Maine — as frivolous a place as any for the Rhodes who had come from an island marred by cataclysmic milieu only to be thrust into an age old supernatural war. Maine — he had to offer a saccharine chuckle at that, one weighed down by even a slight sliver of envy for where she had retreated to for the past year of her life, a wanton of grief exceedingly prevalent under freckled countenance. His own chagrin could only covet the means of regret; spanning over his itinerary of the past year, under the well understood impression that many could have been spared, much akin to Lucinda, had they all just left. Perhaps such pattern of loss by their mere absence rather than a score of immutable quietus should be transcribed as more of a blessing than a curse as he had once believed; obsidian hues near latching onto her gaze for even the briefest span of insight to her peregrinations of the last year. “And did it?” Familial connections were his lifeline of survival in a city that had since transmogrified into a necropolis of mass proportions, understanding full well that perhaps such interdependence was never quite the same for everyone. All the same, Julian could clutch to any sense of will that Lucinda had grasped even an ounce of peace in her absence, head bowing in tandem to the scoff elicited from rosebud lips.
They both clutched to a repository of nugatory rejoinders, the near inconsequential quips preventing any stave to such flood of emotions both were implicitly keen on avoiding. “Next time I’ll be sure to call before you board a flight or hop on a train then,” a grim chuckle bubbled past his lips, eyes peeking back up to Lucinda, clutching to any spec of insouciant ebullience; the fumes of his typical sangfroid fleeting as the walls of their own visceral quandaries crumbled.
Hands spanned over covered limbs that held a blueprint to her scarred past if denuded, hoping to provide any sense of comfort and credence in succor to his own lexicon. To say scads of his own life had changed within the past year since Lucinda left was an understatement which was dreadfully apparent as Julian dared pulled her closer. The faint opprobrium of Julian senselessly surmising that this was a line he could cross once more as if either of them hadn’t been reoriented by all that their set of circumstances allowed; near flinching at the irresolute breath Lucinda could old, the action tacitly spanning out every inquiry she could ever conjure to fruition. A sanction of minuscule resistance was prompted in spite of ribald mirth which bristled on freckled mien, a near involuntary reflex as such haptic wanton overcame his own unstable vulnerability. “I —” A loss for words was not common place for Julian, near shamefully averting his gaze from cerulean hues that searched so helplessly for a response to what had happened in the past year that had unearthed his own sense of parental means. Sheepishness clouded his gaze now, the brewing fondness he once had for said mother and for Lucinda at a nauseating cross roads now, shaking his head in mellowed finality. “She’s not…. dead, if that’s what you’re getting at,” sharp jaw clenched; a perfect inscription to his own amalgamation of culpable regret. Ever since Lola had made her own means to leave their haphazard sense of family behind, Julian may as well have felt horribly duped, a small plume of ire scorching every fiber of his being now.
Any extempore was ceased despite his own nerves coercing any prospect of word vomit that dared be excavated, gnawing on his bottom lip under the most minute inkling of restraint. A penitent grin eclipsed any sense of prospective bliss, gaze flitting back up to hers after the briefest stretch of recovery; a more farouche demeanor settling into Julian, “She didn’t want to be a mother. I think deep down she never wanted to be one, but— what can you do about that,” his last stretch of syllables were flooded with a flippantly brackish covet of humor, offering a shrug in tandem finality. Calloused palms soon seized their own means of redemption, one in which his own carapace could not claim, possessing a subtle retreat up to the baseline of her neck, a titillatingly mellow spur of sportive inclination. Julian’s own hamartia was his vying desideratum to drown out any trepidatious lament of blunders in his life, “She’s been.. gone for a couple of months now,” Julian mildly confirmed, sparking any hubristic retreat to the somatic ardor shared moments prior as digits sunk into plush skin. The impulse to touch her in every way he dared crave was innately profound, though he allowed such pause lest she absorb such information and reject any sake of rekindling, gnawing on his bottom lip.
How simple the act might have seemed, retreating to something familial. The warmth such notion should have held never seemed to bleed through the memory of a loveless home. Of parents that could barely look each other in the eye before the wake of each burning dawn and how absurd the idea of finding solace within a place that her father’s presence would likely be damned. With the remaining sense of her own sanity clinging to the sordid strength of such a man, she anticipated spending more time fighting among them than she ever had anything else. While such presumption had certainly fallen through the gaping holes of the state of their daughter and the timeless nights spent in harrowing silence while the shards of pain shrieked in hours unholy, Cinda couldn’t truly contend to the idea that she felt any differently now than she had then --- everything she felt was simply, quieter. Rounded at the edges and no longer tearing her from the inside out. The same discomfort, the same blatant knot in her throat seemed to linger, a distrust that still seemed to bruise the place of wounds once open. “A little,” she’d confirmed with conviction as solid as bone beneath the breaking city they’d shroud themselves in. “I thought it might have been easier without..-- all of this.” But her heart was just as much a mess among those that couldn’t grant a sense of security within the four walls of a single home.
The quietus comfort of such nostalgia that could draw the confines of his sofa as little more than a welcome place to fall, a dark contrast to the warmth of the man beneath her painting a far more detailed picture of where the sentiment of safety could ever have been had she simply learned to swallow her own panic and fear to see it so clearly. But now she did --- now she saw it, as if every burning line of freckled countenance, of which she could see in such vivid detail in even the darkest recesses of her mind, lived as the very catalyst for a swelling heart. Difficult to breathe, difficult to pry herself away, and even more difficult to consider a single place more suited to bare the cracks beneath the surface of such facade. Lungs burnt with the desperate need for air in such revelation, the hushed whisper of words that slipped through rosebud lips beyond even her control, “But I missed you,” so much that it hurt, beyond the welts of loss, fire and death. So much so that some nights, she’d find herself wondering which part of such a change in her life she’d been running from in the first place. So much so, that’ she’d wondered so bleakly, how it could have taken her walking away to feel something so vibrant. Such a choice to find refuge had only truly separated her from the place that had so surely begun to resemble the aspects of a home for a soul, caught within the grasp of another. Caught within the confines of a feeling that far surpassed the comfort of a warm body to encompass how hands had burnt euphoric against her skin, while every aspect of who Julian Rhodes was, left effervescent imprints on memory, heart and soul to keep him with her, without it ever being her choice in the first place.
The warmth within the palm of her hand cast gently across the sharpened edge of his jaw. Still so difficult to look beyond the visible creases of exhaustion between the lines that created such masterpiece in dark features, crystalline pools shifting back and forth as if searching for some dire change in who he was, if she’d truly missed something beyond the extent of such life altering circumstance. Perhaps concern built itself in the cavity of her chest, a crumbling building so dire that the laugh that bloomed ever quietly in return was barely recognizable, even less so when it reached the curve of azure hues, “Next time?..-- I told you, Julian.” The pad of her thumb slipped out over the brazen bone of his cheek, etching lines between each flicker of light reflected in hues she’d drown in if he’d let her. “Without you, there is no next time.
It’d been absolutely, none, of her business, but wrapped up within his touch, she’d truly only been irked by the single thought that there’d been anyone else. Not likely a thought she was granted to have, any and all right to feel such a way cast aside when she’d left so suddenly, unable to concur that such a thing would have ever bothered her until the time that’d passed between them had so surely surfaced in the ever widening place that another woman had slipped into stared her blankly in the face. The rise of venomous ire, a burning distaste, as if such a place belonged to her without Lucinda ever having said as much, like acid in her throat. A consequential shift of her own guilt shattering in the expenditure of words that could confirm this loss didn’t come in the shape of a casket, rather, just another being so set on leaving Julian as if she could so rightfully damn another for doing so. Intently, she waited, seeking something beyond the irate feeling so surely surfacing within his chest, her own features filled with uncertainty, lips parted in disbelief that someone could find family with this man and carve every tether in half, “I’m sorry she did that to you..-- to your son.” A headed weight that felt heavier still than any apology that’d befallen her lips this night. “I can’t even... imagine..--- but if there’s anyone I know that could do this on their own,” She couldn’t have laid more faith in the palm of his hand had she tried, ”it’s you.”
Worn hands that drew fire across the base of her neck claiming such comforting impulse as instinct alone drew her eyes closed, the rough expanse of air that slipped from her lungs a brazen call to beg his hands to pay homage to the marks he’d once left her with. Imprints beyond the eye or another’s touch, the slight cant of her head a well worn request, silent among all others, that he forgive her one last thing as lashes parted and the lacking sense of breath fell to a cataclysmic ripple in lower timbre. “Julian,” he drift of her hands against the carved muscle beneath his shirt, lowly and filled with a near grave wanton for the space between them to disappear. “--- I’m not sorry she’s gone.” Breathless, it fell a mere whisper on the winds of a year passed, a transcendent moment of dire uncertainty if he should so readily forgive her such a thing; forgive her this moment, where she could so easily fall right back to him.
