Wonderful, Sue, as always...and cruel, too, to give us just enough lovely light moments to give us hope and then to follow them with the scene in the tent, which darn near broke my heart.
You do a great job of exploring their trust issues in their chapter, starting with the climbing exercise and moving on to the
real issues between them.
She knew he meant it - he wasn't going to get even. Her heart ached to be able to trust him again.
She trusts him in the first sentence and then
wants to trust him in the second. So she trusts him but doesn't realize it, or just plain is afraid to let herself, which seems more likely.
And then it all leads up to her confessing her dream to him. Not the fun, sexy ones (though the fact that they're willing to share those
does show a certain amount of mutual trust) but the one where she's falling and doesn't trust that he'll be there to catch her. And it turns out that he doesn't trust
himself to catch her either, which is just heartbreaking, even if I do still kind of want to smack him upside the head. But I can see how he might let that fear rule him for a while. I only hope that Lois will talk him around to her point of view.
No one knows what's going to happen or how it's going to end. If it came right down to it, and I knew for certain that someone would use me to get to you, I'd still pick you. I'd rather have those few days or weeks or however long we get that are real, and happy, than to have an entire lifetime of lonely safety without you.
Yes. That's it exactly, isn't it? Makes me think of Julia Roberts in
Steel Magnolias - "I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special."
Let's hope Lois will be very convincing!
Caroline
