Then and Always

by Dani Atkins

  “This … between us … I’m confused … I thought you didn’t …” Oh God, he had robbed me of the art of coherent speech.

  “You thought what?” he prompted gently, taking my hand in his, tenderly lacing our fingers together.

  “That you didn’t want me … well, not in that way.”

  My words must have been so unexpected that they erased the loving smile from his face, replacing it with a look of incredulity. “Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Well, after what happened at the hotel …” My voice trailed away.

  Realization began to dawn in his eyes.

  “You made it pretty clear that night that you didn’t want me.” My voice was hushed, the memory and embarrassment still raw.

  “Is that what you thought?” He ran his hand distractedly through his hair. “I wanted you so much that night I could hardly breathe. You’ll never know how hard it was for me to leave your room that night.”

  “Then why did you?”

  He pulled me toward him then, cradling me against his chest, my head against his neck. His soft breath fanned my forehead as he spoke. “Because it was wrong of me to take advantage of you then. It probably still is now.”

  I gasped out the beginnings of a protest but he silenced me with a finger against my lips.

  “You were so confused that night, nothing made sense to you, and you needed me as a friend then, not a lover. And besides, you were still engaged to Matt.”

  The last doubts of uncertainty began to crumble as he spoke. The strength of what he felt for me was made even more apparent by his leaving my bed that night than if he had stayed. Sarah had been right, Jimmy would never have rejected me unless he had truly thought he was doing the right thing.

  “About Matt …,” I began, and he groaned softly.

  “Do we really have to talk about him?”

  I raised my eyes to his, allowing all the love I felt for him to shine through them like a beacon, letting him know there was nothing I could say that would hurt him here.

  “I just want to let you know that I understand now why you’ve been holding back. And I know you think I still need time to get over breaking up with him, but really I don’t.”

  He looked doubtful at my words.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Matt and I broke up over five years ago. It was finding myself engaged to him now that I was having trouble dealing with, not losing him.”

  I looked over at the clock on the mantelpiece.

  “Okay, my five minutes are up.” I leaned over to kiss his mouth but this time he was the one who drew back.

  “Before I totally lose myself here, can I just say one thing, Rachel?”

  He sounded so earnest that I was suddenly afraid of what I would hear.

  “Tonight. Us. This isn’t just some spur-of-the-moment thing. I need you to know that. What I feel for you … I should have told you a very long time ago. I almost did, in fact.”

  Suddenly the pieces were sliding into place.

  “I knew you were with Matt, but I promised myself that before we all left for university I would tell you how I felt—how I’ve always felt—about you. We even arranged to meet, but that was the night …”

  “… of the accident,” I finished.

  “And after that there never seemed to be the right time to say anything. And then after uni you two were still together, so I thought I’d lost my chance.”

  It broke my heart to think of the pain it must have caused him over the years to see me with someone else and never be able to say anything about it. If I lived to be a hundred, I could never make up for what I had done. “I’m so sorry,” I said brokenly. “Can you ever forgive me for not realizing that you loved me back then?”

  “Then and always,” he corrected gently, his voice husky with emotion.

  “Thank you for waiting for me,” I whispered softly.

  His smile was all I needed in the world right then.

  “My pleasure.”

  The fire crackled quietly in the grate, the fairy lights twinkled in the darkened room, but we saw and heard nothing. Just each other.

  I REALIZED MY father must have guessed what had happened between Jimmy and me by the stupid grin he wore as he greeted me in the kitchen the following morning.

  “You look happy,” was his opening comment. My grin matched his. “What time did Jimmy leave last night?”

  Oh Lord, the man had no subtlety at all.

  “Late,” I confirmed, reaching for the cup of coffee he was handing me. “You know, don’t you?”

  He nodded in confirmation. “Jimmy told me that he wanted to tell you how he felt.”

  So that was what they had been talking about when I was out of the room.

  “Did he actually ask your permission?” I queried, astounded to learn they’d both been so unexpectedly traditional.

  “No. Not my permission exactly. He just wanted to know if I thought you were ready to hear what he had to say—if you were strong enough yet or if I thought you needed more time.”

  “And you said?” I prompted.

  “I told him he had already wasted the last twenty years or so and that he should go right on ahead.”

  “I’m not sure if I was entirely ready to hear it when I was three years old.”

  “But you are now?”

  Did he really need to ask? Wasn’t it written all over my face?

  “Now everything is absolutely perfect.”

  I didn’t know it then, but things were about to get even better.

  MIDNIGHT MASS ON Christmas Eve. I hadn’t been for years, but suddenly it seemed I had a lot to be grateful for. Although Jimmy was on a late shift, he would finish in time to join us for the service.

  I sat by the lounge window and watched the soft snowflakes falling on the road and pavement, waiting for him. Before my eyes the familiar street transformed to a Christmas card idyll. I smiled as even the mundane and boring took on a white shroud of beauty.

  I’d been smiling quite a lot these past few days. Every minute spent with Jimmy filled me with such joy and happiness that he felt more necessary to my existence than the air I breathed. Every minute apart was spent either thinking of him or in heady anticipation of when his familiar knock would sound on the door.

  I could have been a nauseating daughter, wreathed in smiles and wistful glances, if my dad hadn’t been so patently delighted at the turn of events. He was even continuing his mission to give us as much private time together as he could, and was going to bed at night at an increasingly early hour. There were six-year-olds who stayed up later than him these days.

  My father entered the room, already dressed for the weather in heavy topcoat and hat.

  “Is he here yet?”

  “He will be soon,” I assured him. Bright headlights cut through the falling flakes as Jimmy’s car rounded the bend and pulled up beside our house. I snatched up my coat from the chair and hurried to the door, heart already beating faster. It was like being a teenager all over again.

  I stood in the open doorway as he climbed out of the car, mindless of the snow buffeting against me as I waited for him. The intensity of my feelings had taken me by surprise. Since we’d known each other all our lives, I had expected our relationship would be more of a slow burn, and not the raging inferno that I was consumed by.

  “You look like a snow queen,” he murmured, kissing the crystal flakes from my face. “And you haven’t got your coat on,” he chided, noticing that I still held it in my hands. “You’ll get cold.”

  “Not with you here, I won’t,” I said dreamily, but nevertheless slid my arms into the garment he had taken from me and was now holding out. I particularly liked the way he used the wrapping of the long scarf around my neck as a means of drawing me against him for a lingering kiss.

  “Ahem,” came from behind us. We broke apart, not guiltily, but with obvious reluctance. “I hope you two can behave yourself for an hour or so in church,” my father warned.

>   “We’ll do our best, Tony,” promised Jimmy.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” I assured him, tucking my arm under his as we walked down the path to Jimmy’s car. “I’m not going to embarrass you in front of the vicar!”

  The pathway leading up to the church was lined with flickering tea lights in glass jars. The church doors were open, and inside, the choir was singing a familiar carol to greet the large congregation. I paused for a moment on the path, taking it all in: the church spire covered in snow, the glowing candles, the music, and, of course, the man at my side.

  “So incredibly beautiful,” I breathed in wonderment.

  His eyes ignored our surroundings and everyone else; they were only upon me.

  “Incredibly beautiful,” he echoed.

  The service seemed unbelievably touching. I even cried at the reading delivered by children from the local primary school. And when I went to reach into my bag for a tissue, Jimmy already had one out and ready for me. I dabbed at my eyes, not ashamed by the emotion. Tears of happiness were nothing to be embarrassed about.

  As we filed back out into the night, Jimmy drew me to one side of the path, out of the way of the emerging congregation, who were hurrying back to their cars to escape the falling snow. My father had been waylaid by an old friend inside the church, and neither of us had realized he wasn’t behind us until we were already outside.

  The temperature had dropped several degrees during the service, and despite my warm coat and scarf, I shivered violently. Jimmy drew me into the circle of his arms, pulling me against his body, whispering teasingly, “I think we’re all right with this, as long as we claim it was only to keep you warm.”

  I don’t know if it was my lack of response or the stiffening of my body that alerted him that something was wrong. From my position in his embrace, I was now facing away from the church and was looking directly at the graveyard. Unbidden, the awful memories of standing beside Jimmy’s grave suddenly assailed me, so horribly vivid and real that I forgot for a moment that Jimmy was actually still very much alive.

  He carefully held me away from him, saw the pain in my face, and in puzzlement turned to make out what had distressed me.

  He was intuitive enough to realize exactly what I was thinking as I stared in fixed anguish at the cemetery.

  “Is that where …?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  He threw a glance at the church doors and saw that my father had still not appeared. He took my hand and gave me a gentle tug. “Come on then.”

  My feet remained rooted on the path, causing him to stop. “Are you serious?”

  There was love and understanding in his eyes. “You need to see it.”

  I shuddered. “I’ve already visited your gravesite. It’s not something I ever went to see again.”

  But, as ever, his patient persistence was hard to resist. “There is nothing there, Rachel. Come and see.”

  It wasn’t a long walk to the cemetery, but it was long enough for me to conjure up all manner of horrible outcomes. The one that fought for supremacy and won by a mile was, what if I got to the plot and found his grave there? Would I then turn to look at the man beside me and find him gone? A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the weather. Wouldn’t that just be the perfect Christmas ghost story?

  The idea that each step over the crunchy turf of the cemetery was leading me into peril was impossible to ignore.

  “Where was it?” Jimmy asked softly, possibly the only person in the world to ask someone for directions to his own grave.

  “Over there,” I indicated, pointing with a finger. “Beyond that group of headstones.”

  He led me gently but determinedly in the direction I had identified. I read familiar inscriptions from the surrounding tombstones as we passed. I shouldn’t know what they said, but I remembered each one vividly: DEAREST HUSBAND, BELOVED GRANDMOTHER, MUCH LOVED FATHER.

  My feet were leaden as I walked to the spot where the man I loved had been laid to rest, after giving up his life to save mine.

  Jimmy’s hand firmly gripped mine as I looked up. For a moment I could see it, I really could: the sparkling white marble tombstone was for an instant so real I felt I could almost reach out and touch it. I blinked my eyes and then saw nothing but an empty area of undisturbed grass.

  “So it was here,” Jimmy said, his voice strangely humbled.

  I nodded, closer to tears than I had realized, as suddenly the pain of that night threatened to overcome me.

  “The inscription was so sad,” I whispered. “ ‘Lost too soon at eighteen years. Cherished son and loyal friend. Our love for you will live on forever.’ ”

  I hadn’t realized the words had etched themselves into my mind.

  “It was awful, I felt like my heart was breaking, standing there, missing you, loving you … I just sort of dropped to the ground beside you.”

  He moved close to me, and for a bizarre moment I thought he was reenacting my memories by falling to his knees, just as I had done. And then I realized it wasn’t both knees he was on … but one.

  He still had hold of my hand.

  Snow fell around us in magical swirls. There was a look on his face that I knew would remain with me until the end of time.

  “Rachel,” he began, his voice not entirely steady.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  “Will you marry me?”

  The remembered horror of the location disintegrated under the power of his love. The force of his feelings pulled me back from the dangerous memories, saving me all over again.

  “I can’t believe,” I began, my voice a mixture of laughter and tears, “that someday I’ll be telling our grandchildren that their grandfather proposed to me in a cemetery!”

  If there had been even the tiniest glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes, my words removed it in an instant.

  “Is that a yes?”

  I got down on the frozen ground with him, and whispered softly against his lips.

  “Oh yes.”

  12

  SIX WEEKS LATER

  I descended the stairs slowly and carefully, holding up the hem of my long ivory dress.

  My father was waiting at the bottom tread, trying very hard to hold on to his smile.

  As his hand reached out to take mine, a single tear escaped his eye and trickled like a lost diamond down his cheek.

  “I wish your mum were here to see this. She would be so proud of you.”

  I reached up to kiss him, breathing in the familiar clean smell of his aftershave.

  “Hush now, Dad, you’ll make me cry and undo all of Sarah’s hard work.”

  I looked around the hall and living room; from upstairs it had sounded as though there had to be at least a hundred people here.

  “Has everyone left already?”

  His glance swept the empty house.

  “They have, my love. It’s just you and me. The car is waiting outside.”

  I drew in a steadying sigh. It was time.

  “Nervous?” questioned my father, handing me my bouquet of deep red roses.

  I shook my head with a smile. “Just excited.”

  He took my hand and led me toward the front door.

  “Time to go, Rachel.”

  THE SIX-WEEK ENGAGEMENT had been swallowed up by wedding preparations. I guessed there would be some curious glances at my waistline to explain our haste. They would be wrong, of course, but if challenged it was an easier explanation to give than the truth. How would they have reacted if they had heard the conversation between Jimmy and myself on this matter?

  “I don’t want to wait,” he had confessed, only a few days after Christmas. “I’ve already waited far too long for you.”

  His words had filled me with a warm glow, but I still had a major concern.

  “I know you think I’m talking nonsense here,” I began, “but let me just say this once and then I promise never to speak of it again.”

  He gave a small nod. I suppose he guessed wha
t I was going to say.

  “This thing that happened to me … whatever it was … I think it started when I hurt my head in that car accident, and then got totally crazy after I was mugged and got injured again …”

  “Go on,” he urged as I frowned, struggling to formulate what I was trying to say.

  “What if something happens to me again? What if I somehow go back? What if something happens and everything changes again?”

  He pulled me to him then, kissing me slowly as though to chase the ridiculous notion away.

  “Nothing like that is going to happen,” he promised. “You’re not going anywhere, not without me. I won’t let you.” It was a beautiful declaration but he could see I was still worried.

  “There are no guarantees about anything in life, Rachel. Accidents and illnesses happen, we can’t do anything about that. My job can be dangerous sometimes, and God knows you can get into serious trouble just getting out of bed! But we can’t let it rule our lives.”

  He was right. Hadn’t the last two months taught me how important it was to grasp onto any chance at happiness and hang on to it for dear life?

  “Although to be on the safe side, I may just get you a hard hat for a wedding present.”

  “That’ll look nice with a veil!”

  “What I’m more worried about,” he said in a different tone, “is what might happen if your memory does suddenly come back and you wake up and find yourself married to the wrong man. What if you realize it was Matt you really wanted to be with?”

  There was a vulnerability in his eyes I don’t think I had ever seen before.

  “So the amnesia is cured but for some reason I’m going to go completely stupid?”

  He tried a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “I guess we’re both worrying about something so ludicrous it’s never going to happen.”

  THE LONG SILVER car, decorated with white ribbons, was waiting by the curb. Some neighbors were watching from their front doors and gardens as my father and I emerged from the house. From somewhere nearby a small child cried out in delight, and someone started to clap, which rippled around the street.