The slam of the back door jolted her, but even then it was a minute before she could move. Bolting up, she ran after him out of the house, stumbling on the steps, catching herself and running on. The hammer of her heart made breathing difficult, but she didn’t stop.
He was fast disappearing into the woods. Frantically she followed, running on through the low growth until she reached a clearing. He sat there with his back to her, brooding among the dandelions. The sun glanced off his hair in sparkles, but his hunched form was grim.
“Mitch?”
She crept nearer.
“Mitch, I’m sorry, so sorry.” She tried to touch him, but pulled back when he flinched. So she hunkered down inches behind him and said, “I’ve been wrong. Please forgive me. It was cruel of me not to listen, not to even ask questions, but it hurt to know that there was so much I didn’t know, after everything that we’d shared. Because of what we’d shared, I should have given you the chance to explain, but I loved you so much. Finding out who you were like that was awful. Try to understand.”
This time when she touched his shoulder, he allowed it.
“I’ve always been nayve,” she explained not to make excuses for herself, but so that Mitch would know more. “My life was easy and happy and charmed. Maybe I felt immune to tragedy. I’d never known any, not until the crash, and then I couldn’t believe Jeff was gone. It couldn’t happen to me.”
She moved closer. “Then I found you. I love you, Mitch. I fought it for a long time. I was afraid of suffering the kind of pain I had suffered loving Jeff and losing him. When I saw you in that lawyer’s office, the two worlds came together. I should have trusted you. I should have known that there was an explanation. So help me, I was afraid to listen. Maybe I was punishing myself. Maybe I was feeling guilty for finding happiness with you.” Her voice broke.
His eyes met hers, then, and they were filled with the same vulnerability she felt. It gave her the strength to finish.
“My God, Mitch, haven’t we both suffered enough? Isn’t it time to end the punishment? I love you.”
“Do you, Anne?” he asked unsurely, huskily, hopefully. “Do you love me enough to want to wake up in my arms every day, knowing that I make mistakes?”
“Knowing that you’re human? It’s a relief, y’know?”
A sound came from his throat, no, from his soul, it was that deep, and he pulled her around and crushed her in his arms. “I love you, Annie,” he whispered with a rush of feeling. “Don’t ever, ever turn away from me again. Don’t shut me out. I can’t survive it.”
He kissed her, then pulled back and made a show of licking his lips. “Salt?”
She smiled through her tears. “That’s happiness. You’ll have to bear with me.”
“I think I can manage it,” he said with infinite tenderness and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I do love you.”
He showed her how much right there under the sun, worshipping her first with clothes, then without, making love to her on the soft carpet of new grass and dandelion puffs. It was hotter, harder, sweeter than it had ever been before, a preview of what it might be in twenty or thirty years’ time.
When later they lay still and let the sun stroke their naked bodies, she nuzzled his neck. “This is heaven.”
He patted her bottom. “Let’s hope there’s no poison ivy around here.”
When she bolted upright, he burst out laughing.
“Is there?” she asked.
He pulled her back to his chest. “No poison ivy. Just me.”
“Will you give me a rash?”
He laughed again. “Hopefully one very special itch now and again; never a rash.”
She stretching against him, so pleased to hear him laugh and know she was its cause. “You have no idea how I love you.”
“Not as much as I love you.”
“No? Wanna bet on that?”
“You’re on,” he said and rolled over her to settle the matter.
Through no lack of trying, it was far from settled by the next morning. Awakening with the sun in a happy glow, Anne crept quietly from his bed, pulled on his large shirt, and went to the front door. As it opened she caught the sweet scent of the lilacs. In the week’s tumult she hadn’t noticed them before. Now she smiled in delight at the shapely pink-purple clusters and the full, rich fragrance.
Snapping off a small cluster, she returned to his bed, dropped the shirt, and slid quietly between the sheets. She lay on her stomach and watched Mitch sleep, seeing the same peace on his face that she felt inside.
One sleepy hazel eye opened. He smiled lazily.
She moved the spray of lavender under his nose. “The lilacs are in bloom. Spring is here.” As her lover’s hand wound through her hair to draw her in for a good morning kiss, she knew that it truly was.