sure I understood that it could be passed through heterosexual sex as well, and offered me a free box of condoms to take to college. Or to my guy’s house.

I said no. They wouldn’t have fit in my purse.

He recommended I buy a box as soon as I got there. Just in case something happened that I didn’t expect or plan.

And then he stepped out of the room so I could take off my clothes and put on one of those god-awful paper gowns.

He was a grandfatherly older man, with thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses, dressed in a button-down mint green dress shirt with the shirtsleeves rolled up. I can’t remember his pants, but I’m sure he had black oxford shoes on, and they looked new. When he came back in with the nurse, the first thing they both did was put on latex gloves. Not even my dentist used gloves, then. I dimly recalled reading about how HIV could pass through blood and rumors about how it couldn’t pass through saliva, and wondered why the dentist didn’t wear gloves as my gums always bled. And then I wondered if he thought I was lying about being a virgin, or what he saw in me that made him guard against catching something from me.

It didn’t occur to me that gloves were as much to protect me as they were to protect him, at least not until much later. I was thus first terrified and then almost cried when he smiled at me and tried to make me put my feet in the stirrups. 

When he realized that I had no concept of what was going to happen, he had me sit up, and then he explained it in excruciating detail. He’d do a breast exam, or the middle-aged nurse would if I preferred. I needed to have a pap smear, which he could do without breaking my hymen if I had one (and maybe I didn’t if I was athletic and wore tampons and number of other things… ). He explained the purpose, the procedure, showed me the metal instruments involved, and then mentioned that I’d need to do this every year for the rest of my life.

It was the first time anyone had touched my bare breasts. He talked as he did it, explaining what he was looking for,  how I should do it every month, and what to do if I felt changes or lumps. Honestly, I had to read the brochure after to remember anything he said. All I could think of was that, for the first time, I was an adult and this was an adult conversation and I was suffering an adult responsibility.

It wasn’t anything like I had imagined my first time. There was no dark lighting, no kissing, no slipping fingers inside clothing. No romantic man-friend (even then I hated the term boyfriend because I wanted nothing to do with boys) but a sterile room with a mirror over the sink, stirrups, and paper on the table where I was sitting.

Nothing bad happened. I felt nothing but awkwardness and stared at the nurse as she took notes in a chart and busied herself with the table of gleaming stainless steel torture devices.

“Now lay back and relax,” he said, “It will be over quickly.”

Oh, how I wish that had been true. Relax was not a word that my vagina and I experienced often. I clenched, and clenched hard, when I touched myself. The very concept that I could control clenching versus not clenching was a revelation, and the stainless steel was cold and … I sat up as soon as he withdrew the longest piece of metal I’ve ever dreamed about from inside me. It turns out that I sat up too fast because black spots promptly formed at the edges of my vision and I started to fall to the side…

Here is where things are a bit hazy. The nurse caught me and laid me back down. I remember he took my temperature and checked my pulse after I was lying back on the table, staring at that white ceiling.

A few minutes  later, I started to sit up but he said no, to lie still a bit longer, so I did. He told me about the condition of my hymen, and how – when I was ready to have sex – it would be more enjoyable to break it in advance, so that my first time wasn’t memorably painful and unpleasant. He could do it in the office, he said, but many girls preferred to stretch theirs, which I could do if I just wore tampons during my menstrual cycle instead of pads.

When I eventually sat up, the nurse brought me a cup of water. “What happened?” I finally asked. I had passed out before, but under much different circumstances.

“You have a very sensitive set of nerves* in your vagina,” the nurse shrugged. “It doesn’t happen often. And try not to do that during sex, it will make the guy pass out!”

I actually managed to laugh and then had a horrible thought. “Does my mother know?”

The doctor, who was washing his hands, turned around. “No, of course not,” he said firmly. He paused. “I’m writing you a prescription for a painkiller,” he went on, and described the dosage, when to take it, how often and all the possible side effects.

My mind spun.

And then … and then my brain froze while he said it was nice to meet me, wished me good luck at school, and ordered me to make an appointment for the next summer.

The nurse stayed behind, ostensibly to make sure I didn’t have a relapse while dressing. “Do you have any questions, dear?” she asked. “The first time’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it?”

Somehow it seemed easier to say it to her, than to him. So I said it. “What’s a tampon?” I asked.

Thank heaven she explained. And showed me.

A month later I started using tampons. The next summer I started on birth control. But it was six more years before I had someone human inside my vagina. And I still hate the feel of cold, sharp metal there.

 

~o~

True story, right down to the dialogue. That memory is burned into my brain … For more on current thinking regarding the mysterious G-spot, read this article by Jezebel: You’re Never Going to Find Your G-Spot Because It Doesn’t Exist

What’s a G-Spot? Tagged with: , , , ,

Simply

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:01 AM No Responses »
Jan 252012

“Take your clothes off,” Harry had said stubbornly. He’d been exhausted by the time they’d gotten around to napping, but had refused to lie down in the bed unless she was with him. “All of them.”

So she’d stripped and curled up beside him and they’d slept. When bedtime had arrived, he’d said it again, just as insistently. He’d positioned her head on his upper arm, gripped the back of her hair in his hand and had proceeded to explore her body with his other hand until she’d been arched and tried desperately to push his hand against the throbbing pearl of flesh at the head of her vulva.

“No,” he’d said huskily, capturing her wrist. He tucked it beneath his thigh, then very deliberately and with his eyes on hers, had lifted her other wrist to rest on the back of her head, where his hand could hold it in place.

“Harry,” Shannon had pled, but he’d only whispered the hated word again, this time with his lips directly against hers.

And then he’d gone back to touching, holding her firmly in place while he explored her bare skin with his fingertips, never more firmly than a soft grazing of skin to skin.

She’d sobbed against his cheek forever later, not daring to struggle for fear she’d hurt him and unable to hold in the burgeoning desperation.  ”Please. Harry, please.”

And then he’d said the words that she couldn’t forget, that had made her burn and shudder at the simple memory of them. “You’re mine, Shannon. All of you, especially your sexuality, especially your orgasms. You’ll come when I want you to, and not before.”

At the time he’d said it, her gut had clenched and she’d felt the roaring in her ears as her spine tingled. Amazingly, even though the orgasm had threatened to overwhelm her, she’d fought it off in an absurd attempt to obey him.

“Good girl,” he’d praised her when she’d finally stilled. “My girl.”

“Harry –”

“You need to know you belong to me. It starts right here. You’ll come when I say, Shannon, and not before. Do you understand me?”

She’d groaned but he’d held her firmly in place, her naked form at his side. It felt deliciously decadent to be naked next to his t-shirt and boxers, to have her hand trapped beneath him, to have her wrist held against the back of her head as though she were a wanton, to have his fingers tugging at her hair as he tilted her face up so that he could see her eyes.

Shannon had whimpered but he hadn’t broken. He’d kept her trapped, even her eyes caught by his. He’d kept her there until she had been the one who’d submitted. She’d whimpered again and finally whispered, “Yes, Harry.”

At the time it had felt like defeat, but his pleased smile and repeated praises and kisses had made it seem more like a victory. “That’s my girl, my good girl,” he’d rasped, his free hand moving to cup her swollen breast and tight nipple in his palm.

He’d done the same thing the next night – last night – tormenting her with seemingly infinite patience, his jaw clenched as he’d listened to her increasingly desperate whispers pleading for relief. And then he’d cupped her breast firmly in his hand and asked quietly, “Why are you letting me do this, sweetheart? I know you haven’t snuck off with your vibrator, and I know you could have come already, without waiting for me to say that you could. So why are you, for want of a better description, suddenly so obedient?”

Shannon had caught her breath, her body still tingling and aching. She’d felt him release her breast and trail his fingers down her abdomen and brush the wet juices decorating the long muscle there. She’d swallowed hard, and felt the tears well up in her throat, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from him.

“Try for me, sweetheart. Say it out loud.” He’d trailed his fingers through the moisture and waited.

And again, she’d whimpered in defeat and closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she finally cried.

“Then I’m not ready for you to come, yet.”

She’d cried on his shoulder, but he hadn’t let her go and he hadn’t tried to hush her. He’d whispered lovely words against her hair and held her until she slept. She knew he’d said pretty and silly thing. There had been most beautiful creature and my dearest.

But now, in the cold, very early light of day, when she wasn’t on the verge of an explosion, Shannon thought she knew the answer. “Do you still want to know why?” she asked him, trailing her fingers over his mouth as she rolled on her side to face him.

Unlike her, he wore a plaid pajama set. He’d gotten out of bed earlier and made her coffee, bringing mugs for both of them to the bed. She still thought it odd to sleep in nothing but her skin, but was ready to admit there were compensations. Wherever their bodies brushed against one another – wherever his hand roamed – he inevitably found skin. Not an old t-shirt, soft as it was, or flannel shorts, or the silk of a negligee, but her skin.

“Mmm. Yes,” he said, capturing her finger and biting the tip gently. She tugged but his teeth persisted.

“Because you didn’t ask me not to come. You expected I wouldn’t, as if I was, in fact, yours.”

“You are,” Harry said simply.

“And because you said I was your good girl. I wanted to be.”

“You are,” Harry repeated, still calm. “You are my good girl.”

Shannon shivered, and so Harry bent forward and tasted her mouth, licking the coffee flavor from her teeth and teasing the top of her mouth with his tongue. “Good morning,” he murmured.

“Good morning,” she answered, and wound her fingers in his hair as she returned the kiss.

 

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Broken Update

Posted by Serenity Everton at 5:20 AM No Responses »
Jan 242012

A summary of the ongoing fiction pieces under the tag “Broken(fic)”:

Chase Me

Broken Hearts

Golden Silence

Wading

The Birdcage

Battleplans

Cry For Me

Alone Together

The complete selection can be read in one entry on my fiction blog Out of My Mind at Broken (Chapter 1). Photos inspiring this story series can be found on the At A Kinky House Tumblr under the tag “Broken”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Alone Together

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:00 AM No Responses »
Jan 232012

Harry had followed her to the kitchen and had eaten the breakfast she served him without complaint. He’d dried the dishes – carefully, she thought – as she washed, testing his range of motion and stamina. He’d never been a large man, but in the previous year he’d limited exercise to the weekends and eaten more sparingly. It was another sign she ought to have noticed and confronted.

Shannon watched him closely as he showered and dressed in a worn button-down shirt and a pair of loose fitting cargo shorts then left him to go upstairs and shower. He’d been napping in the living room recliner so she’d quietly gone about her day. She’d used a combination of vacation and friendly favors to cancel her two weekly shifts in the ER where she worked; now she rescheduled this week’s two shifts to later in the week when Harry’s parents were free and could spend the day with him. She deflected a goodwill call by his partners and asked them to come two days later instead. He needed today at home, and tomorrow was his first cardiac rehab session. They could come the day after that.

And she thought. Harry was right, again. She hadn’t fought for him. She’d laid down like a beaten dog and given up on him – and on herself too – without so much as a murmur.

When had she become so passive? Shannon rather suspected she’d taken him for granted one too many times. She didn’t want to take him for granted.

She didn’t want him taking her for granted, either.

Rather mechanically, she made the guest bed and straightened the room, listening as he walked carefully into the hallway bathroom and closed the door.

Shannon knew the minute he appeared in the doorway of the guest room, where she was storing extra clothes for him in the closet.

He frowned at her, then asked, “You aren’t planning to do chores all day, are you?”

Shannon looked at him carefully. He looked better, though perhaps it was because the scars on his thighs and the wound on his chest were hidden, because he was dressed in clothes instead of hospital attire, or because he was home in the natural light of their house instead of under the fluorescent glare.

“I could do chores all day,” she said quietly, “But I don’t have to.”

Harry considered her. She actually watched his eyes trace the lines of her body before they rose again and met hers. Shannon reminded herself frantically that it would be at least five weeks before the surgeon gave him permission to engage in sexual activity and even then he’d need to be careful  –

“I’d like to take a walk,” he smiled a just a little, knowing smile, “Before you feed me again.”

Shannon cleared her throat.

“You’ve not been down to the water lately and I need some time in the sun. Maybe we could drive down and walk there, then come back for lunch. And a nap together.”

Shannon walked to him and stood as close as she dared before lifting up on her toes and kissing his jaw softly. “I’d like that.”

So they did. He held her hand and they walked a few blocks near the ocean, then walked down the sand and stood. They debated whether he’d be able to stand if he sat down in the sand to rest and then they tried it. Harry drew Shannon back against him, between his legs and cradled her, kissing the top of her head as she tossed their sandals to the side and stared out into the surf.

After a long time, he spoke. “I do have to earn your trust again. I see that. I can’t fix that in a day, though. I think it will take awhile. I can’t resurrect your faith in me overnight. All I can do is say I’m sorry for destroying it, however unintentionally, in the first place and do my best diligence to earn it again.”

Shannon’s fingers stroked him around his knees. “You were right too,” she finally replied, “About how I didn’t believe we belonged together. I need to know – no, not just know, but have it burned into my soul – that I am …”

Her voice drifted off, as though she weren’t even confident enough to even speak the words.

“The center of my world,” Harry said directly. “The lynch pin of my life. My most important treasure. My reason for living and working and sleeping and -”

“And yours,” Shannon broke in, twisting to rest her fingers against his lips as she remembered the dream, where she had fallen to the floor at his feet when released from the cage. “That I am yours. That I belong with you and that I belong to you.”

Harry met her eyes, his own flagrantly darker with sudden intense emotion, a deep need she’d only rarely seen evidence of, and then only in the dark depths of their bed when anything was possible. “You are mine,” he said, his hand tightening on her scalp. The other slid down the side of her sundress and clenched at her hip. “All of you absolutely has to belong to me. If any lesson has been reinforced to me over the last two weeks since this business with my heart happened, it’s that – that you must be mine, that I will go to any lengths to keep you.” The low voice was thoughtful, as though he was thinking out loud, but Shannon didn’t truly believe that. Harry never said anything he hadn’t thought about and considered from every angle, especially if it was important. “I thought you knew, once upon a time, and maybe I thought that stepping back and watching you spread your wings was what I needed to do to keep you. Maybe that was the right thing to do, when the boys were boys and your life was defined by their needs and I could fill in the empty spaces. But maybe that’s not quite right anymore. Maybe instead of letting you spread your wings … maybe I need to clip them, just a bit. If it takes telling you repeatedly and demonstrating it at every possible opportunity, so that’s what I’ll try. Gladly.”

Maybe they had been dream-sharing, Shannon wondered.

“That’s what I need, Harry.” Shannon looked up through her lashes at him and felt her heart clench as she swallowed hard and heavily at the courage it took to open up her heart and offer it to him again. “If-if it’s not t-too much to ask. I need that attention. Conviction. P-Passion.”

But then his lips were crushing hers and her heart wasn’t being crushed into obliterating particles of sand and there were no more words, except for the word Mine that reverberated into her brain when he whispered it inside her mouth.

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Cry For Me

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:00 AM 1 Response »
Jan 222012

The first night, when Harry didn’t sleep much and she woke up to his lips on her temple at three in the morning, Shannon assumed that he was disturbed by the cheaper sheets that she kept on the bed in the downstairs guest room. No one had used the bed since Sam and Simon had gone off to college. The unfamiliar cotton was rough, if an improvement over hospital linens, and Harry hadn’t been wearing anything more than his boxer shorts. She’d murmured sleepily that she’d change the sheets and pulled the blankets over them and slipped back into sleep, utterly exhausted.

Last night, with the bed made in the finest Egyptian cotton they’d actually brought from Egypt, Harry still had been awake in the middle of the night. In the dark room, he’d pulled her against his side and feathered his hand over her head as it laid on his bicep. He couldn’t pull her on top of him or even roll over and crush her beneath him but there was no denying that the move was deliberate. He didn’t drift off to sleep after but kept her there, one hand rubbing the small of her back and the other tracing her eyebrows and her hairline.

The sun was up now and spilled into the room from their back patio. Shannon had thought about getting up, but Harry held her deliberately against him, one hand wound through her hair and clasping the back of her head.

She couldn’t tell if he was awake or not, and it didn’t truly matter. It was early, his medications could wait until after eight –

“What would you change, sweetheart?” he asked huskily. “No, that’s not quite the right question, is it?” He was silent and then rephrased. “What can we do so that you believe that we belong to each other, so the knowledge is burned into every cell of your body that I would do nearly anything to see you safe and happy and in my arms every day for the rest of my life?”

Shannon swallowed hard. She’d started to wonder if that conversation in the hospital had meant less than she’d thought. She tipped her head to nuzzle her mouth against his warm skin, the question tipping off a cascading torrent of emotions. Affection, devotion, uncertainty, passion, disappointment, despair, guilt and anger raced through her and she caught her breath at the strength of those last two.

“The question you ought to ask,” she said, sitting up abruptly in the bed and twisting so that she could face him and wrap her arms around her knees. “Is what you can do to convince me that you deserve my trust again?” She let a small taste of bitterness leak into the words and met his eyes squarely as the words suddenly poured out of her in an angry rush. “How dare you keep something like shoulder and neck pain from me for months, Harry. Months. For months I’ve wondered why you became a walking zombie at night, why you could go to work and perform faultlessly day in and day out only to come home and fall asleep night after night, often without so much as a damned goodnight kiss. For months  I’ve wondered what I’d done that made you so disinterested, or if I was finally too old to hold your attention. For months. I’ve been terrified you were having an affair, or that I was too old to interest you anymore. And instead I find out that all this time you’ve been walking around in pain, experiencing one of the most common signs of heart disease like a boorish little boy afraid to say his broken arm was hurting. Did you want to die?”

Harry stared at her, plainly aghast. “No,” he said hollowly, “No, I didn’t want to die.”

She watched him swallow, then reach up with his fingertips and cradle her chin. “You are so unbelievably beautiful,” he whispered, “Even – maybe especially – when  you’re angry. It’s as if you’re in the throes of passion.”

“Trust me,” Shannon returned tensely, “They do not feel at all the same to me.”

“I’ve been a fool in more ways than one,” he mused, the expression on his face and in his eyes clearly reflecting the cranial activity still taking place. “Because I can’t believe you actually thought or believed any of those things, especially not without confronting me.”

He stared at the wall for a minute then looked back at her. “What were you thinking, Shannon? For the love of God. An affair?”

Shannon sat stiffly and refused to look at him. She kept her gaze on the wall behind the headboard.

“That’s why you got the fucking haircut without telling me your plans,” Harry said slowly, the emptiness in his voice returning. “You were breaking your heart from mine. Deliberately.”

Shannon couldn’t look at the wall. She laid her head on her knees so that he couldn’t see her eyes.

“Talk to me, dammit!” he roared suddenly, in a loss of temper so rare that Shannon gasped and looked up to see him clenching his cardio pillow with deliberate violence.

“Yes!” Shannon suddenly shrieked at him, sitting up on her knees and punching his thigh with her closed fist. “Yes, I was breaking my heart apart. It’s been breaking for months while you walked around in your own little selfish world, thinking about how it was easier to ignore it. I couldn’t stand it anymore!”

“I was the one locked in my selfish, little world?” he asked, aggravation in every jerky movement of his muscles and voice. “Me? I’m not the one who curled up in a little ball and admitted defeat. You never asked me if I felt ill. You never once - and by God I wouldn’t have missed that – questioned why my behavior was so different to make you wonder if I was sleeping with someone else. You can be as angry with me as you please but you will not pretend that I am the only one who failed us, Shannon. You are as responsible for this debacle as I am.”

Shannon felt her cheeks pale. She’d clung to anger for so long, only to have run headlong into guilt in the hospital. And he agreed that she ought to feel guilty.

The sobs welled up in her throat and the tears left her lashes and streamed down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, lifting one hand to her mouth and pressing her fist there to hold back the great, violent sobs.

“Take off your clothes,” Harry said abruptly and Shannon stared at him shock.

“Harry, now? We can’t –”

“Take them off right now, Shannon,” he ordered, “Or I’m going to rip that damned t-shirt apart getting it off you. It’s my shirt, anyway.”

Shannon was still fighting back her tears, but shakily she pulled up the old, thin shirt over her head. Harry took it from her and threw it deliberately across the room and then reached up and tugged her down against his warm, male skin.

Even distraught, she savored the familiar, masculine scent and laid her head gently on his shoulder. She’d forgotten about the panties at her waist, but Harry apparently hadn’t. He used one hand to jerk on the waistband, until it ripped and he could strip the scrap of fabric from between her legs. Only then did he drag her closer, wrapping his arms around her and trapping her legs under one of his.

“Cry, sweetheart,” he said, “Cry right here where you belong. Once the tears and the grief are gone we can talk about it. But cry for me now, love.”

So she did, and he didn’t let go for even a moment.

Cry For Me Tagged with: , , ,

Mornings

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:00 AM 7 Responses »
Jan 212012

Chris left me snuggled in bed this morning while he headed for the shower. I usually have about twenty minutes between that point and the time I actually need to get out of bed, in which I either sleep or catch up on Twitter and check e-mail. Or read, and then another ten minutes before I open the princess’s door and try to herd her toward breakfast and waking up.

This particular morning I was sleeping. It was raining. The bed was warm. Chris had rubbed my bottom before he got up. I had my teddy bear and all was right in the world.

And then something that was louder than the blasted smoke alarms started, along with a strobe light, all emanating from a point on Chris’s side of the bureau. I glared at it, naturally and tried wake up enough to work out what it was and how to turn it off.

Turns out it was a weather radio, intended to warn us of hurricanes, tsunamis and provide post-earthquake news. Chris came out of the shower dripping, in time to hear the Amber Alert about a child abduction while I sat there, stupefied, and wondered what had happened to my clothes and if I was awake or dreaming.

Of course, I was awake. I slipped on a pajama top as Chris headed back for the shower and the princess’s door flew open across the hall. “Mom, what was that?” she asked, coming through the doorway. (It was open, it wasn’t like she burst in.)

I looked at my pajama pants and concentrated on getting them on in the right direction as I replied that it was the weather radio.

She walked over to the patio door in our bedroom and peeked out. “They didn’t need to tell us it was raining,” she pointed out, in perfect logic. “That’s obvious.”

Pulling on my pajama pants, I started to explain but before I could, she pointed at me. “Mama, you forgot to put on your panties.”

I blinked. I am not allowed to wear panties to bed (or anything else if it’s feasible). “Um,” I said, stumbling a bit as she starred at me pointedly. “Yes, yes I did,” I finally said, not having anything else meaningful to say on the subject.

“I’m going to wear my rainboots today,” she told me then, turning and heading out of the room. “My girl firefighter boots.”

“Good idea,” I mumbled, and followed along in her wake to start the day…

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Battleplans

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:30 AM 1 Response »
Jan 202012

When they’d first married, Harry had made a point of carrying Shannon over the threshold of the little house they’d rented together while he finished law school and she worked as a school nurse. He’d done the same for every new home thereafter, including their snug ski cabin near Lake Tahoe and the little apartment they’d lived in with the three-year-old twins while construction was finished on the big home in the suburbs where they lived now. He’d also made a point of carrying her into each of the bedrooms they’d shared over the years, often whispering inane words in her ears just to hear her laugh helplessly.

He’d never carried her into the blasted guest bedroom in his own house, though, and yet here he was in its bed, staring at the ceiling. Harry wondered if she’d join him, or if she’d make a point by sleeping upstairs in their warm bed while he sulked on the ground floor, forbidden for the moment from climbing the damn stairs. He’d already been kept away from holding her lovely form against his side for the last eight days and if he had to wait until tomorrow, he’d throw one fine tantrum about it as soon as the twins left the house.

Harry hadn’t had an answer for her question in the hospital, three nights earlier. How did they do it? When she’d asked, he’d said simply that they’d have to take it one day at a time, and he supposed that was true. But what he really wanted was a strategy and a battleplan that would win him the war, as though it was a mere court case instead of the most important challenge of his life. Shannon had expected him to be scared by the heart attack, the broken sternum from the surgery, his inability to get out of bed by himself, the months of rehabilitation and time away from work, or any number of other physical obstacles. The truth was, though, that Harry was too consumed with Shannon to pay more than a cursory and requisite amount of attention to himself. The first few days, yes, he’d struggled physically but as the medications settled into his system and he’d become aware of his surroundings, she’d featured as his central obsession. He was prepared for mortality, at least in theory, but as they’d hesitatingly acknowledged the dissonance in their marriage, Harry had realized that there were fates far worse than death, and losing Shannon ranked right up at the top of that list.

Now that he was home, he could devote his time to her. He’d been assured he’d have plenty of time to read or simply stare at the wall, for he was strictly forbidden by both Shannon and his partners from even thinking about his clients or the firm. There was to be a daily regimen of exercise, cardio-therapy, and napping, of course, but he’d never had such an opportunity before to devote nearly all of his time and attention to his wife.

If he was more sure of success, he’d be looking forward to it. It seemed such a pleasant way to pass the time – certainly more enjoyable than playing solitaire or watching old episodes of those far-fetched CSI episodes.

As it was, she hadn’t yet lost her temper and that worried him. As long as she kept her emotions bottled up and controlled, he had little chance of really breaking down the walls she’d constructed. Still, he didn’t want to tear down that wall in a frontal attack. The only way to do that was to blame her and lose his temper with her.

Harry couldn’t do it, not even if it was the quickest means to the end he wanted.

The first thing, he growled inwardly, was to get her to sleep in the damn bed with him. As it was, if he wanted her, he’d have to bloody well text her cell phone – he couldn’t even go upstairs in search of her. Chances were that one of the boys would answer the summons and he’d have to create a reason for calling for her. He knew very well there was a foot of mail, a refrigerator full of barely-touched casseroles from family and friends and a mountain of laundry; the twins hadn’t bothered to pack clean laundry but had dumped the contents of their respective laundry hampers into suitcases as an alternative to packing. Shannon, mother that she was, was incapable of sending them back to college the next day with dirty laundry in their bags.

She’d be exhausted, again, by the time she got to bed, not paying any attention to her own needs.

Harry wanted to throw something, but the only thing he had handy was the damn cardiac heart pillow with his bypasses drawn on one side beside the surgeon’s signature, and he’d need the bloody thing to get out of the bed. If he threw it, he’d be stuck there even if his bladder objected.

Frustration welled and he twisted in the bed even as the door opened. Harry looked up, hopeful, but it was Sam who carried in a glass of water and a Dixie cup full of medication. Harry narrowed his eyes. “Where’s your mother?” he asked directly.

Sam stared at him as Harry used the cardiac pillow to cradle his chest as he sat up. “Jesus, Dad, if that’s all the better your manners have become since we left home, you’re bloody lucky Mom hasn’t shot you. Ever heard the words hello or thank you?”

Sam’s sarcastic words so much mirrored Harry’s over the boys’ teenage years that Harry barely blinked. “You know very well she doesn’t own a gun,” he countered, using Sam’s often-repeated words against him.

“Seriously, Dad,” Sam rolled his eyes, handing Harry the glass and then the Dixie cup, “I’m supposed to give you the standard instructions about taking them one at a time, tell you which one is supposed to relieve constipation, which one is the lopressor, which one is the vitamin, and on and on, but I can’t remember any of it.”

Harry smiled. He already knew which pill was which and Shannon was still a nurse at heart. She’d devoured everything about his treatment and he trusted her implicitly.

“Thank you for coming home, son,” he said after he swallowed the first pill.

“Yeah, and if we stay longer, you’ll be thanking us for going back too. Mom will have more time for you with us out of your hair,” Sam assured him. “And no, neither of us need money, have gotten caught drinking underage, knocked up any girls, inked or pierced anything visible, or even screwed up a class. We’re bloody boring, if you want to know the truth. The girls seem to love that straight arrow shit, just like you said.”

Harry tried not to laugh at the cynical sound in his son’s voice. “You’re a college student, have good grades, are probably willing to help them with whatever course they’re struggling in, have successful parents, and decent in appearance,” he said helpfully. “With a future in a law firm if you want it, or a future in any other field that has taken your fancy. Of course they love it; you’re husband material, son.”

Sam coughed and choked, then spit out, “Jesus Christ, Dad. What makes you say that?” he finally gasped.

“How in the world did you think I was lucky enough to find your mother, son?” Harry asked.

Sam stared at him, aghast, and then turned to leave the room. “You’re delirious,” he said. “Or absolutely right. Either way, I suddenly want to get kick-ass drunk.”

“Wait until your mother’s in bed with me before you drink the beer in the refrigerator, Sam,” Harry said mildly, looking away so that Sam could escape. “Take it upstairs so she doesn’t hear, and for pete’s sakes, take the trash out to recycling in the morning before you go.”

“Whatever,” Sam said, already halfway out the door.

Harry chuckled. He’d lay a hundred dollar bet now that the twins would have Shannon in the bedroom with him, convinced she was exhausted, within a half hour. They might not talk, but he’d hold her while she slept.

Victory came one battle at a time, and this victory would be especially sweet.

 

Battleplans Tagged with: , , , ,

The Birdcage

Posted by Serenity Everton at 12:45 PM No Responses »
Jan 192012

Shannon dreamed she was in a birdcage. Frantic, her wings fluttered anxiously and hopelessly, until she slammed into the metal wires again and again. She was alone, trapped, and frenzied, and there was no escape.

In desperation, she flew harder and faster than she’d ever flown at the catch on the cage door. To her utter surprise, it flew open and she was … free.

Even more desperate, she flapped her wings in pure panic, screaming for help but there was no way for her to stay aloft outside of the cage. Shannon fell in a terrifying, dizzying rush to the floor and laid there, stunned.

At his bare, beautifully formed feet.

It wouldn’t have taken a pop psychologist two seconds, she groused inwardly as she sat on the couch in the hospital room, to see the significance in that dream. She’d tried to escape from him, and had instead fallen blindly at his feet. Shannon was consumed with guilt, and she knew it.

What had she missed in her selfish introspection that had made her not see what was happening? The strange new tiredness that seemed to afflict him in the evenings she had assumed to be a new disinterest in intimacy with her. The occasional, unexplained looks of pain on his face of which he had not complained? She had taken those to be unspoken irritation with her as he often had that look when he was annoyed, rather than actual, inexplicable discomfort in his shoulder and neck. She’d even dismissed the sudden increase in his consumption of Rolaids to be a simple effect of aging and had responded by limiting the garlic in their meals, rather than asking him about it, even when his apparent bouts with indigestion and nausea didn’t improve.

She flipped the page absently, less than half her attention on the book. Shannon had burst out of that cage two – no, three – weeks ago now. Harry had picked up her little lost soul as she’d laid on the floor at his feet and soothed it a bit, metaphorically kissed her forehead and sat her … where?

The only thing he’d felt he needed to say, in that horrible moment in the kitchen, was that he loved her. He’d said it since then, too, and watched her in a way he’d never had. He was brooding, even now, and a bit grumpily possessive and protective, even when those two aims are at odds. Shannon, you need a good night’s rest, he’d said. But to be honest, I want you here. One of the boys can stay, but they’re almost as much work as being alone. You make everything easier. Better.

Shannon didn’t mind. She’d rather be here, honestly, than tossing and turning in the empty bed at home. Of course, he was supposed to be sleeping and wasn’t. He was staring at her again, brooding.

“Why did you decide to cut your hair?” Harry asked her.

Shannon blinked, and looked up at him, blindly marking the page and setting aside the book. She clasped her hands in her lap and considered. It had been one of her first acts of independence, she remembered, determinedly thinking of those heart-wrenching days after she’d decided he didn’t want her. She’d needed to feel different, new. Shedding eight inches of ebony curls had been like cutting off her nose, or maybe something more erogenous. While the scissors had clipped, she’d had visions of Harry, his mouth buried in the hair at the back of her nape, raw words of passion in her ear, his hand alternately tracing the locks and winding his hand in them tightly to move her head where he wished it.

Why was he asking now? She’d half-expected an eruption that first night, but he’d simply stared at her for a minute and turned away when she didn’t offer an explanation. Now he wasn’t turning away, he was insisting on an answer. She could practically feel the intimidation pouring off of him; in another setting, law clerks and lesser beings would be fleeing in terror before an impending stampede of commands.

Shannon had always been somewhat immune to that broadcast of power. And to be truthful, she was infinitely relieved that his personality and presence were re-asserting themselves so dramatically, so soon. A small stirring of hope rose up, both that he was pushing open a door between them and that he might return to his relatively healthy self.

“I’m waiting,” he said, his eyes narrowing at her even as he infused the quiet words with determination.

At least he hadn’t arrogantly adopted impatience, as he might have done to a recalcitrant witness.

“I-I was-was,” Shannon began awkwardly, pausing to lick her lips before starting over, “I was testing my wings, I think.” She blinked, then hesitantly explained as she looked down at her hands, “I thought I wanted to be … different.”

“How did it feel?” Harry asked her. She looked at him puzzled, and he shrugged carefully and clarified, “How did it feel to declare your independence from me – from us - like that, without so much as a word to me?”

Shannon’s mouth fell open and she gaped at his suddenly stony countenance for just a second before she slammed it shut. It never had been wise to dismiss Harry’s intellect; he was ruthless professionally and had just applied the same quicksilver logic to her behavior and arrived at the conclusion just as instantaneously. Tears welled up and she looked back at her hands. “It was awful,” she whispered. “I felt as if I was cutting out my heart, or maybe  my soul.”

“That’s because you were carving out my soul, and my soul is your heart. And your heart is my soul,” he said softly.

“You didn’t say a word,” Shannon said after a moment.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Harry agreed, “So I said nothing. Maybe I should have had a tantrum instead. Maybe I should have raved about it, spanked you to your senses like bloody caveman and forbidden you to even think of doing something so desperate to get my attention ever again. But honestly, I couldn’t. I was too damn tired to do anything more than hurt.”

Shannon’s throat swelled with guilt and regret. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered in the dim room.

Harry was quiet for a long minute and when he spoke, his voice was low. “I’m sorry too. I-I-I knew something wasn’t quite right but I kept telling myself it would wait, that I needed to get past this case or that meeting or some holiday. I’m honestly shocked you haven’t ripped up at me about it yet. You’ve said you loved me, but I was wondering if maybe you had succeeded in carving out that part of my soul.”

She bit her lip and choked back a sob. “No, I was waiting until you healed a bit more and we were home,” she admitted. She bent forward and laid her head on her knees. “So what happens now?” she asked.

“You let your hair grow back out, and talk to me before you cut it next time,” he said, resting his head against the back of the recliner. “I never could refuse you anything, as you well know, and I would hardly upend our marriage over a haircut. And while your hair is growing, why don’t we see about growing my soul and your heart all back together in one piece?”

He’d sat her back on her perch inside the birdcage and his hand was still with her, soothing her.

“I’d like that,” Shannon said shyly. “How do we do it?”

The Birdcage Tagged with: , , , , ,

Wading

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:00 AM 2 Responses »
Jan 182012

She should be sleeping. He should be sleeping. Harry sat carefully back in the recliner and just stared at her instead, soaking in her feet crossed at the ankles, the long socks up her legs over a pair of old peach tights and the long, ivory sweater dress she’d sleep in tonight because it would still seem presentable in the clear light of the morning.

Shannon was reading from one of those old books she was forever bringing home from used bookstores and flea markets. He knew it would be a love story – something Austen-esque. Her glasses were perched on her little turned-up nose and her hair fluffed about her ears.

She’d cut her hair two weeks ago and he already missed the long curls that used to bounce on her shoulders and spill over her pillow as she slept. Harry had been shocked when he’d come home and seen those luxuriant locks missing. It wasn’t that she’d needed to ask his opinion or seek his permission, but he wished he’d known. Harry would have liked one last night to rub his face in the fragrant long curls, to wrap his fingers in them and tug her head back so he could lean down to kiss her.

He hadn’t known what to say, of course, and she hadn’t mentioned it, so there the haircut sat on her head, one more example of what he still thought was a strange rift between them: a list of things they couldn’t talk about for no other reason than they hadn’t talked about them.

She still smelled delicious. She’d said, repeatedly, that she loved him. She hadn’t left him, except to shower and answer dozens of phone messages, and then only when their sons stayed with him. She’d held his hand, kissed his forehead, helped him wash and perform even more painfully personal functions. Her hands had traced the lines of his face with extreme gentleness as she’d helped him shave. She’d taken copious notes on his aftercare, read voraciously about the new diet and a myriad of medications. She’d taken care of his cell phone, both texts and calls, his e-mails, his parents, his mail and any other complication that arose without complaint.

She’d slept very little, but then again, he knew she hadn’t been sleeping before. It was yet another item on the list of things they hadn’t discussed, that she hadn’t brought to him. He ached with the desire to have her on his lap again, her head snugged against his neck as she poured forth all that she’d pent up that day into his ears. How many months had it been since she’d done that? How many more would it be before she could again.

They had to start somewhere. The room was dim, the nurse not due back for another hour or two. They were both awake. But where did they start?

She blew out a long breath and chewed her lower lip, twisting one of the short curls that framed her face now around her finger.

It was as good of a place as any.

“Why did you decide to cut your hair?” Harry asked.

 

Wading Tagged with: , , , ,

Golden Silence

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:45 AM 1 Response »
Jan 172012

Harry blinked, then closed his eyes against the dim light. There was a strange man’s voice – a younger man’s voice – but Shannon’s hand clutched his almost compulsively.

He could hardly breathe, and tried to suck in air, struggled, only to suddenly realize his throat was open —

Harry lunged up, intending to pull the uncomfortable, choking thing from his mouth, but he did no more than fight against fabric straps.

Panic welled, the man’s soothing cadence broke off, and Harry heard – actually heard – Shannon speak to him, beg him, the words thick with tears. “Please,” she said, “Please lie still, Harry. Please.”

It had been too long since he’d heard that warm, pleading voice. He acquiesced immediately, as much to comfort her overt anxiety as anything else, and then realized how disconnected he felt. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t control his breathing.

Harry focused on her low, intimate cadence, and felt the warmth of her breath against his ear. How he’d ached to hear that husky whisper again. Harry had gotten out of bed and gone in search of her, at a loss to explain her behavior in recent weeks. He’d been half-angry, frustrated and hurt over her sudden penchant to leave their bed at first light and the distant way she’d treated him and them, and he’d had enough. He had to know.

Shannon hadn’t been in the living room. He’d walked through it and into the kitchen, and rather than find her there, it had been dark and cold. Shannon always made coffee first. He’d leaned against the counter, ready to howl with defeat and call out loud to her when the odd exhaustion he’d felt for weeks now washed over him again and he stumbled backward, struggling to stay on his feet.

She’d been there, then, the light glow of her skin shining through the dimness. Shannon said his name and he thought he’d said goodbye, or was that hello?

Either way, she’d screamed but he was fading before the pain in his shoulder and couldn’t respond.

It was a damned hospital bed.

He gripped her hand harder and concentrated on making his fingers squeeze hers.

She gasped and clasped her second hand around their intertwined fingers. “Lie still, please,” she repeated more clearly. “There are tubes and monitors everywhere and you’re drugged. It’s going to be hard for awhile, but you’ll be fine, Harry.”

Harry tried to nod but it was more like a shrug.

“Dad went to get the twins from college; they’ll be here tonight. You know they’ll be a ruckus if you’re not walking around and able to put them in their place by then.”

Her voice was trembling, and his brain hurt from trying to follow her but she rushed on, determined to reach him.

“Your parents have been in the waiting room all day, Harry. I think your mom’s going to end up in the next bed if they have to wait much longer for good news.”

In desperation, he squeezed her fingers, hard this time, and then let go. Her fingers slid from his and she made to take his hand again but he was lifting it, ever so slowly, watching to make sure it acted as he thought his brain was telling it. Shaking, he laid it on her cheek and squeezed gently, then concentrated on setting his palm against her heart. She was still wearing the ridiculous old law school t-shirt of his that she slept in. Her face was pale, and the dark smudges under her eyes meant she hadn’t slept.

But she was silent, until one of her hands came back and covered his.

“I love you too,” she whispered and Harry’s eyes closed in relief.

Golden Silence Tagged with: , , , ,

Broken Hearts

Posted by Serenity Everton at 6:51 AM 3 Responses »
Jan 162012

What was she to do, anyway?

Shannon stayed on the sofa in the sunroom, staring blindly out into the backyard. She’d gotten up early and made her way there. He’d once again come to bed hours later than her. She’d woken to him in the shower – unusual for that time of night – and it had taken him an exceptionally long time.

She suspected what he’d been doing, but instead of confronting him and creating a scene at midnight, she’d rolled over and pretended to be soundly asleep when he finally slid into the bed beside her.

He couldn’t have taken even a second to look at her, and he was sleeping as far from her as possible. The covers had dipped between them, as if sealing the separation.

Shannon burned with resentment, but it was a state of affairs that seemed to define her nights now, so she had closed her eyes and tried to ignore it.

Of course she hadn’t slept well after that. She rarely did these days. After curling up on the sofa with the thick afghan they’d brought back from a magical cruise in Scandinavia, Shannon had slept an hour. It was a weekend morning, so the house remained quiet and still. The coffee pot didn’t automatically click on, there was no alarm upstairs. He wasn’t showering. Outside, dark clouds lowered, threatening, and soon the rain would beat down on glass around her.

Shannon thought she might be happy for the noise. The silence screamed at her, encouraged her to cry again, reminded her of loss and emptiness. Had it always been this way – had they always been half-empty – and the presence of their two teenage boys just a mask?

She swallowed and pondered, but couldn’t believe it. He’d attended to her too solicitously, loved her too thoroughly, seen to her pleasure and her fulfillment regularly, even denying himself at times to bring her to a state of wanton desperation.

Lately, though maybe only in the last week and in response to her new policy of not offering anything she didn’t want rejected, it seemed as though he’d been more tired in the evenings. He’d brought work home two nights – not so unusual now that she’d thought about it – but he’d shut himself in the study with it instead of spreading it over the coffee table and taking his laptop to the recliner, where she could join him. The tears welled up and she pushed them back.

A defeated sigh left her lips. It was Saturday, and she’d not asked him what he wanted, but she planned to explore the farmer’s market by the wharf and then maybe dip her feet in the ocean if it was raining. She loved the beach in the rain and there was no reason to deny herself, just because he wasn’t at her side.

Shannon folded the afghan and left it on the end of the couch. No doubt she’d need it again. The sunroom wasn’t heated, though it warmed over the course of the day, even in the winter. But it was her retreat – her place. He and the twins had always treated it as her space, and she’d grown used to the idea.

She stepped into the kitchen, then, and her eyes flew open wide. He was there, leaning against the counter.

Impossibly pale.

“Harry?” she whispered, and watched his fingers grip the granite convulsively. “Harry!”

His lips were dry, but he opened them and smacked them shut again. “D-doctor,” he whispered. “L-l-love you.”

And then he closed his eyes and she screamed as he slid to the floor.

 

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