The Conversation
      Chapter 15
 

"Why!? Why is it so different for you? Why do I have to play by a different set of rules in your life!?"

He rushes to kneel before her, holding her hands. If bringing this up causes her too much stress, and gives her problems with the baby, he'd never forgive himself.

"Shhh, calm down. You need to calm down. Are you ok? Don't forget to breath when you yell at me, ok?"

He strokes her forearms and flashes her a grin. She doesn't return it as she takes her hands out of his and takes a few deep breaths. He gets the hint and goes back to sitting on the ottoman a few feet in front of her.

"Fine, I'm calm. I'm calm. But just tell me, please, tell me why it's different?"

"I… it's different because I had no idea how you felt about me, but you…you knew, you knew how much I loved you, and if you had done what I did… You knew…"

Her calm demeanor doesn't last, as he seems to be able to say the very thing that sets her off. She doesn't scream, instead the intensity is felt with the depth and weight of every word she says. The tears have returned to their familiar home under her eyes as she ignores their pleas. They've come more in the last 12 hours than ever before. They've become more than an uncomfortable nuisance, they've become a comfortable friend, a safe and warm blanket in these times when she feels vulnerable and alone.

"Exactly… don't you think that's why it hurt even more? Because I knew how you felt about me, and you were still capable of doing this. How was I supposed to trust anything I ever felt again? How was I supposed to believe in us… believe in you… when the one thing I knew, that you loved me, wasn't enough to keep you from her bed. That apparently, it was just some kind of unreliable feeling that meant nothing to you…"

"That's not true…"

She ignores him and continues, tears engulfing her face like wildfire as her ire boils within her.

"…and if you were able to do that then…you had said that you knew… that you knew that I loved you then too, deep down. So how is this different, huh? Wasn't that you who said that earlier? Get your story straight, Danny! I need to know the game before I can play along!"

"Stop it, baby, stop this…"

Her voice raises, anger creeping back into her throat. His head is hanging, awaiting the onslaught that, during their multitude of disagreements, has always rendered him helpless.

"No! I'm not stopping this! You cheated on me! Look at me! You might as well have opened my chest and ripped my heart out! All night that night I did everything I could to get the picture out of my head…"

Going back to that night, she takes a breath and relaxes her temper. The sadness taking over.

"The picture of you kissing her, of her hands on you, of her doing things to you that I had only dreamed of. The picture of her skin touching yours… you slept with another woman, Danny… you made love to her…"

His eyes race to meet hers, shocked that those words could cut him so deeply, that the idea of his beautiful Michelle thinking such horrific thoughts could hurt him so much.

"No, baby, no… I did not make love to her. I've never made love to any woman but you. With her… it was just sex…"

As soon as those words cross his lips, he wants to take them back. No matter how true they are, he knows it's the one thing she doesn't want to hear. He's right. The pain sears through her heart as she hears them, it was just sex… she flashes back to the lighthouse - Drew… meant nothing, it meant nothing to, it was nothing - and remembers wishing that it weren't true. A part of her wished that he wasn't capable of such an unfeeling act, not her Danny. If he was going to cheat on her, at least cheat with someone who mattered, don't make what they have a joke, she thought. She tries with everything in her to stop the tears, but everything he says makes them flow that much harder. Every thought she has causes them to increase in volume and strength. They've become a part of her at this point and she could not stop them now, not with a tissue or her sleeves, not even with her own resolve. Finally, she takes a breath that allows her to speak. The pain in her voice is almost too much for him to take, but he lets her feel this pain that's been bottled up for over a year. He owes her this much.

"Just sex. Just sex. Don't you see? There is no such thing as `just sex' to me. I'm finding it really hard to understand how you can separate the two. How you can take off all her clothes and be… with her… that way and not feel something. How can you do that?"

Everything in him is telling him to take those tears away. His heart breaks for her as she gives up trying to wipe them away…they fall like a thundershower onto her lap, creating the most sorrowful puddles on her golden skin.

"I don't know. But I did. I used to, but not anymore. Not since you…"

"No, no, no, don't turn this around. Do not turn this into a declaration of your love for me."

She makes the term sound dirty and disgusting. His voice is calm, but his heart races a mile a minute. How can he make her feel what's in his heart? How can he do that without hurting her more? He has to take that chance. It's now or never. His words carry the weight of the world as he tries to speak his truth without causing her more pain, though at this point, he's not sure if that's possible. With every strength he has, he tries…

"I'm not trying to. But you need to stop looking at me and thinking about how you would've done things. People don't always do what you want them to do, they don't always look at things the way you do. I'm not you, Michelle. You and I, we were so different then… in so many ways, we still are. But just because you don't understand how I was feeling does not mean that those feelings weren't real… it doesn't mean that the pain that I felt wasn't as painful as anything I've ever felt in my life. Do you get that?!"

"Dan…"

His bottom lip curls as he tries to hold back his own tears. He loses the battle as they being to form, glossing over his beautiful brown eyes. He falls to his knees and pries himself between hers. His hands on her hips, he makes sure she looks into his eyes. The very eyes that love her more than life itself… the eyes she trusts.

"No. You had your say, I'm getting mine. Dammit, Michelle… yes, you know, if you had slept with some guy back then it would've killed me, and yes, I know I hurt you. I knew it then, and I know it now. But I was hurting myself too, I hated the fact that I thought I was lucky enough to have you love me… the kind of man I always wanted to be. But when you told me… it all came crashing down… I didn't think you loved me, I didn't think you needed me; I thought you wanted me gone. I didn't have you. I barely had myself… I didn't have anything left, Michelle."

His head finds her lap as his sobs cause both of their bodies to shake. She wraps her hands around his head and kisses the back of his neck. She comforts him briefly before forcing him to look back up at her. His tears, gone from his cheeks, still reside in his eyes. She has to be strong.

"Danny… I don't want to fight about this anymore. I don't… I just need you to know what you… what that night did to me. And whether you believe me or not, I want to try to understand why you did it… but what you're telling me, they sound like excuses."

He backs up, a bit confused and hurt by her suspicion. He sits back up on the ottoman, no more than 2 feet away from her and holds her hands in his.

"I am not making excuses, ok? I'm just telling you how… how I was feeling and how it was for me, ok? I'm not trying to justify anything to you because I honestly don't think there's any justification that you would understand… no, I mean… what I mean is… no, it's not how you would've handled the situation, but it's how I did. It's what I did. I needed to feel in control of something that night, anything. But you know… you know I'm not that man anymore. If you walked out on me tomorrow, I wouldn't go sleep with another woman. I'm not him anymore… and no matter how much I try to tell you how I felt, you're always going to be hurt by it. I know that, and I would do anything to change it, but I can't. I don't think there's any magic words that will make that pain go away for you, because you know, you know that if those words existed, I would say them to you every day. But… I can only tell you now that I would never do that to you… that the kind of man I am now, because of you, would fight. I wouldn't give in like I did that night. I wouldn't give up on you."

She wipes away the untamed tears dancing on his cheeks. Their salts mix with hers as she wipes hers away as well.

"I know what I did to you. I've lived with it every day. I've lived with all of this. Every piece of misery I've brought into your life, I think about it all… all of it, every day…"

Minutes pass before she replies. His words have meant more to her on this day than they ever have before. On this day, more than any other, he's bearing every part of himself for her to see. For as strong as she needs to be, she doesn't deny that her heart is breaking for him. She basks in her sympathy for him, as well as the sorrow she continues to have for herself.

"I loved you so much, Danny. You were in my heart already. I wanted my life to be with you. That night, I wanted us to start over, start fresh. Just you and me…"

"And I wouldn't let us."

"Neither of us would."

The need to explain himself as much as he can consumes him. Before he knows it, he's talking, unsure if she can hear him, unsure if he's making sense, unsure if she would ever be able to understand. Again his words come slowly and are filled with emotion, but this time they're asking for forgiveness, they're asking her to hear them and help him make sense to him.

"Michelle, I didn't know what or who to trust anymore. You were everything to me… you were… every reason I woke up in the morning… you were every reason I was able to put up with my mother… you were every reason why I wanted to be a better man, why I wanted to change everything about my life. All of those dreams, all of those reasons, the minute you told me about the FBI… I couldn't believe them anymore. I didn't believe in anything. Not you, and not me. Yeah, I wanted to hurt you, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job at the time…but I was disgusted with myself. It turned me back into the man I was before I met you. A man I hated, a man I couldn't look at in the mirror. It's not like I never thought about how you felt, that's not true…it's all I did. It's all I do. I think about how you felt…that look in your eye when you found out. I never want to see that look in your eyes again…the hurt, the disappointment. I wish I could tell you… how much I hate myself every day for doing it to you."

"I think you just did."

"We were different people then… different than we are now."

"I know. I know. And I'm willing to take my responsibility in this."

"No baby…"

"Yes. I mean… I still don't think that it was reason enough for you to do what you did, I don't… but I think I'm beginning to understand your reasons for it a little bit more now. But I know I wasn't the only one hurting. I know it sounds like sometimes I think that everything that happened with us back then was what you and your family did to me and that I was the only one who had to suffer, but I know that's not true. I know that I did things… things that hurt you. And to you, the way you grew up, the way you were raised, they hurt you just as much as anything that ever happened to me."

"I'm never gonna hurt you again."

"I know… and neither will I."

A huge weight has been lifted off of both their hearts. To forget what happened, even the worst of what happened in the past, is impossible. To do that, they would have to forget parts of themselves, and neither would wish that upon the other. But to forgive… it was the best possible resolution. Can they reach that place together? Can they both forgive the other for hurting them in the worst possible way? They've begun the passage by confiding in each other, the way that a truly connected couple does. Now, they must find the strength to get past all of this, while still cherishing the foundation on which such strength is born. He has rejoined their hands as he continues.

"You know, a lot of couples… this kind of thing destroys them."

"We never did things the normal way, that's for sure."

They sit in silence, remembering the awkward phases of their life. They didn't do it like every other couple. They didn't flirt or date before they got married. They didn't enjoy a courtship or go to family functions arm-and-arm before they were promised to each other. Their first kiss was not sweet and filled with anticipation, neither was their second. They met, they fought, he forced her into marrying her, and then they had a wedding… all before falling in love. Backwards, yes. Unorthodox, yes. But was it wrong? No. It was their path. Separately, their paths led them to each other, where they belonged. Suddenly, a memory floods back to her.

"Oh my god…"

"What is it baby?"

"That night… you came to me… you let me go… you… you came from her bed…"