The Conversation
      Chapter 5
 

She begins shaking her head back and forth.

“No, no, no.”

She tries to rip her hand away from his, but he doesn’t let her. Instead, he holds her forearms tighter.

“Shh. It’s true.”

“Why!?”

“Why?? You really have to ask me that? Baby, I couldn’t have… I’d rather have been dead than living every day knowing what I did to you and not having you in my life. Even then… I could’ve accepted not ever being with you, as long as you were alive, but…”

His emotions get the best of him and he stops before he begins to drown in them. She breaks the silence and in sincere amazement and shock, she probes deeper into his frame of mind at the time.

“Even then? Even when you knew I’d killed your brother? You would've gone that far?”

His eyes match hers in amazement. His body, however, relaxes, as he releases her arms and settles back on the bed, his left hand never leaving her right.

“You told me what he did to you, and I believed you,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s as simple as that. Maybe he didn’t deserve to die, but you didn’t deserve to be harassed and nearly killed, either.”

“Was that why? Was that why you couldn’t do it? Because he attacked me?”

He knows that she wants to know what ultimately forced him to push her into the river instead of ending her life.

“I don’t know… I don’t.”

There’s defeat in his voice. She can tell that he’s still trying to figure it all out himself.

“I think you do.”

As she looks down at their hands, she remembers the first time she put that ring on his finger. Unlike her, he didn’t wear one until the formal wedding at the house. His fingers, long and sleek. She turns his hand over, gliding over his palm. So soft. These hands that have caressed her, loved her and made her feel so good, they’re the same hands that threw her to the sand in anger that night. They’re the same hands that pushed her up against the rocks and held her head so tight that she was afraid to breath. These were the same hands that forced her into the boathouse that night, turned her around and held death to her head. Her eyes close as she’s taken back to that night. Still staring at his hands, a tear falls from the edge of her nose and splashes onto his smooth skin. She’s there. Quietly, she remembers…

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to know that you’re going to die? To just know? To know, without any doubt, that your life is over… it… it’s peaceful.”

She closes her eyes as the tears continue to form and fall like the rain onto his skin.

“Until you turned me around, I thought I’d get out of it all. But once I couldn’t look you in the eye, I knew. I knew I couldn’t possibly get through to you. I guess that’s why you did it?”

She lifts her head and under her half-opened eyelids, she looks at him. No tears, but his eyes are remembering everything like hers are. In this time of pain, their connection intensifies. In that one look, so much is understood. He slowly nods his head. A small smile forms on her lips and takes some kind of small comfort in knowing that he knew, even then, that she would always get to him. She drops her head again.

“I turned around… I remember crying… I remember being scared… and then…”

He turns his body more towards her, taking her hand in both of his before reaching up and cupping her scarred face in his palm and slowly lifting it up even with his.

“Then what?”

His eyes. She’s safe in these eyes. The love that usually encompasses his eyes has been temporarily replaced by guilt and sorrow. She continues to lose herself in these eyes, trying hard to make him understand that no matter what’s said tonight, he has her heart and he always will. Her mind retreats to that night again…

“Then… I thought about my father. I thought about how I wished I could’ve said goodbye to him, just one last time. I thought about my mother… my mom… and how much I missed her and how happy I would be to see her soon. All of this flashed through me before you pushed me.”

Her tears aren’t as heavy now, as thoughts of her parents invade her, making her feel more at peace.

“I didn’t want to die. But if I was going to, I wanted them to be with me when I did. Then there was that second. That second when I was so still and you started to come closer to tell me to jump. For that second, I thought the gun was going off. I thought the pressure I felt behind me was the…force… I didn’t know. I thought I was dead. I didn’t realize I was still alive until I was under the water.”

She can’t hold it in anymore; having to experiencing these feelings again is too much to take. Her body is shaking, the tears are now flowing recklessly and she needs him. She needs those same hands around her. She gets up onto her knees and he quickly follows, holding her gently and letting her sob into his shoulder. Over and over again, he hears her trying to say something. He backs up to give her some room and he hears her as she continues to say these same words into his chest as her fists ball up and half-heartedly start beating him.

“I didn’t want to die! I didn’t want to die! I didn’t want to die!”

Her voice is hoarse and there is no anger in these words, but pain. His heart tears as he sees his wife crumble in front of him. Knowing that he did this to her, that this pain that runs so deep inside of her, that has become a part of her, is because of him – it’s killing him.

He grabs her wrists tightly as he feels his tears mix with the remnants of hers on his cheek. She gives in immediately, frees her wrists and throws them around his neck, pulling him tighter, the sobs still coming in waves.

The guilt is consuming him now. She loves him, she needs him, and he knows that with everything in him. But how could she? Soon, her cries subside and her face is buried in his neck. He can feel her tears rinsing his skin, soaking through his shirt. Still on their knees in the middle of the bed, he rubs her back the way she always asks him to when she’s upset.

Her life, it was almost over once, by his hands. As the pain washes through her veins, she holds him tighter, for she had never known what her life was before she met him. This man, who could’ve killed her, didn’t. He saved her. For some reason, fate smiled on her that night and allowed her life to truly begin. A life filled with passion and love and devotion, at the levels that even romance novels and sweeping epics can only hope to reach.

She begins to pull back from him and puts her hands along both sides of his guilt-ridden face. She wants nothing more than to take that pain away from him, to take it all on herself. She wipes a stray curl from his forehead and continues down his face, freeing him of his tears. His eyes, those eyes. She rubs alongside his temple, remembering his eyes after he pulled her out of the water, the concern, the panic… the love. She knows now.

“Thank you,” she says as her eyes burrow into his.

“Thank you? What? For putting you through that? Through this?! For what? For… how can you thank me? Look what I did to you!”

He falls back, sitting on his heels. She bends down to bring his eyes back to hers.

“For loving me enough to push me instead of pulling the trigger.”

“But I…”

“You gave me my life that night, Danny. If you ever know anything in your life, know that. Know that no matter how much I hated what happened, that I wouldn’t take it back for anything. Not for anything. Our life together has been anything but easy… but we've fought through everything. That night, it was no different. That night, we won. We won."

He still doesn’t want to believe her. He starts shaking his head in defiance.

“Listen to me, listen to me… are you saying that you regret loving me then? Do you regret that feeling that came over you when you made the decision to save me instead of kill me?”

“What?? No! That's crazy, that’s not what I’m saying… I just… I have no idea how you can possibly forgive me for what I did to you.”

“Forgive you? There’s nothing to forgive you for. We were both in this game that Mick and your mother were controlling. We were pawns. We were both being used, it wasn’t just me there that night. I wasn’t the only person who thought their life was ending. I saw it, Danny… I saw it in your eyes… maybe I never wanted to admit it, and after a while, I guess I just forgot about it… but I remember now. I remember the way you protected me, the way you took me into your soul that night.”

"How can you do this? You should've hated me. You should still hate me. I can't… I had no idea what it was like for you. I mean, I thought I did… but I didn't. I was so caught up in myself, in my feelings, that I never really thought about yours."

"Yes you did. How could you know how I was feeling if I never told you?"

"I should just know. I should've just known."

"You do… now. You know me better than anyone ever has. You read my thoughts so well sometimes it scares me. You know exactly what I need. But you didn't then, you couldn't. And I know that. Just like I don't know how you were feeling then."

She settles him back to the pillows to sit side by side.

"I don't know if I can tell you… I felt like I wasn't even there. Looking back now, remembering now, I feel like it wasn't even me holding that gun to you. For a while after that night I would stay up at night, watching you, thinking about it. Every day I became less and less like that man on the docks. Every night I couldn't help but think, `what if my finger slipped?', `what if she jerked back just right to make the gun go off?'… I couldn't stop thinking about that look on your face – how you wanted to get so far away from me – and there you were, sleeping in my bed. How you must've hated me…"

"I never hated you. I never did."

"I followed you, I hurt you… I hurt you… how can you love me?"

"How can I love you… there's no question anymore. Danny. Oh, Danny. How can I not?"

"I… I knew my life would end without you. Every time I saw you, with Jesse, with Drew, alone, whatever, I knew. I was dying a slow death before I met you. Slow, painful, lonely… you made me live again. I guess I was being selfish. Yeah, I was. I needed you to be alive because you made me feel like… like I was worth something. I can't explain it. I'm sorry, I can't explain it. It just is."

He smiles. He remembers what she said earlier this night, "Like I was yours…".

"I belong with you, do you know that?" he says, hoping to find acceptance in her eyes.

"I didn't know it then, but I do now."

"Sometimes I think about things… things that are bigger than us… reasons for living… why we're born… why us… why you and why me… why were you and I thrown together? I kept thinking and asking and only one answer made sense."

"What's that?"

"I was born… to be with you. That's all."

He reaches to her stomach and the small bundle that protrudes under her t-shirt. Her hands join his and they caress their daughter lovingly…

"And to help make her."

They break out into laughter. For this night is about their life… it's about love and hate, guilt and pain, sympathy and adoration… and it's filled with tears and joy. It's about their past, their present, and their future… together