Heart on a Chain (37 page)

He stares at me a few eternal seconds longer while a thousand thoughts swirl in my head, each fighting to get out, none succeeding. Finally he turns and begins walking away, ignoring the tears running down my cheeks. He pauses, with a murmured, “I’m tortured, Kate,” before continuing away from me.

“
Henry,” his name is out before I can stop it, before I even know I intend to say it. He stops, frozen, and then slowly turns back toward me. His face is creased with misery, hurt shining from his eyes, every line of his body reflecting despair. And I realized that that’s because of me.

I love him more than I ever thought it possible to love someone, and here I am, causing him so much pain when all I ever wanted was for him to be happy. With that my decision is made. I wipe my tears away, squaring my shoulders.

“
I want to tell you a story,” I say. “It’s about a girl, who fell in love with a boy. But she didn’t think she was worthy of this boys love, or anyone’s love. She thought she had to push him away so he could be happy.” I watch as slow understanding crosses his features, though still tempered by the idea that I might not be saying what he wants. I begin to walk slowly toward him. “She was a foolish girl, miserable and lonely, crying herself to sleep every night because she missed him so much. But that didn’t matter, what mattered was that he was better off without her.” He shakes his head, opening his mouth to protest, but I’m in front of him now, and I place my finger lightly on his lips to stop him. Warmth, and a feeling of
rightness,
flows through me at the contact, nearly derailing my train of thought.

“
But then one day he came to her, and she could see that he was hurting, that
she
had done that,” my hand flattens against his cheek, “that
she
had caused him to ache even though she would rather die a thousand slow, agonizing deaths than cause him one second of pain. And she realized that maybe she’d been wrong.” His hand comes up, capturing mine, pressing my palm against his lips. “She decides that maybe she
could
make him happy and she wondered, if she asked
really
nice, if he might forgive her, and give her another chance. That he might let her spend the rest of her life showing him how sorry she is and how much she loves him.”

His free hand comes up to my cheek, cupping my jaw.

“
I’ve heard this story,” he smiles.

“
Oh yeah?” I ask, losing myself in his dark eyes that are now shining with elation. “How does it end?”

“
It doesn’t end,” he says, pulling me close. “It begins, like this.”

As his mouth comes down to mine, my heart lifts free of its burden and soars. I’m back where I belong.

Epilogue

Henry

I slide my hand
beneath the table, running my fingers lightly, slowly down her arm until our hands meet. She immediately turns her hand over, tangling her fingers with mine. It works out really well, my being left-handed and her being right, so that I can hold her hand whenever I want and not have it interrupt her meticulous note-taking.

She doesn’t look my way, keeping her eyes resolutely turned to the front of the room, ostensibly listening to each word the professor spouts. I know her so well, though. The corners of her mouth turn up, and the slightest sigh escapes her lips.

I’ll be getting a kiss after class.

I always knew Kate was stubborn; I didn’t realize the exact extent until I decided just how our lives should go.

Turns out Kate has her own ideas.

She stayed at the community college for a full additional year, while I attended the university. No matter how much I cajoled, threatened or pleaded, she did what she wanted. It was torture, with both our schedules so full, to see so little of her.

Last year she transferred to the university, and though this is the only class we have together this year, we worked our schedules out so that we are in school as much as possible at the same time—and therefore home at the same time.

Kate lives with her father, whom she has grown very close to. John has turned his life completely around for Kate—a sentiment I completely empathize with. He’s finally being the father he denied her of for so many years.

She refuses to marry me.

She says she won’t marry me until she finishes her degree and can support me while I go to medical school. She’s less than a semester away from her teaching degree.

She wants to teach fourth grade, she says, because for her, that’s when she needed someone to recognize how her home life was deteriorating. She wants to be in the position to do that for someone else if needed.

My compassionate, courageous Kate would be just the person to do that.

I stare at Kate, compelling her to look my way. She glances down at her paper where she’s taking notes, sliding her eyes sideways to glance up at me from under long, dark lashes.

“
I love you,” I mouth silently, rubbing my thumb across her palm in her lap. She smiles openly at me.

“
Me, too,” is her mouthed response.

Absently, I reach up and muss my hair, and her eyes turn liquid. I laugh silently. It never fails to amaze me, the things she loves about me. She’s told me repeatedly that she finds the habit “adorable.” I’m not sure how I feel about that—it doesn’t sound too manly to be “adorable.” But then she looks at me like that, when I do it, and suddenly I don’t mind being adorable.

I don’t know exactly how many times I’ve proposed to her. A lot. But she’s going to have to say yes soon. Not just because I can’t wait any longer—though that’s certainly true.

This time I have the deal breaker in my pocket. I’ve been accepted to pre-med in Maine, almost twenty-five hundred miles away—and I’m not going without her. She’ll say yes because it’s the only way she’ll go with me, if we have our union bound legally. She’s very firm on that, not living together while unmarried. Part of it is her personal values; part of it, I believe, is that she’s afraid I’ll leave her still. She doesn’t know that I’ll never leave, and if
she
goes, I’ll follow her to the ends of the earth.

Oh, she’ll protest. She’ll tell me that she isn’t good enough to be a doctor’s wife, that others in my profession will shun her. She’s wrong.

Kate has never been able to see herself as she truly is. A spurt of anger shoots through me when I think of what was done to her, why she has such a flawed vision of herself. I tamp it down; she’s taught me about forgiveness, about letting go, so I’m working on it.

What she doesn’t know is what I see. If anyone tries to look down on her, tries to make her think she is less than them, she will raze them with her quiet dignity. She isn’t the cowering mouse she used to be.

I look over at her once again, see the curve of her mouth as she bumps her shoulder against mine.

“
Quit staring at me,” the gesture says. The great thing about gestures is how easy they are to ignore. She glances at me and I see it—that glint of pride and confidence that comes through when she isn’t guarding against it.

They won’t be thinking she’s not good enough for me; they’ll be wondering
why
she’s with me. I don’t really care, as long as she is with me.

“
That’s it for today,” the professor announces, and I quickly shove my books into my backpack, as Kate slowly layers her books by size in her backpack that I bought her. Impatiently, I scoot hers off the edge of the table into the bag, dragging her up with me amidst her protests, hurrying her out of the room.

“
Henry, what—”

I cut her words off with my mouth as I push her into a nearby alcove, needing to have her in my arms. She responds immediately, flame meeting flame.

“
What was that for?” she asks breathlessly when I let her up for air.

“
Does it matter?” I tease.

“
Nope,” she grins, pulling me back down for another kiss.

Yup, I’m definitely going to have to push for that wedding—and soon. I can’t imagine anything better, anything I want more, or anything I will ever want more, than to hold her in my arms.

For always.

The End

For my beautiful Lindsay, without whom this story never would have come to be. I wished for you so hard, and have never been anything but grateful that I got even more than I wished for!

Other Smashwords titles by Cindy C Bennett:

Geek Girl

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/17789

Please visit the author’s website at

www.cindycbennett.com

and her blog at

http://cindybennett.blogspot.com

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This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to

actual persons, living or dead, real places or events are

entirely coincidental. All characters, places and events

are products of the author’s imagination.