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As I approach it, I can’t help but remember my first time with Clarise in there. I felt so bad after it was over but, at the same time, I don’t think I've ever felt anything quite like what I was experiencing. It was Heaven and Hell at the same time and, for the first time in a long time, I felt truly alive.
I stop right in front of the door and push it open, blinking as my eyes adjust to the darkness inside. The darkness where my body and Clarise became one. The darkness where her moans cut through the silence.
I might be leaving for good, yes, but I won’t leave before I tell Clarise what she truly means to me. I have a lot of regrets in my life, and I won’t let her become another one.
And that’s because I love her more than anything.
Connor
There’s a deep silence in the chapel, one that blankets everything. My footsteps feel like gunshots as they echo through the aisles, and I almost feel bad for breaking that silence.
I sit there on the pews, right in front of the altar, and fold my hands over my lap. Closing my eyes, I let my mind drift off to all these moments I shared with Clarise, and how the world seemed so perfect whenever I had her in my arms…
Ah, if things were different! What I wouldn’t give for another chance at this. If I could turn back the wheels of time, I’d have pulled her into my arms the first time she appeared at the guest house, cradling an orchid. I’d surrender to lust and temptation right there and then, and I’d offer Jonathan a letter of resignation the following day.
But that’s the thing about love, if you miss it, you can only see it in the rearview mirror.
Will I ever feel something like it ever again?
No, let her go and you won’t ever love anyone in the same way, a small voice inside of me seems to say. And that voice is right, you know? Even when I was young, a true ladies man, I never fell for anyone. Love was nothing more than a comic book fantasy to me, something a marketing department invented to sell chocolates and lingerie.
When I was younger, I was all about the sex, about living fast and hard… I spent my first few years as an adult living the life, and I never found anything that I could point at and say "that’s love."
No, I’m lying… When my father told me stories about my mother, that was love. I can’t forget about the glint in his eyes whenever he started telling me the story about how they met, and how my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world… Even after so many years without her, he still loved her deeply.
But the odds of me finding something like that were astronomical, or so I thought at the time. And so, when I took my vows, I thought I wasn’t leaving anything of importance behind. Sure, I was pushing sex to the curb, but after you’ve gone through as many women as I have, even sex starts to lose its appeal.
Clarise showed me I was wrong. So very wrong.
"Connor?" I hear her voice, and I turn around to see her. She’s standing in the doorway and, even though it’s already night, the moon is still bright enough to make Clarise’s shadow tumble down the aisle.
"You came," I tell her, jumping up to my feet. I was afraid that, after the way I handled things at the cemetery, she’d just shoot me down. It’d be a sad sight, me, all alone in the chapel through the long hours of the night, but I was prepared for it.
"Of course I came, you idiot," she whispers softly, closing the door behind her and walking toward me.
"I wanted to see you one last time," I admit, the words feeling like nails as they climb up my throat. "I needed to see you."
"One last time?" she whispers, and I can feel dread and fear coating each and every word of hers.
"Yes, I’m going back to Rome, Clarise," I reply, and the look on her face is enough to make my heart break into a million little pieces. Whoever said words are mightier than the sword had no idea how right he was. Right now, I’d rather have a broadsword blade sticking out of my chest instead of feeling this… desperate.
"Why, Connor? Just tell me why because I don’t understand. I really don’t."
What can I say? I can’t tell her about Earl without breaking the Donovan family apart, but I can’t lie to her either. Ah, it’s so damn easy to be gung-ho on the truth when the truth is easy; of course, more often than not, being truthful is probably one of the hardest things a human being can do.
But I’m not perfect, and I don’t want to break her heart more than I need to. And so I just settle for a half-truth.
"It’s … it’s complicated. And I’m sorry for what I said before. I didn’t mean it. What happened between us was everything but a fantasy. It was real, more real than anything else."
"Then how --" she starts to say, but just like how she did many times before, I rest my index finger over her lips and make her quiet down.
"I stand by what I said. I’m sorry, but no good will ever come out of a relationship between the two of us," I whisper, slowly taking my finger off of her lips. Turning on my heels, I then look at the altar, the cross hanging overhead like an ominous reminder that all good things eventually must come to an end.
"But I’ve never felt better than when I’m with you," she tells me softly, brushing her fingers against the back of my hand before grabbing it tightly. "This feels right," she continues, holding my hand in hers. "I’ve never felt so alive, Connor, and I know you must feel the same…"
"I feel the same. But it’s wrong. It’s just so wrong," I tell her, that heavy sadness taking over me once more. I haven’t felt this bad since my father’s funeral.
"But how can something so wrong feel this good?" she whispers gently, cracking a smile as she goes on tip-toes. Then, she brushes her lips against mine and I simply come undone.
