Absolutely loved it, Nicole! I don't think I've ever seen TOGOM used so creatively. This passage brought a lump to my throat:
She could hear his heart beating.
She flashed back to a night long ago, when she had looked for that heartbeat and hadn’t felt it. He’d been hurt. No… killed. And his heart… oh god… “No!”… had stopped beating.
She tucked her head protectively into his chest, closer. Louder, the beat. He wrapped his arms tighter around her.
He was alive.
She had thought grimly, in the day she thought he was gone forever, that when Christmas came, it would be too horrible to bear without him there. Everything would be too horrible to bear without him there, but Christmas, especially, was a time where people enjoyed their friends, family and loved ones. It would have been…
He was dancing with her. Holding her. He was so alive. Warm. Comfortable. Safe.
So safe…
She could not push him away because he was dating someone else. In love, even, with someone else. She just could not do it. A life without him in it was no life at all. She had learned that lesson already.
Wendy
