The Road to Something Better

by TheOtherCourse (kanevixen)

Summary:

A series of connected drabbles based on one word prompts. Following the events of Who Loves You, Baby?, Tom's fiance, Abigail is about to set off on festival tour around Europe in support of her play. Tom indulges her every whim in his way of comforting her before they're separated by a few hundred miles, his shooting schedule and possible weeks or months apart. When one Abby's coworkers shows a keen and more personal interest in her, Tom’s not entirely comfortable with the schedule and the original support that he threw behind the project. How will Tom’s jealousy and Abigail’s distance change their relationship?

 

Chapter 1: Purple

Purple

Abby was meant to leave in a month’s time, and our flat became a flurry of activity. She was going through her wardrobe like a madwoman, tossing old clothes, trying on clothes she hadn’t worn in a long time, purchasing new garments. She revamped her toiletries, without needing to, but it was a comfort for her. She had so much nervous energy leading up to her leaving, involving her concentration in any activity helped her.

After her mania of cleaning and reorganizing and purging some of her possessions in order to fill it again, Abby resumed her natural excitable state with most of her time and energy at home focused on me. I indulged her every whim, frenzy and fancy when we were together and she seemed calmer with the idea of being away with my doting on her. She was getting the constant reminder that I loved her and wouldn’t forget her when she was away by maintaining physical contact, holding hands, sitting flush beside one another, my arm slung across her shoulders, her sitting on my lap.

Abby was storing up the contact for her time away, and eventually she turned her attention to constructive outlets. One night we were curled up in bed with her between my spread legs. She was tinkering around on her laptop with her tour schedule to one side and a small world map I’d had mounted on the wall of my office on the other side. When she crawled in the bed with it, I couldn’t ignore it. “Baby, that’s my map.”

“I know. I need it.”

“What in heaven’s name do you need with a map?”

“Relax, love. I’ll put it back.” I knew I would end up putting it back because she’d find something else to focus on. “I need it for something I’m working on.”

“What are you working on?”

“It’s a surprise. Keep quiet and read your book.” She kissed me quickly before I could say anything more and she turned back to her laptop. Luke sent me a text earlier that he showed Abby a few apps and websites for her to play around on, no doubt she was applying her new tricks. She was color coding something, googling, referring to her map, consulting her tour schedule, studiously and meticulously working on her task.

Tenderly I stroked my left hand over her back in a lazy pattern with most of my attention on the book in my other hand. I glanced a few times over her shoulder only to see a huge calendar open in a window on her computer. Occasionally she would lean back to kiss me or let her mind reset and recharge before she went back to it again. After two hours, I sat my book aside to wrap her up in my arms and peek over her shoulder at her agenda in front of her. “How goes it, love? Almost done?”

She clicked through a few more windows, sailing through quickly, hit the mouse pad with her middle finger with a flourish, checked Google once more, giggled and relaxed into me. “Done! Tom, I did a thing!” her tone lilted higher in her excitement and accomplishment.

I kissed her cheek affectionately, looking over what she’d been working on so diligently for hours. I snickered in her ear, “It looks like the Rainbow Bridge.”

She tsked me disapprovingly, “But it’s all sorted. I did a thing!”

“Okay, what did you do? What do the pink days mean?”

“Pink is within fifty miles from home and the possibility to come home and sleep in our bed.”

“And purple?”

“Purple is within a hundred miles, slight possibility to come home.” Her fingers interlocked with mine, resting on her belly.

“So blue… Blue must be too far away, no possibility of coming home to me.” She hummed in agreement, squeezing my hands in hers and burrowing into my embrace. “You’ve got numbers in the top and bottom of each date. What do those mean?”

“Till I come home for good. James and Michael have only scheduled the first six months until they see how the play is received, how well I’m received,” she said self-deprecatingly.

“Stop it, baby. You’re brilliant and you know it. You’ll prove yourself the star you are, and other directors will be ringing nonstop to hire you.”

She sighed dramatically, her small frame rising and falling with the inhale and then exhale. “I hope so. But the countdown for the six months scheduled and the other for the possible extension to a year… till I get home… till we get married.”

I whispered reverently into her hair, catching her very dear peach smell, “We will. We’ll get married.” A rush of pride flooded my bloodstream, quickening my heartbeat with delight that she wanted to be my wife, still. We had just come off a rough patch and I feared she would leave me or change her mind about marrying me.

“You didn’t ask about the yellow days,” she objected softly.

I knew what the yellow days were because those were the most important to me, but I let her have it. “Go on then, love. Tell me about the yellow days.” I nibbled at the shell of her ear, reclining back against the headboard, bringing her along with me.

“The yellow days are our days together when you can come to me or I can come to you, as long as your shooting schedule holds. I needed to work that out, when I would see you, before I go,” she said sadly, her emotions elevating the more she thought of it.

I shushed her quietly, “No tears, Abby… come on… You’re still here and we’ll have yellow days to look forward to.” She shuddered momentarily with her overwrought emotions. “Sweetheart, with all this talk of colors, you’ve reminded me of a dream I once had, about us, about our future.”

“You had a dream about us?” She sat up, moved her computer and papers out of the way to the foot of the bed, and crawled up over me. My hands traced along the outline of her curves as she ascended, fingertips lightly caressing, as remained prone in my relaxed pose. Finding her niche against me, she brushed her lips along mine in passing as she snuggled into my chest with my heartbeat as her pillow. Wrapping her up in my arms, I kissed the crown of her head and ran my hand over her hair.

“I did. I dreamed of our wedding, with me waiting at the end of the aisle and you in a big stunning white dress. They say that a majority of people don’t dream in color, but I did. The carpet was red, the stained glass windows of the church were painting the runner in a myriad of colors, greens and blues and even yellows…” I trailed off dreamily at the irony in her picking that color for us. Picking up again, remembering all the details of that dream from two years ago, I described my dream Abby to my reality Abby, “But you were my angel in white, a long flowing gown, made up to be the princess you are - and the smile you wore… you were so happy, and it was a perfect reflection of my emotions.

“Abigail, my heart, I want to make that dream a reality… at least the part where you’re pronounced mine and I yours, and I can finally kiss you as my wife.”

Her small frame heaved little audible breaths in the quiet of our bedroom and I had to strain to hear those. She was frozen in place otherwise, struck by the story of my dream. One hand stroked over her back, her excitement and vitality so alive under the cotton of the t-shit she’d absconded from my drawer, her happiness palpable. Tipping her head back with my crooked fingers under her chin, I brought her shimmery gaze on mine, her smile bright and alive, her skin flushed pink. Tears swam in her eyes, but she was positively beaming.

“Abigail?” I teased. “What’s all this?”

“Um… elation? … I think?”

I lowered my lips to hers, slanting my head, closing my eyes, breathing in her smell and holding it in. She kissed me, slow and simple, tender and sweet, all of it combining together to make my heart sing in harmony with hers. Her tangled in my hair as she melted against me, opening up to me in the most delicious way and I drank her in.

When she separated from me again, she giggled in my arms and I could swear I could feel her giddiness exude from her, hanging on me like a quilt. “Abby?”

“Dream, colors, dress, happy, your wife… it’s all good,” she counted off. “I like it. I like it a lot. I have one request, one teeny tiny request.” She held her pointed finger between our parted lips before that one too found its way into my hair.

“Anything for you, baby.”

“Make love to me as though I was already your wife.”

I laughed as I rolled her over onto her back. “Abby, love, I will kindly remind you that,” I rocked my pelvis into hers, my cock hardening with the want of fulfilling her plea. “That,” I rocked into her again the friction awakening my erection. “Thatis not a teeny tiny request.” I swallowed her moan of encouragement in a passionate kiss.

I made love to her into the late hours of the morning. The want of turning purple days into yellow so we weren’t so blue forefront in my mind.

 

Chapter 2: Ego

Summary:

Ego

My meetings with Luke for the new Joanna Hogg ran extremely late Wednesday night, forcing me to cancel in fetching Abby from rehearsal. All around fantastic publicist, assistant and best mate Luke offered to meet up with her since he wasn’t truly needed for the late lunch/early dinner discussion with Joanna. I phoned Abby quickly when I knew she’d have a break from her rehearsal to check in on her and if she wanted me to send Luke to collect her with the car later on. He adored Abby, and, as an added bonus, I didn’t have to pay him extra to do it either.

She answered my call with a cheerful, “Babe!” She sounded energized and enthusiastic, but there was a slight roughness from overuse or tiredness to her tone.

“My Abby. Has James been overworking you?”

“No, no, no… things are good. We’re winding down to our premiere in a fortnight. James and Michael have a lot of ideas,” she fluttered through happily. I could hear outside traffic and pedestrians passing by where she sat. In my mind, I knew exactly where she was, having joined her for lunch whenever I could manage it. There was a spot in Leicester Square that she favored for taking her break, looking over the TKTS building on a patch of grass, sat Indian style, watching the tourist milling about. If she sat in just the right spot at just the right time and the sun was shining down over London, bathing the city in a warm glow, she could catch a patch of sunlight through the trees overhead.

“Oh, Michael’s been there too?” All her practicing had been solely with James and the stage manager Lisa. Lisa was hired to travel along with them to run the lights, handle props and costumes, and manage the cues for all the scene details during performance time. Abby still felt shy, reserved and a little intimidated by the capable woman, but I was relieved there was another woman that would be riding around in the bus or on the aeroplane with my girl.

She bubbled excitedly, speaking in a rush to get all her thoughts out, “Yeah, he was biding his time in production of Jesus Christ Superstar in Bath or something until he could concentrate on producing this. He left, took a holiday to the Caribbean to nurse a broken heart…” She paused temporarily, to breathe and ponder the next bit of her speech. “I don’t know all the details, a broken engagement or a broken heart, I’m not sure. A girl called Isabelle or something…” she trailed off quietly.

As though catching her second wind, she blurted out, “He’s really thrown himself into our rehearsals and changing the script, flipping lines, punching up the blocking. He’s pushed me through the beginning, wanted to grip the audience… a lot of the character discussion, and I genuinely feel for her.”

“Brilliant. They’ve liked what you’ve done with the character for the height of the drama? What we talked through last week?”

“Yes, you brilliant man, you helped,” her tone tainted with her sarcasm and an eye roll that she reserved only for me. I didn’t even need to see her to know that she’d done it.

I laughed at her teasing and her assumption that I was fishing for a compliment. We’d spent hours pouring over the script, ripping it apart, garnering as much information for Abby to create the character. I really couldn’t take any of the credit for her dedication and all the ideas she came up with over the past five weeks. I let her use me as an outlet to talk it all out, only too glad to do it, since her mind worked differently than mine. Her approach was purely organic and instinctive, having spent so much time not speaking but watching.

Abby never ceased to amaze me, in how observant, astute and surprising she was. She made it a practice to study people, reactions, motivations, mannerisms, yet if she got any kind of attention towards her, she didn’t recognize it. Body language, eye contact, and verbal cues between other people she could read, but she couldn’t see it right in front of her if meant for her.

“It’s always good to hear that my woman appreciates me,” I taunted with a smirk.

She clicked her tongue at me through the phone and warned, “Keep it up, Hiddleston. Now why are you calling me? Didn’t you have things to do today, like be sexy and gorgeous so people beg you to be in their movies?”

“Is that what you think my negotiations are about?”

“I don’t know what gets accomplished with you being all suave, charming, intelligent, gorgeous…”

“Keep going, I love when you talk dirty,” I growled into the phone seductively.

“Overly talkative, assertive, tall as fuck with an ego to match-”

My laughing halted her playful insults, and her peels of giggles soon joined mine. “I love you too, Abby.”

“Why are you calling me? I could’ve easily mocked you through text, babe.”

“I wanted to hear your voice, check in on you and ask if I can send Luke to get you from rehearsals tonight.”

“You’re running late again?” she sounded disappointed, but not in the least bit surprised.

“Yes, I’m sorry, baby, but I shouldn’t be too far behind you. I’ll make us a salad for dinner tonight when I get home. We’ll still have time to spend together, to be together.”

“Will you make me a cuppa tonight?” We always had tea around eight in the evening, and she always brewed it, the only task I allowed her to do in the kitchen.

“Whatever you want, love,” still doing my best to accommodate her, avoiding the inevitable breakdown that she was leaving looming on the horizon. If I were honest, I didn’t want her to go, with the fact around the corner. I knew we weren’t looking at six months completely apart, but there were so many unknowns, so many variables. She was sensitive and relied so much on her comfort zone to be the person she was, the beautiful creature that I wanted to protect.

“Do you need Luke? He’ll come get you with the car?”

“No, I’ll take the tube. I could take a nap before you get in…”

Skeptically, I asked once more, “Are you sure, love? He doesn’t mind.”

She made a small noise in the back of her throat, a perfect blend of a moan and a huff. “I don’t want to put him out, I’ll be fine. I have my Oyster card and everything.”

“Is there credit on it, Abby? You always conveniently forget to load it up.”

A raspberry followed.

Chuckling to myself, I surrendered, “Alright, love, alright. Then go home, rest up while you wait for me. I know you’re working so hard and I know it’ll pay off in the end. I’m so proud of you, my Abigail.”

“I love you, Tom. I really, really love you. I needed you with me for all of this. I never realized how much I did,” the sincerity in her voice expanded my chest with pride. I could feel the swell, the bloom physically moved me to stand at attention with the impact of her effect on me.

Softly, I returned the sentiment, “I love you too, Abby. I’ll see you at home later on, and I’ll be thinking of you until I get there.”

Chapter 3: Suspicion

Summary:

Suspicion

My beautiful fiancée stood center stage, reviewing notes with James and Michael with Lisa to the side, eavesdropping and taking minutes, notating any changes. I couldn’t hear the specifics or their conversation from my position by the doors. Arriving fifteen minutes early to pick up Abby from rehearsals, I’d made unexpected excellent time driving across London. Some days, I could fly through, meeting the path of least resistance, and others, I could sit in hours of gridlock. Abby was expecting me, but I didn’t want to disturb progress, so I hung back, keeping my presence secret.

Leaning against the steel door frame, I crossed my arms over my chest to watch and observe Abigail. She looked relaxed and contented, her arms hung loosely at her sides, her eyes wide and bright, no worry lines around her eyes or mouth. When she laughed at something Michael said, the sweet happy sound of her made me smile.

She pointed to the other brother, giggling with the effects of his joke, and shook her head, waggling her finger at him. Her hair, held up in messy ponytail with a ribbon that hung down her back, swayed with the motion, sweeping from side to side in even increments across her shoulders. Michael reached across the space between where he stood to Abby, laughing with her, and caressed down her bare arm.

I stood to my full height, abandoning my pacified pose, seeing red with that touch. Something in my gut jolted, pulled tight and taught with tension, an all too familiar rigidity when it came to men familiar with Abby. Subduing the caveman, deeply flawed alpha male arrogance and mentality of storming the stage, snatching my woman, and growling ‘mine’ at the competition, I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from vocalizing anything.

I completely trusted Abby, I just didn’t trust any other man in her general vicinity. She was mine, my heart, my love, my life and I didn’t want another man touching her. It was a fleeting touch, and I swallowed my pride and possessive nature, keeping my eye on Michael until James called rehearsal complete. As all the parties began gathering their belongings and sorting themselves to leave, I stepped into the theatre and called her name.

Her head snapped up in surprise, quickly replaced with a wide smile. She squealed, “Tom!” and ran up the aisle to me. She threw herself into my arms, genuinely ecstatic to see me.

I landed a solid kiss on her lips, laying my claim on her, confirming for her and the three others in the room that she was mine. I reached behind her, loosened the ribbon, letting her hair free to caress my hand over her hair, my gesture for her. She beamed up at me, positively glowing. “Ready, love?”

“Nearly. Let me get my bag.” She took my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine, and led me down into the theatre.

James and Michael came to me to say hello. I last saw James when I did Cymbeline, quite a few years ago. We greeted each other with smiles, a handshake and then a manly hug. Abby didn’t let go of my hand, so it was one armed hug. “Tom, how the fuck are you mate? You look well.”

“Brilliant! You’re looking gorgeous.” I offered my hand to shake in Michael’s direction, trying to gauge his reaction to me. We didn’t know each other well, not like James and I knew each other, but we were friendly acquaintances. Stiffly he shook my hand, and we nodded to each other as I turned back to James. “How’ve you been, man? Abby’s told me some of your adventures up in Manchester.”

“Manchester’s a wild ride, don’t let anyone tell you different. Couldn’t stay away for long, so we’re debuting this show up there first.”

“I heard! I’m going to try to be there, for Abby. Can’t miss my fiancée doing this, exciting project.”

“Fabulous! Eager to get people to see, to see what we can do with the play, if we can make it back to the West End. This one,” he said, nodding in Abby’s direction. “This one is a special and unique talent.”

Abby had collected all of her things and flung her bag on her shoulder. I crooked my arm around her, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “That she is, that she is.”

“It’d be honor to have you there, mate. Abby, get some sleep tonight and we’re back at it tomorrow.”

She snuggled into my side, circling my waist with her arms, and nodding agreeably. I slipped her bag from her shoulder and threw it over mine. She looked to Michael and said, “You’ve gone quiet.”

He blushed and giggled nervously, the complete opposite than I thought he would act, and so different from his brother. “Nothing to say, I suppose. It’s good to see you again, Tom. It’s been about twenty years, give or take.”

Brushing off the mood from earlier as an overreaction, I laughed at around a two, “At least… at the Donmar, yeah?”

“The production of Antony and Cleopatra, last row, power outage.”

“Right, right, right! I remember! The theatre ghosts were alive and kicking that night.” We quieted into an awkward silence for a few moments. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. I’ve got to get Abby home.”

She piped up with a yawn, “Nap time. You and James work me, so I need a break to let my brain reset.”

Michael nodded and smiled gently, “I won’t keep you.” He looked at me, “Take care of our girl. We need her.”

Again I quelled the desire to correct him that Abby was mine and mine alone. I tried to match his smile, but it physically pained me, the strain of trying to fake the sentiment. Against my better judgment, I offered my hand once more and he shook it once more. “Until next time.”

Abby and I exited out the back where I’d come in to get back to the car. I had a deep seated desire to take my fiancée home and claim her body over and over again until she only knew my name and nothing else. I kept quiet until we go buckled into my car. I pulled Abby to me over the center console in order to kiss her deeply, attempting to sooth the jealousy pumping through me. I hated feeling this seething burning green eyed monster that lived in me.

With my forehead pressed to hers, I demanded breathlessly, eyes squeezed shut, “Tell me that you love me. Tell me I’m being foolish for feeling this suspicion. I don’t like him touching you.”

I felt her hands cup my cheeks, her thumbs stroking my cheekbones. “Tom, I’m yours always. I love you powerfully, my beautiful man. Just people I have to work with. I love you.” I tried to release this feeling by panting it out with even breaths, but I only kept seeing Michael touching her arm. She separated from me a fraction, carefully touching my face. “Open your eyes, baby. Look at me.” I did as she asked, ashamed with myself that I constantly doubted any man that came near her.

She held up her left hand with my ring gleaming on her finger before me. “This is our promise, remember? Trust me.”

I shook my head, “I trust you, Abby. I don’t trust any other man.”

“This ring means that I’m yours. I love you and nothing can stop that. Not some inconsequential touch. There was no underlying meaning to it. They’re both coworkers, you’re my world. No need for suspicion or doubt. I’m yours and I want to be. Nobody can take me away from you.”

Chapter 4: Magic

Summary:

Magic

In one simple possibly meaningless touch, a surge of raw and primal possessiveness created a storm of doubt and distrust for Michael, and by extension James. He touched my Abigail and referred to her as a collective our Abby, and neither sat right with me, no matter how I tried to justify it. They were working together and physical contact was to be expected, but the familiarity of that touch didn’t look innocent. Fuck, no! My Abigail!

I wanted to rationalize this animal instinct, throw a harness and muzzle on it, to keep it at bay, but somehow I couldn’t see beyond the entitlement that man had with my woman. Suddenly I wanted to keep her at home, safe with me.

Abby took this flare up of my jealousy in stride, doing what she could to sooth the raging beast. She held my hand, kissed the back of it on the drive home, and showered me with compliments that I needed to feel better. When we arrived back at our flat, she led me into the living room, sat me down on the sofa and straddled my lap. With a patience I never thought she possessed, she calmly asked, “What bothers you about James and Michael?” Her fingers curled and coiled in the curls at the back of my head in her way to tame my agitation. “You know I’m not turning my back on you.”

Wrapping my arms tightly around her waist, I pulled her as close as I could. She was my life ring in the turbulent sea of jealousy and mistrust. “More Michael than James. I saw him touch you- fuck, no, it was a fucking caress!” Fuck, I didn’t mean to snap at her.

Calmly, Abby asked, “You saw Michael touch me?”

I groaned at her saying his name, and shut my eyes against the pain of seeing that man touch her and hearing him refer to her as ours collectively played over and over in my head on damn repeat. Every muscle in my gut rebelled and twisted against it. My fiancée grasped me with more urgency, pulling me back from the tide carrying me into the darkness. “Tom,” she cooed softly. “Thomas.” I felt her nose nuzzle mine when her lips brushed along mine, a mere whisper of an endearment. “Do you know what I love most about you?”

I opened my eyes again, memorized by the feel of her breath against my barely there stubble. I shook my head, fighting against the waves of jealousy, seethe and outrage, fighting to concentrate on her.

She smiled for me, trying to lift me up from the dark depths. “I love how special you make me feel with the force of how much you love me. I don’t understand how you believe me to be this amazing creature, but I want to be her – for you. Not every man is after me, flattering as the thought may-“

“You are an amazing creature, Abigail!”

She smiled again serenely, “You’ve seen me at my crankiest, at my bitchiest, at my saddest, at my quietest and you’ve loved me through it all. You wanted to be beside me through all my atrocious moods. I’ve treated you poorly and still you love me.”

I looked deep into her beloved blue eyes, completely besotted with her, almost as powerfully as the day I realized I was deeply and irrevocably in love with her. “You’ve done all that and more for me, Abigail.”

She giggled softly, playing with the collar of my button down shirt. “But look at you… who couldn’t love you, Tom? Intelligent, sweet, thoughtful, funny, silly, loyal, dedicated, honest, not to mention absolutely drop dead gorgeous.” With every attribute she said, she was reeling me back in against the undertow of jealousy threatening to drag me under and drown me. “You are everything I’ve ever wanted and needed. So tell me why you would ever feel in danger of losing me to someone else?”

“I can’t be the only one that knows how special you are.”

“But not everyone is trying to take me away from you. I certainly don’t think these guys are trying to steal me away from you. Even if either of them tried, he wouldn’t succeed. You’ve my choice and I stand by that choice.”

Puffing out a breath between pursed lips, I admitted, “I know how I’m feeling is foolish and unfounded – rationally. I don’t think I can completely explain the irrational part of it. It’s a hunger, a gnawing presence, one that never quite goes away. I should be the only to touch you, the only one to call you mine.”

She tried to scoot a little closer and moved her hands from my collar, sliding gently up my neck to my cheeks. She locked me in an intense gaze and wouldn’t release me. “You’re the only one who can touch me and have it mean anything. I respond to your touch, your caress… No one excites me, calms me, soothes me, ignites me or pleasures me as much as you do, and more importantly, I don’t want anyone else to have that ability. You’re my one.”

“Tell me again,” I stated.

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“Cheater,” she teased, knowing my need for verbal confirmations of adoration. Where Abby needed touch, I needed her to tell me. “I’ve stroked your ego enough for one day. You won’t be able to leave the house with the size of your head.” Sobering, she took a deep breath and said, “You don’t have to like another man touching me, but be secure enough to know that it won’t do anything, it won’t mean anything.”

“I’ve never been on this side of it, Abby. This separation, you’re leaving me…”

“Hey, only physically!”

I nodded. “I’m usually the one going away and you’re sending me out into the unknown. I wanted to be the strong one for you because you didn’t handle the first part of this so well.”

“You were fine until you realized that the opposite sex was out there, in the unknown.”

I shook my head, “It’s different this time. You’ve had to kiss other men on stage, but I knew that was acting. Never ever thrilled with the idea naturally, but you kissed them differently than when you’re with me. Even when we were starring opposite each other, you kissed me differently in character than offstage.

“I have a scale, a spectrum of how I react seeing you with other men. With Luke…”

She interrupted, “I know why you’re fine with that, babe. He poses no threat to you. He plays on your team. I should be jealous of him.”

Despite the mood, I laughed, “I think you are sometimes, love. Isn’t that why you still dislike Benedict?”

“He started it!” she insisted rather loudly.

I laughed again, reaching up to run my hand over her hair. I suspected they were bitter towards each other in some kind of competition for my affection. “I know I have nothing to worry about with my best friend, or Hemsworth because I know how much he loves Elsa. I get a twinge of the green eyed monster when you greet Evans, and a very tiny way Zach still.”

“Tommy!” I rolled my eyes at her referring to me like that. She reserved the right to call me that when I was being really silly. “After all this time? After all we went through?”

“After all I put you through,” I confessed regrettably. “Henry still panics me. He fancied you a lot, he told me and you spent so much time with him.”

“Someone was dragging his heels about claiming me,” she said, giving me a withering look. “Nothing ever happened with Henry. I was too hung up on this other bloke,” she remarked with a wave of her hand in mock nonchalance.

My heart swelled because I knew that was me. “God, Abby- that is exactly why I shouldn’t worry about other men, but I do. You’ve always picked me, but I’m so afraid of losing you.”

She buried her fingers in my hair again, pulling me back into her. “You’re not losing me, not this time, not ever. So what is it about this time that’s different? It’s my job to be with these guys.”

“But it’s not all acting. You are, but they aren’t. Close quarters on the road, on the coach, on the plane. I’ve been on tours, baby, and relationships form because it’s a different life, different priorities, different situations.”

“Still only my job to be with them, and I would prefer to be with you. I will be counting down the days, yellow and pink and purple days. I look forward to those most of all, counting down the days when I can return to my life with you here in London and we can get married. There’s nothing I want more than to be your wife, Tom, my love.”

I kissed her soundly, grounding myself with her presence, with how much she meant to me. “I want that too, baby. We are magic together, that’s why I’m loathe to lose it. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“You don’t have to, Tom. You don’t have to.”

Chapter 5: Enraptured

Summary:

Enraptured

Abby sought me out in my office when she woke from her reset nap. After exorcising my doubts and talking out my reservations about this tour, these men, her time away with her, my girl snuggled down on the sofa with my help under her pink duvet. It was her way of unwinding from rehearsal and relieving her brain of Bea, her character. Half an hour was all she needed to rid herself of any feelings of melancholy or depression or errant tears from the play’s dark themes. It was her way of remaining her chipper and exuberant self, always bouncing right back after the small sleep.

When she laid down, I watched over her for a few minutes, not wanting to be away from her. She closed her eyes, shifted a bit to get more comfortable, and I waited for her breath to become deeper and even out. I felt better than I had before, but I couldn’t let go of the jealousy completely. My fiancée deserved all the affection the world had to offer, but I wanted to be the only one allowed to give it.

I was already out of my mind with worry about these men being around Abby so much. Rationally, I knew she wouldn’t let anything happen, but I wanted to be there to protect her, to protect our relationship. She valued our dynamic longer than I have, because I was a horse’s arse in the beginning, thinking with my dick with no regard for her feelings for me. Fate saw to teach me a lesson by falling in love with my conquest.

The sound of my typing on my Mac in my office drew Abby to me. From my peripheral vision, I saw her enter the mess that I called my office. I swiveled in the computer chair in her direction as she crossed to me, reading her loving expression, I knew she’d come to check on me. Her head was tilted slightly to the side, the corners of her mouth upturned in an almost smile, her full pink lips looked moist as though she’d just moistened them.

Without a word she came to me, laid her finger over my lips and shushed me before I could say anything. Our eyes met and held as she took my hands from the resting position of the tops of my thighs and placed them on the back of hers as she stood between my splayed legs. The warm silky supple skin was already bare, ready for the tiny side to side, back and forth sweeping motion my thumbs traced just shy of the crease from her legs to her bum.

She sighed out, a brief little whoosh of air in relief of my touch. Her fingers eased into my hair, the pads of her fingertips massaging into my scalp. She bent to lay a small kiss along my lips, and again, and again, without closing her eyes. Shuffling forward, she stood over my seated position, her abdomen level with my face. I leaned in and pressed a kiss along the cotton that covered her.

Slowly lowering herself, she sat finding a comfortable seat in my lap, center to center, chest to chest. As she lowered, my hands slid up to her bum to hold her closer. Abby kissed another two kisses to my lips chastely, patient in her seduction. “Tonight,” she kissed me again. “I’m going to remind you what no other man can have, what is for your eyes, hands, teeth, tongue, fingers… for you, only for you.” She peppered her plan, every other or every third word, with easy soft kisses, keeping her eyes on mine.

Closing the small distance between us, she whispered in my ear, “If you play your hand correctly, and history strongly indicates you will, you’ll hear things no other man will ever hear from me.”

I groaned long and low, feeling the blood in my body rushing and collecting in my groin. She scraped her teeth over my earlobe, then licked the shell with the tip of her tongue. She pulled away a little meet my dazed and aroused gaze again and kissed me again. “No reason for these bouts of jealousy. I’m yours, only yours. I have been since you came to me in my dressing room, probably before that, and I will be yours as long as you want me. Beyond that.” Another small kiss, this one lasted a touch longer than the others. “I’m your Abigail,” she said husky as she rotated her hips over my erection, pulling a moan from me. “Say it, Tom. Your Abigail.”

Completely beguiled, bewitched and intoxicated with this woman, I almost lost the ability to speak. She swept her center over the bulge in my trousers again, and our breaths hitched together. “My Abigail.”

She kissed me innocently again, her cheeks flushed pink in her arousal and then whispered, “Now take me to bed and make me forget everything but your name.” She appealed to the man and the animal in me simultaneously, letting me prove that choosing me was right, saving herself for only me was right.

I picked her up and carried her across the hall to our bedroom, with her legs circling my waist and our lips engaged in those soft sweet but random kisses she’d been dealing me. Safely in out bedroom, I placed Abby on her feet, kissed her a few more times and told her, “Undress.” A simple command, and she followed to the letter immediately.

She pulled my t-shirt that she’d stolen from my drawer off over her head and dropped it on the hardwood floor in a pile. Abby possessed a gracefulness that I envied, her small figure perfectly in proportion. I suffered from too long legs for my torso, making me appear gangly, lanky and spindly. My breath quickened as she unclasped her bra and shimmied out of her knickers. To me, she was stunning, bare for me, and she’d done it for me.

Breathlessly I whispered, “My Abigail.” My hands caressed from her shoulders down her arms, awakening her skin in gooseflesh, visual evidence of her desire. I led her hands to hold behind my neck and then took her breasts in my palms.

She gasped, “Tom!” Her eyes slid closed with my hands on her flesh, weighing the delectable rounded skin.

“So beautiful,” I breathed, testing her response to me I molded my hands and fingers around those gorgeous globes, my mouth watering to taste her. “Open those eyes, my Abby. Be with me.” Immediately, she did as I requested and I rewarded her with another sweet kiss. Taking my time, I pressed her rosy nipples between my thumbs and forefingers. She keened as they pebbled, “Thomas!”

“That’s right, baby,” I kissed her, another chaste brush of my lips on hers. I pinched the peaks and pulled gently, and she sobbed my name again, pleasurable torture colored her tone. I lowered my head to take one nipple in my mouth, my tongue flicking across it evenly. I caressed one hand down her belly and lower to her sex. Ghosting my fingers along her folds, shallowly checking her readiness for me. I felt warm moisture coat my digits, and I smiled around her breast in my mouth. Abby panted with the teasing and the concentrating to stay on her feet with my sensual attentions.

I stood up to my full height, bringing my fingers that had touched her so intimately to my mouth to taste her, my effect on her body. I hummed around the hint of her arousal, rich and fragrant. Abby coiled her fingers around my forearm and brought my fingers to her mouth. Her tongue snaked out and licked the length of each finger before taking my pointer and middle finger into the depths of her mouth. My cock twitched as I felt the suction along my skin as she sucked on my fingers. “Fuck… oh, fuck… Abigail…” Her eyes never left mine as she imitated what she does with her mouth on my length when I’m deep down her throat.

With my lust for her heightened to maddening, I commanded gruffly, “Undress me.” I withdrew my fingers from her mouth and brought them back to her folds. Trembling with desire, she whimpered as her fingers tried to unbutton my shirt as I lightly played with her distended clitoris, just a fleeting touch to keep her aroused. She bit her lower lip, fumbling with the loops on my shirt, the flesh of her sex slippery with her need.

Abby peeled the stiff material from my body, her mouth landing on my nipple as she ground down on my fingers, seeking friction. She bit down almost roughly, evoking a howl from my throat. She stood up as I abandoned my teasing to paint her lips with her arousal, pleasantly rewarded with her swallowing my fingers. “I love when you get downright primal with me, Abby.” I felt her fist on the bulge in my pants and I grunted with the added stimulation. She stroked her hand over the length of me and sucked hard on my fingers, my chest heaving with the effort to breathe through the gratifying palm over me and pressure on my fingers.

Making quick work of my belt and fly, she pulled the rest of the clothes free of my body. I pulled my fingers free from her mouth and she whimpered at the loss. She started to sink to her knees, but I stopped her, pulling her back to me. Bewildered eyes met mine as I kissed her feverishly, all the sweetness and chasteness forgotten as I breached her lips with my tongue. I devoured her mouth, sliding and tasting her tongue with mine. She moaned, clinging to me.

My hand at the small of her back pulled her flush to me, every inch of her pressed to mine. I was so hungry for her, and she was practically begging me to end the agony. Ending our kiss, I laid flat on my back on the bed. Abby watched with a fire in her eyes, wanting me as much as I wanted her. Before I demanded something of her, she positioned herself between my legs and licked my engorged cock. The warm wet of her mouth surrounded my balls, the pleasure of the vacuum of her mouth erased every possible thought from my head. She then licked my shaft a few more times agonizingly slow, drawing out my pleasure. When her lips curled around the head, I groaned out her name.

As much as I wanted her to suck me off, I loved being encased her body, our climaxes overlapping. I pulled her off my cock with a will of steel that I surprised me, and led her up my body. Abby, my little sex kitten, fought me by trying to kiss, touch or lick every inch of me on the way up. “Tom, I need…  I need… I want… let me mark you.” She buried her face in my neck, her teeth worrying the skin on the curve of my shoulder. To encourage her, I held the back of her head to the patch of skin she’d claimed. Because of my career, a lot of the time she wasn’t allowed to, but my shooting didn’t start for some weeks so I allowed her.

The force of her mouth on me was just this side of painful, but she distracted me by sliding her sex along mine. The folds of her sex hugged my shaft, coating my length with her arousal and teasing me with the warmth of her body without being surrounded by her. Abby made a noise in the back of her throat with every flex of her hips over me, her clit getting the most attention.

“Abby, I need to taste you again, darling,” I said urgently when she’d laved the abused part of my skin over and over again. “Crawl up here, love, and hold onto the headboard.” She did as I told her, positioning her sex above my mouth. I wrapped my arms around her hips, locking her in place. I pushed my tongue deep inside her, pressing a scream out of her, repeating the action in very quick succession. With the flat of my tongue, I followed the line of her folds, spreading her lips with my fingers tips, licking from bottom to top.

Abby whined above me, her patience wearing thin in our seduction, her orgasm just within reach. She chanted my name, grinding her clit against the tip of my tongue. I could taste how close she was, and I wanted nothing more than to get her there. Using the cave of my mouth, I alternated between sucking her clit into my mouth and flicking it fast and furious with my tongue. Abby rode the ministrations, and finally all at once she screamed out, collapsed against the headboard, her orgasm washing over her. Watching her body clamp and relax was fascinating, because I did that to her, I had that effect on her.

When her breath returned to normal and her body recovered from its high, she slunk back down my body. She lazily kissed me full on the mouth, trying to pull the taste of her from me. Pulling away again, she demanded, “Fuck me, Tom. Fuck me into the mattress.”

Rolling her over and mounting her with a forceful push, my cock filled her before she even finished her demand. I held her hands down with mine, the mattress sinking with the force of it. My hips moved quickly against and with her, the pace bruising and brutal. I reveled in it, her flesh pliant and yet snug around every inch of me, soft, warm, wet, fucking heaven. She reveled in it, the sounds she made absolutely indecent. I rolled, rocked, jolted, and pistoned with a fast motion of my middle, plundering the depths of her.

I dropped my face into her left breast, sucking the gentle flesh into my mouth. As she had marked me, I matched it with one of my own on her. At the height of the pain, her climax hit her full on, her entire body convulsing with the force of it. Thrusting into her quaking sex roughly a few more times, my orgasm claimed me within moments of hers and with it, I pushed as deep into her body as I could.

I collapsed over her, our limbs a mass of sweaty trembling nerves, our skin stuck together with our sweat, our breathing accelerated and our heartbeats echoing against each other. We were both silent for a long time, unable to form a coherent thought or sentence, our bodies trying to recover from the activities.

I finally withdrew from her body and placed a kiss on her lips as I climbed off of her gingerly. Abby found her spot against me, curling into me, making herself as close as possible. She mumbled my name, snuggling like a second skin on me and I couldn’t say I minded in the least.

We didn’t need any more words or actions. I knew she loved me, she knew I loved her and together we would survive this obstacle together.

 

Chapter 6: Disagreement

Summary:

Disagreement

I had dropped in on Abby’s rehearsal early to fetch and bring her home at the conclusion like I did every chance I got, once my work commitments were fulfilled. Hovering in the back of the theatre so as not to disturb, I watched my girl trying a new approach to Act Two, and she was incredible at the top of her game. Naturally anxious to get there to pick her up and be there for when she was done, I arrived fifteen minutes before end time. I wanted to make it clear with James and Michael that Abby and I were happy together, not to be messed about with, and absolutely serious about our plans for marriage.

She was luminous, a shining star, in character as Bea. I was entranced and pulled in by her performance even in dress rehearsal setting. Her delivery of the lines were heartfelt and true, but a few minutes in, James called out through the darkness, “Abby, can we go back through that once more?”

Abby squinted into the audience, lifting her arm to shield her eyes from the bright stage lighting, and asked with a smile, “Sure. From where?”

My gaze cut through the darkness of the house to a shuffling from the third row of the theatre. Michael announced, “I’ve got this.” He sidestepped out of the aisle, away from his brother and climbed to the stage beside Abby. She smiled politely for him, as they got direction from James.

Michael then faced my fiancée, upstaging her, took hold of her waist and moved her backwards to the chair directly behind her. He sat her on the arm of the brown leather straight backed chair that the Eighties surely wanted back. When he stepped aside, she looked confused with her eyebrows furrowed in a knot and her eyes narrowed on him. James was giving direction to start this particular beat from the arm of the chair.  

From that day, that day I saw Michael touch Abby, I made my presence known. I made it a habit to drive her to rehearsals, walk her inside the theatre, and kiss her before leaving. I picked her up after the end of rehearsal as often as I could because I didn’t trust Michael and the way he leered at my girl. This display of moving her around by touch was no exception.

I was trying to get used to the touching, but the glances and the heated stares were beginning to unnerve me. Even in the limited time I’d stepped into and observed rehearsal, Michael searched out any opportunity to touch her, and it was starting to frustrate and enrage me. The longing looks in her direction did nothing but anger me all the more.

Violently I pushed the door open, gestured for Abby to enter first, and slammed the door shut behind us. I wasn’t angry with her, but my fury was spilling over onto her. I couldn’t contain the raging, roaring boil of rage, and I knew I had to try to contain the monstrosity that my temper had become.

Pushing my fingers through my hair, I attempted once more to get my temper under control, a battle I was losing terribly. “Abby, damn it! I don’t like it!” I’d raised my voice to her again, and I didn’t mean to yell at her.

Evenly she asked, “What can I do, Tom? I’ve done everything I can to convince you that you have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t trust him. There’s no reason for anyone but me to touch you as much as he does. He’s doing it on purpose!” We’d gotten home from her rehearsal and I was trying to keep my anger in check. I knew she needed her nap. I could see the wariness around her eyes, but I also saw that she wanted to comfort and assure me in my ranting. We were still having the same argument that started the minute we stepped outside the theatre, the same argument that started days ago when I first saw Michael touch her.

His laying his hands on my girl hadn’t decreased, in fact it only seemed to increase. The action was starting to appear deliberate, his doing it to rankle me. It was fucking working, because my Abigail wasn’t a bargaining chip to mess with, not with my emotions or hers. She also wasn’t available, not for him to fantasize about or carry on having a crush on. I’d had enough of this.

I had to make Abby see, make her understand what she was missing. Michael wanted her. She mentioned that he was nursing a broken heart, but Abby was not his rebound. No doubt he was attracted to her good nature, her smiling and sunny disposition, how sweet and tolerant she is, but his attraction to her didn’t fly with me. Abby was my light, my sun, my sweetness, and I wasn’t tolerating or indulging this schoolboy crush. I wasn’t going to share her or give her up.

“Tom, baby, you know it’s ultimately my choice, who I want to be with, who I want to share my time with. That’s you. You’ve always been my choice. A few insignificant touches and glances, even small insider jokes isn’t going to sway me away from you. You mean more to me.”

She kicked off her flats in the hallway, and I didn’t even think to try to correct her. I was too caught up in trying to get my fiancée to see reason with this man. “I want to protect you, Abby. I don’t want him to put you in a situation where you have to choose.”

She took my hands, pulling me backwards deeper into our flat, pure adoration and acceptance in her eyes. She was so patient with me when jealousy raged again. She smiled serenely and declared clearly, “And if he does, my choice isn’t going to change. Trust in me, Tom, in all the years we’ve been together, in all my devotion to you, to you and me.”

“He might not give you a choice. He clearly doesn’t respect our relationship. If he did, he wouldn’t touch you the way he does or look at you the way he does.”

She pulled me into the bedroom and sat me down on the bed. She stood between my spread thighs, holding my jaw between her hands, maintaining eye contact. I coiled my arms around her waist, keeping her anchored to me, searching her face for confirmation that nothing between us was at stake. “Tom, please let this go.” I started to argue again, but she placed her hand over my mouth, trapping a grunt in my throat instead.

“Baby, listen to me. You’re sensitive to this issue, I know. I’m doing everything to convince you that you have nothing to worry about. All your scenarios, all worst case…” She shook her head to accentuate her point. “All those don’t mean anything. Trust in me.”

I reached up and took her hand away from mouth so I could speak. “I don’t like it! It’s not how a bloke is supposed to act. He’s not respecting the boundaries of my place in your life.”

She kissed me softly, chasing away the jealous monster with her affection. “What does it matter? You know where your place is in my life. I know where your place is in my life. Let this go.”

I clutched her shoulders, holding her closer, as close as I could. “It matters to me, Abby, because you matter to me.”

She sighed with barely contained frustration, “But you’ve built this up in your head. Even if every man in England wanted me, it wouldn’t matter because I’m with you.”

“You don’t know what living on the road is like.”

“Tom, please… I know what my life is living here with you. There is nothing better. Now please, let this go.”

I tried taking a deep breath, to hush the bubbling jealousy, but I couldn’t it was haunting me. I’d seen too many lingering glances from Michael in Abby’s direction, I’d witnessed too many excuses for him to put his hands on her. “It’s making me so angry. You need to tell him.”

“No, no I don’t.”

“Why don’t you understand this? Cut it off now before it gets to a point where you have choose.”

She pushed away from me her eyes alight with her own indignation. “What does it matter?” She was beginning to pull into herself, her self-preservation and aversion to any type of confrontation. She didn’t want to have this same argument, and I didn’t want it either. We were closing in on her set off date, and we were both feeling the pressure of it. She wasn’t going to confront one of her bosses about this, confrontation wasn’t in her nature.

“Tom, either you trust me or you don’t. We need to get beyond this. Just drop it. Please. They all know that we’re engaged, so why do I have to declare it?”

I stood up to my full height, pushing away from the bed. “It matters to me, because you matter to me.“

Chapter 7: Fight

Summary:

Fight

When Abby kicked me out of our bedroom and closed the door in my face, I didn’t blame her, but at the same time, something inside me knew we were in a bad place again. She was cranky, exhausted from rehearsal, and the last thing she wanted to do was coddle me in my temper tantrum. I felt driven to argue my point and make her face this problem, and I needed her to understand that I wasn’t going to be passive about whatever Michael’s agenda was with my girl. I couldn’t let her go on as she was, because this was becoming a bone of contention between us.

The argument was always the same, and we weren’t saying anything new. Abby, completely convinced of Michael’s innocence, tried reasoning with me, maintaining that he was irreproachable in this. She couldn’t get me to see things the way she did, because I saw the way his eyes undressed her, desired her. This had to stop, this friction wasn’t what Abby and I needed with the separation coming. I was trying to draw her out because I knew what she was hiding, and I really wanted her to offer up the information on her own. She was falling into the same pattern she always had: hide until the problem imploded, hoping against hope that it would disappear on its own.

With the tour imminent, I wouldn’t let this get any further out of hand. This secret was causing a rift between us and I wasn’t having that.

After an hour passed, I tiptoed back into our bedroom to wake my girl. She was still asleep, her breathing even, her body relaxed. She was precious, curled up on her side, her knees bent, her hands tucked up under her head against the pillow. I went to her and sat beside her on the bed, careful not to stir her awake. I curled some of her hair away from her face, and tucked the strands behind her ear as she slept on.

In a very real sense, I wouldn’t feel completely comfortable with other men in Abby’s company until we were married. Making her mine in a tangible, real, permanent binding contract would feel impenetrable and unbreakable. Marriage was sacred, and I planned to do it only once. My relationship with Abby were the happiest, most passionate and meaningful of my life. Yet, she was pulling away and I couldn’t let that happen, not since I just got her back.

After a few minutes of watching her sleep and caressing her hair, her eyelids fluttered open. She rolled onto her back with a yawn and a sleepy, “Hey.” All the animosity and bitterness with which we fought were gone, replaced with her enthusiastic disposition.

“Are you ready to tell me about this now, Abby?” She looked up at me with those beautiful innocent blue eyes, with confusion, unsure what I was asking. I reached for the book on the bedside table that I retrieved only moments ago from her hiding place for it, the piano bench in the living room.

I didn’t think anything of it, as it wasn’t anything special or noteworthy, at first. The faded red cloth covered hardback book with cracked binding and uneven yellowing pages was sitting neglected in the bench and I never remembered seeing it before. I only thought to open the pages in the hopes that something would jog my memory, since I keep most of my books filed away on book shelves.

That’s when I found the inscription that made my blood run cold and the remembrance of all that came before Abby entered my life come rushing, flooding back. I found that book two weeks ago, and I never brought the subject up. I wanted to give my girl the benefit of the doubt, let her tell me herself, but that didn’t happen. I patiently waited for her to be honest, but I was done waiting. She was leaving in less than a week, and I couldn’t leave this lingering.

Upon showing her the book, her expression fell away from bewilderment to shock in an instant. She sat up with a jolt and tried to take the tome from my grasp, her sleepiness instantly forgotten. I kept the book firmly in my grip, searching her face for the truth. This was not the reaction that I was hoping for. Accusingly, she asked, “How did you find that?”

Incredulously, I stated, “I don’t think that matters. Tell me what this means.”

She made to snatch the book away from me again, but I held it out of her reach. Overall, who possessed or held the book didn’t matter, the damage was done. She withheld vital information from me, and instead of the writing being on the proverbial wall, it was in the book that I held. With a dark warning tone, she said, “It’s not what you think. Give it back.”

“Tell me, Abigail. Tell me what I think this is,” I intoned calmly, though I was beginning to panic. I couldn’t disguise the hurt that clouded the words or the betrayal I felt. I’d been keeping it bay, keeping it from consuming me, but the more she kept quiet, the greater the hurt became. Logically I knew she wasn’t cheating on me, there was no way she could, but the book led me to think that maybe she wanted to.

“Tom, trust in me. Everything else doesn’t matter,” she pleaded helplessly, but I could see the guilt written all over her. As strongly as I knew she cared for me and how much that showed, so did her conscience. “Please, Tom, don’t make this more than it is.”

“Abby, it’s very hard to ignore when another man is giving you expensive gifts, like this.” I waved the book in front of her, and this time she snatched it away, hiding it behind her back. “What does it mean? Why have you accepted it?”

She moved to climb on my lap but I lifted her away. This wasn’t something that she could distract me from anymore. Tears formed in her eyes from the gesture of putting distance between us. Solemnly she looked down at her clasped hands, her thumbs fidgeting around each other and said, “You’re going to think it’s a lot worse than it is. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Abigail,” I warned quietly, the sound of it cutting through the room. There were a few beats of silence that passed between us before she dared to steal a glance at my eyes. Visibly she pouted, allowing her anxiety to pull her into herself again, her shoulders hunched and her back curled. The stern, curt utterance of her name hung there, before I finally spoke again. “Why the hell would you hide this?”

“For you. For us. I knew it would upset you, and I didn’t want that.”

“Hiding it from me upsets me. There shouldn’t be any secrets between us, Abigail. Not between us.”

I watched as Abby shuddered and nearly dissolved into tears, and the impulse to hold her was there, but my anger wouldn’t let me. She covered her face with her hands, her elbows planted on her knees as she sat with her feet tucked up under her. Muffled, she confessed, “I’m so sorry, Tom. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I didn’t know what to do.”

“Start at the beginning. I need to know every detail.”

“It’s not nearly that involved,” she snuffled pathetically, trying to keep her tears out of the mess we were in. She uncovered her face again, steadying her breath. “Michael and I spent some time at rehearsal talking about Tennessee Williams, and how much I wanted to play Laura. I was almost cast… and he was listening to all I went through, all the auditions I went to, how I couldn’t go with you to New York, all the hours I sunk into trying to land that part, for nothing. He told me that he and Isabelle used to study all of Williams plays, it’s how they fell in love. He ordered the first edition of The Glass Menagerie as an engagement gift for her before she took off. He gave it to me, because he knew how much I loved the play, and he didn’t want the constant reminder around of her leaving him.”

“Abby, this book is worth at least a thousand pounds!”

“But, he gave it to me because he didn’t want it around anymore.”                       

I shook my head in disbelief. “Do you believe me now? He’s trying to get to you, Abby, and you’re allowing it.”

“I’m not!” her voice raised in volume and in octave.

I pointed at the book and scowled. “Proof positive that he is. It’s there in black and white. Have you read the inscription?”

Quietly, she confessed, “Yes.”

“It’s addressed to you.”

“It is. I know.”

“So explain it.”

She slouched even further into herself, fighting to keep the truth from surfacing. “Tom, please… this has nothing to do with us, don’t let it come between us, because I didn’t want that.” She reached for my hand, to squeeze, to reassure herself that I was there, a physical plea to keep us together. “What’s written in that book has no bearing in what we mean to each other.”

“It was enough to hide it from me.” I pushed off the bed and away from her, trying to reconcile the Abby I knew with this new secret. “I gave you every opportunity to tell me on your own, but I still had to force it out of you, Abby.”

“I wanted to avoid this. I know how much James and Michael bother you, and I didn’t want that for you, Tom.”

“Are you turning this on me?”

She hopped up from the bed and raced towards me. “NO! Please don’t think that! Oh, God! Tom!” She took a few calming breaths as her fingers tightened on my shirt, clinging to me. My heart shredded to pieces, since I wanted to simultaneously wrap myself around her in comfort and push her away. Instead, I did nothing at all, just stood stoically, listening. “I don’t like to see you upset. I love you and I’m completely devoted to you. Please know that much. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place… I didn’t know what to do. What was I supposed to do?”

Softly I said, “Come to me.” With that, I turned and walked out of the room and our flat, Abby’s weeping followed me all the way out the front door and the rest of the evening.

___________________

Chapter 8: Similarities

Summary:

Similarities

“Tom, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” my voice broke over the syllables, betraying my guilt. He didn’t make a move or even appear as though he heard me. He was standing before the kitchen sink with the water running, staring out the garden window. His rigid posture spoke volumes of the depths of his anger and his hurt. I did that to us, to him. I still hadn’t learned, when was I going to learn?

Tom had left me crying in the bedroom after he confronted me about the book that Michael gave me. I presumed that he went for a walk or a run to try to work through how he was feeling about my withholding information from him. I wanted to burn the book as I didn’t really want it, especially with the damage it was currently wreaking on the dynamic between me and my fiancée. I didn’t ask for the gift, I didn’t want the gift, and it had become a wedge between Tom and me.

I couldn’t leave, go out on the tour in three days’ time with Tom and me at odds. I had sorted my laundry, packed most of my luggage, and was waiting for the last minute to pack the last of my essentials. I didn’t have long to plead my case and convince him that my reasons for keeping this quiet was for the best, at least for me.

The pounding of my heart in my chest compelled me forward, to wrap my arms around him. As soon as my hands touched his taut abs, he shrugged away from me with a slight pause. He wanted to feel me around him, I could feel that yearning, but he was in pain from my betrayal. “No, Abby, it doesn’t work that way.”

Floundering, I asked, “What can I do, Tom? Please tell me what I can do to make this right. I never meant to hurt you.”

He held up a finger to silence my speech. “You never meant for me to find out. There’s a distinct difference, and that’s the part that consumes me. You had no intention of telling me.”

I felt like I was drowning in a pool of my own making. I didn’t know how to repair the damage I’d done to Tom’s trust in me. I know why I made the decision I did, but all at once it didn’t feel the right way to go. “Because that book- Michael- all of it doesn’t mean anything to me. You do!”

Torn between wanting to hold onto the hurt and wanting to forgive, he shoved his hand through his curls. “It’s all so convenient for you, Abby.”

“It’s not! I didn’t want us falling apart when I’m hours away from leaving. I never wanted to go to begin with. I wanted to stay with you. I wanted to be your Abigail.” I couldn’t keep the tears away anymore. Tears welled up and poured down my cheeks in a steady stream of sorry. I croaked remorsefully, “I only ever wanted to be your Abigail.”

The disapproving look he gave me burned like a hot poker to the stomach. This wasn’t what I needed when my bags were packed and clambering to go on an adventure. I hiccoughed around a threatening sob. In a desperate attempt to appeal to the part of him that loved me, I said, “I told you, Tom… I told you once that I needed you with me on this, needed you so much more than I ever thought possible. That book, a single book, doesn’t change that. I’m still the girl madly in love with you, the one wearing your ring, the girl that made a calendar counting down the days before she comes home to be your wife.”

“I thought you were all that, Abigail. She’s the one I proposed to, the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. The one. Full stop. The one incapable of lying to me.”

“One book does not unmake the girl I’ve been.”

“Damn it, Abby! It’s not about the book. You kept the gesture from another man secret. You entertained it, almost encouraged it by accepting it. You denied that Michael was competition time and time again. Would you rather have him?”

I gasped, “NO! I didn’t want to upset you like this.” I tried to race towards him, but he stepped out of my reach. As if I’d been burned, I held my hands against my chest, my heart knocking erratically against the wall of my chest bone. “Oh, Tom, I was trying to avoid this!”

I couldn’t escape the hard, withering look that Tom was delivering me in large doses. “Do you crave the attentions and affections of another?”

“Tom, NO!”

“Am I enough for you?”

“Of course you are! I’ve been in love with you since day one. Day one.” I was losing the battle of controlling my tears, the streaks wetting my face. The stress of poor judgment was killing me slowly and painfully. I never anticipated Tom to react so badly, and it was exactly the reaction that I was trying to avoid. Forlornly, I told him, “He’s my boss, Tom. How was I supposed to handle this, and make this livable for me while I’m on tour with him? I didn’t want a token, I didn’t ask for it.”

My fiancée wasn’t warming to me in the slightest, and I was beginning to tremble from my strung out emotions. Gulping down a lungful of oxygen to control my breaking heart, I looked down at the diamond ring still on my finger, wondering if we’d ever get to the next phase, if I’d ever heal this part of it.

“Abby, you once told me that every relationship requires trust.”

Sadly, I reminded him, “Do you remember what prompted me to tell you that? You kept your past a secret for a year. You aren’t blameless of keeping secrets. It took an entire year for you to tell me about your past, and only after you tore down everything good between us. So you decide if I deserve this ring and your name.”

“Is this revenge, Abigail? Are you evening the score?”

I couldn’t completely be angry with him for reacting so badly, and turning everything I said against me. How many times did we have that same discussion about Michael and his designs on me, if they were sordid? I was merely trying to maintain an even keel with all parties, and clearly I was failing badly. “Tom, please… don’t do this. You know I’m not like that,” I cried despondently. I was seeing a future without the love of my life and I leaned heavily against the kitchen table. He was tearing me up with every word he spoke, every turn in our argument. I never meant to throw our relationship to the wolves, and I was now fighting to keep it. “Please try to forgive me. I still need you.”

Tom remained silent, still in pain, still raging against what I’d done. He wouldn’t let me touch him, knowing that was my soothing mechanism. My man only ever responded to verbal cues. Throwing all my pride to the wind, I confessed shamefully, “Thomas, I’m really so very sorry. I should’ve come to you, my beautiful man. I love you so entirely, and I should’ve been honest with you. Please don’t cast me out. I need your support.”

The sobs completely devoured me. “I need you to love me.”

I ran off to the bedroom, fell into my oversized chair with my pink duvet wrapped around me. I couldn’t hear what Tom was doing over the noises coming from deep inside me. I was inconsolable, and my man didn’t come to me or try to comfort me. I understood it, but that didn’t make the agony any easier to cope with.

Chapter 9: Mistake

Summary:

Mistake

Two days. Two empty, meaningless days slipped by without Tom talking to me. I absolutely understood his hurt and his anger, but I wasn’t sure how to fix it either. I begged and pleaded and beseeched him in those two days, but he wouldn’t talk to me. I deserved the cold shoulder and the icy stares, but I wasn’t dealing with the consequences very well.

I also didn’t know what to do with that book or how to handle Michael or this crush he had on me or the tour. As much as Tom mistrusted him, Michael was not a bad man, broken hearted, a little lonely maybe, but not entirely evil, and he certainly wasn’t competition for my heart. I was completely, wholeheartedly, solely and utterly Tom’s girl if he still wanted me, if I could convince him to keep me. I knew I could never love someone as I did Tom.

When the alarm sounded to wake me on the third day, the day I was setting off for Manchester for the first performance of the tour, my heart and my head felt heavy and leaden, weighed down by the burden of guilt. Tom’s side of the bed was vacant, having spent the past few nights sleeping in the guest room, sleeping away from me. I didn’t want to leave things so broken between us, but he wasn’t giving me any indication that I could fix it.

I stroked my hand over the sheet where he should’ve been, but only felt the cold smooth cotton against my palm. My mind frantically searched through scenarios to fix this mess that I created, everything hopelessly inadequate to the hurt I delivered on Tom. Giving the book back didn’t seem enough, but possibly a step in the right direction. My Tom needed something more tangible from me though, to fix us, and I was at my wit’s end trying to figure out what that tangible thing could be.

Without my usual energy and enthusiasm, I got up from the bed and went about my morning routine, hoping in vein that I would think of something. In an hour, James was coming by to collect me and my bags, my first performance as Bea that night. The bus ride would take at least three and a half hours, and I wasn’t looking forward to it, not without fixing what was happening between me and Tom.

I stood in front of our bedroom window, fighting against the tears. I didn’t want to leave with Tom so justifiably angry with me. I hated nearly every minute of my life since I decided to do this tour. Why was something so right for my career utterly wrong for my relationship with Tom? How could one half of my life be on the upswing and the other half beyond repair? Why couldn’t I have both at the same time?

It wasn’t as simple as all that, as I was living with the consequences of my actions. I was losing Tom, and the repulsive truth was because of something I did. I was hopeless to fix or mend it. The silence in our flat was oppressive, knowing that I brought it in with my secret.

The inevitable flow of tears came as I glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes. James would be collecting me in thirty minutes. I knew I had to pull myself together and not let on that my personal life was in tatters. I didn’t want to share the details with James or Michael or Lisa about my life with Tom. All three of them knew Tom and I were engaged and had been together for a long time, but they didn’t need to know anything more than that.

I sniffled loudly, grabbing another tissue from my bedside table and dabbed at my running nose. I already missed Tom and what we meant to one another, how crazy we were about each other, how passionate, how much we trusted each other, and I’d ruined that. A raw sob ripped from my throat at I might have lost Tom’s trust in me forever.

I felt his presence in the room before I heard him, but I didn’t turn. I was ashamed that he caught me crying again over my betrayal. I didn’t want him to see how weak I was, or how much I was punishing myself for doing it. Covering my face with my hands, blocking his view of me, I curbed the noise, but the tears still came.

I felt hands on my hips, and that familiar possessive squeeze that Tom did on them. I lowered my hands to look at him, regretting the decision immediately. He was kneeling before me, anguish written all over him. His eyes were swimming with unshed tears, his shoulders set in a rigid line of stress and the corners of his mouth turned down, the tension between us appeared to be aging him. I couldn’t see his fun, happy side through the strain between us. What had I done to my man?

“Abigail…” his voice cracked and I wanted to curl up in a ball from the pain that I caused him and me. “I don’t want this.”

I hiccoughed loudly, closing my eyes, blocking out the despair of him denying me. The lonely tears wracked my body and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. “Tom, please,” I cried hopelessly. I was about to throw myself at his mercy, anything so he didn’t give up on me. “I can… I will… I, I, I want… to… make… this… better. Please, Tom… please…”

“Abby, listen to me,” I could barely hear the hurt and the pain in his tone over my heaving, labored breaths. “I don’t want to be angry with you.”

I sank to my knees, the weight of all I’d done crushing me, gravity having its will on me. If Tom wanted to be free of me, I couldn’t imagine what that would mean for me. I didn’t want to go back to the lonely existence that I had before, not when I knew a love like his. “I don’t… want… please don’t be,” I pleaded, fearing that he was going to send me away, out into the world, alone, without his support.

“Abby, listen to me,” he repeated, the tears making his voice deeper, the sound of hoarse and croaking. “I need to know something. Calm down, Abby. We don’t have a lot of time.”

In a panic, I exclaimed, “Don’t ask for the ring back! I still want to marry you! I made a mistake!”

Tom grabbed and clutched my hands in his. The hasty movement caught me up and I met his eyes. “Abby, I’m angry with how you chose to handle this situation, but I don’t want to be. I need to know, Abby… I need to know if you accepted that book because you want the attention from another man.”

I shook my head vehemently denying that. Tom was the only man I ever wanted, the only one I needed, and I hated that I’d shaken his belief in me. “No! No! It wasn’t about that!”

“Promise me. Promise me that you don’t want to encourage that man’s affection for you.”

I was finding it very hard to breathe, the sobs had completely taken over. I shuddered against another violent shaky inhale, trying desperately to catch my breath, my heart seizing in my chest in fear that we were over. We just couldn’t be. “Tom, I love you. I only made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”

“Abby, promise me,” he commanded urgently, his hands holding my head so I looked at him and he could read my face.

“I promise! Please… I’ll make it right. Please don’t cast me off. I’m so sorry that I hurt you, Tom. Please, I’m sorry.”

Tom adjusted his position from his knees to sitting cross-legged on the floor and gathered me into his arms. He swallowed me up in his embrace trying to calm me down from my hysterical bout of tears. He held me closely, rocked me in his arms and shushed me, soothing my troubled heart and mind.

My anxiety over the possibility that I’d ruined the best relationship of my life was extremely high, and I shook from nerves and a deep, abiding chill that filled me. I couldn’t face losing Tom, and it was a very real possibility after what I’d done. I murmured on constant repeat, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Abby, sshh. I’m angry right now, but I still love you. I don’t want this divide between us, I really don’t.”

Clutching his shirt in my fist, I asked, “What can I do?”

“I’m not sure, Abby, but don’t let this man come between us. You’ve got to make it clear with Michael that you’re not available. He needs reminding that I love you and that you love me. Only you can do it, Abby.”

“What about the tour, Tom?” I could hear the fear ringing through in my own ears.

“Thing may be uncomfortable for a little bit, but he should respect your decision.”

I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck, desperately clinging to him. “You’re my man. You’re my decision, I promise. I love you so much and I’m so sorry that I did this. Please know that I love you so much.”

Tom caressed my back, keeping me close, calming my panic and my tears. “I love you too, Abigail. I don’t want to argue with you, but I don’t want anyone to come between us either. Don’t let that happen.”

____________________________

Chapter 10: Grudge

Summary:

Grudge

Trudging and dragging my feet up the mountain of five stairs of the hired single decker coach for the tour and clambered into a leather chair under the flat screen telly near the window. I didn’t want to be here anymore. This was a huge advancement in my career and would set me apart as leading lady material, but suddenly that’s not what I wanted anymore. I wanted Tom, I wanted him to still love me, and I desperately wanted to be his wife.

I stared blankly at the diamond ring on my ring finger of my left hand, wondering if Tom and I would ever get to the next step in our journey. Truly if I had to choose between my love and my career, Tom would always take that victory, easily with no contest. So why in the hell did I choose my comfort over him in accepting that book, that ticking time bomb?

I overheard James, Michael and our coach driver outside debating the best way to stow away all the boxes, crates and paraphernalia for the play and all the luggage in the undercarriage for the five of us. I dug out my iPod to distract me from their arguing voices, staving off the panic attack that would follow if I listened anymore. My love life and my future happiness were at stake and they were debating the most effective use of space. I was losing everything that I held most precious and dear and their voices grated on that last nerve of sanity.

I plugged in and tuned out, staring at nothing in particular out the window. Pulling my knees into my chest, I stayed in a tiny ball contemplating my life. I ignored everyone else when they joined me on the bus, lost in thought. Lisa, a stage manager through and through, claimed the seat beside the driver, unable to relinquish all control. Michael took a seat across the aisle from me, while James flitted back and forth between the front and the back. When the bus pulled away from kerb, I was still curled in the little ball.

At this point in my life, I didn’t want to change my lifestyle by living out on the road, but rather settling down, married and planning for a family. I didn’t have lofty plans of taking over show business. I wanted to do my thing and go home to Tom.

The further we drove away from London the worse this dark foreboding invaded me. I did the first thing that I always did when I felt lonely, texted Tom. ‘Baby, I miss you already. I’m so sorry about all of this. I will fix this. I won’t lose you. I love you so much. – Abby xoxo’

A lot of time passed before Tom answered, he was so angry about how I chose to deal with this Michael situation. I didn’t blame him for being hurt and upset with me. I bit back a flood of tears when Tom finally answered my text: ‘I love you too, Abby. – T’ I could feel the coldness in the response. I knew he loved me, but I knew that he was still angry and it was up to me to smooth out the wrinkle between us. I was determined to get him back.

“Hey, Abby…”

I blinked unseeing out the window, willing my brain to engage.

“Abby!”

I heard my name called from the distance, but I couldn’t will myself to respond.

“Hey, Abby? Abigail!”

The sound of my name finally broke through the breech the wall of my loneliness and despair, pulling me into the land of the living. Slightly startled, I distractedly looked to the person calling for me amongst three concerned companions. Absently I removed the silent earbuds from my ears that I realized I’d been wearing for the past three hours without music. My iPod was in my hands, but lost the concentration half way through searching for something to listen to after my first playlist ended.

Quietly, I mumbled my apologies as I looked across the aisle to James and Michael, both smiling at me with an edge of worry. James cleared his throat and said, “Welcome back!”

I stammered helplessly, reconnecting to the present instead of my errant thoughts. “So-so sorry- sorry…  I z- I zoned- sorry… I zoned out.”

“Got that part, welcome back. You alright, love? You’ve gone awfully quiet,” my director observed.

“Just thinking really,” I covered, attempting to brush off that I was upset. I didn’t want these people to know about the trouble between Tom and me. It wasn’t their business and I wanted to keep it to myself.

Michael spoke up, “Is your man still coming tonight?”

The world came screeching to a halt and all the air was sucked from the vehicle. The truth was I didn’t know. The way things were when James came to get me was a clusterfuck. I managed to cover up that Tom and I were having a row. I thought Tom was breaking things off, asking for the ring back, but instead he urged me to remind Michael that I was spoken for and he couldn’t come in the middle of my relationship. I would have to make a stand for myself, speak up for what I wanted, like I had when Tom was messing me about. I stood up to him and it had stung at first, but it worked out for the best that I did.

James rescued me, “Of course he’s coming. He couldn’t miss his lil Abby.”

There was a look that passed between the brothers and I avoided answering at all, returning back to my iPod. I could feel that book in the bottom of my bag, burning a hole in the bottom to get back in the hands of its rightful owner. 

*

Washing the last remnants of my stage makeup away, the menial task overwhelmingly hollow and harrowing when my life was hanging together by a thin thread. Tom was hurting and I was hurting for the divide, this obstacle that I, in my passive brush off, allowed to come between us. I hadn’t heard from him in the hours since I left, and I doubted that he had been in the audience for my first performance as Bea.

Since that question on the bus, I’d been mulling over whether Tom would attend the performance or not. I couldn’t blame him if he didn’t, but I longed for him to be there. But when I hit the stage, and I hadn’t heard from him, I figured that he was still too upset. Although I felt as though my personal life was falling apart, I put it aside for the night and delivered the best performance I could, a slight reprieve from mentally punishing myself for threatening my engagement to the love of my life. James deserved it, both his script and story solid.

After washing my makeup off, packing away my costumes, and setting things for the next performance the next night, I closed the door to the dressing room behind me. I walked around to the front lobby and swung the door into the auditorium to meet with Lisa, James and Michael for any notes before loading on the coach for a fitful sleep.

Slogging down the thread bare red carpet that should’ve been replaced twenty some-odd years ago, I reminded again that I wasn’t in the most luxurious of professions. I’d rather be back at home in London with Tom on our pristine 1500 thread count white sheets and neutral color pallet. As my subconscious wound up to land another blow on my guilt, I glanced down the aisle to the figures standing beside the stage, waiting for me. James, with his arm slung around Lisa’s shoulders, was chatting with Michael and Tom.

Tom!

My steps faltered ever so slightly before nearly skipping down the aisle to close the distance. He was there. He still came for me while being cross with me. James turned his head to see my approach, “Ah, there she is!”

All eyes focused on me as I closed the last few meters. Noting Michael’s shell-shocked appearance, I went immediately to Tom. Confident and self-assured Tom appeared non-plussed, but read beyond that look. The hurt made his eyes appear smaller, and the normal warm blue were slate gray. This was for appearances, showing my coworkers that we were together.

My fiancé smiled coldly and sighed, “Baby.” His tone was steel, rigid, yet he handed me a bouquet of roses. I knew him too well for this to fool me, but for the others, he was making things appear normal. He tucked me under his arm and kissed the crown of my head. I dared to look up at him and he landed a soft kiss on my lips. Yearning lingered behind that brush of his lips on mine, wanting this to be true and genuine as I did.

Our eyes met and spoke volumes between us, our history, our present, our future and everything in between. With a steady grip, I circled his waist with my arms and cuddled into him. “Tom.”

He truly didn’t want us to be at odds and I had to figure out how to fix the divide. This night of all performances in my career was too big for him to miss out because of this wedge between us. In his way, he was telling me that the door was still open for us and it was up to me to keep it that way. Tom wasn’t going to hold a grudge, he’d rather hold me. My love believed in me, trusted me, and I couldn’t let him down.

This show for the others was Tom claiming me through thick and thin. The anger would pass and we would still be together as long as I took care of this problem.

My gaze passed between Michael and James, James and Michael… deciding what my next move was, and if I had the courage to do what I needed to do.

____________________

Chapter 11: Rage

Summary:

Rage

Day 178 till the end of the tour.

When I signed the contract with James and Michael, I agreed to six months with the possibility of extension for an additional six months. James had huge plans for this show to be taken to the West End with me as the lead immediately following the yearlong tour. I supported the show, the material was excellent, and I hoped to be a part of the play if it got to the London theatre scene, especially the West End. I could see myself performing this play, and going home to Tom. The mounting of the production and the patience to earn backers and gaining monetary producing costs by workshopping and festivaling the show was the grueling aspect. I was beginning to doubt that I could be the actress for the long term.

Living out of a coach and a suitcase, spending hours on motorways, without my creature comforts, without my pink duvet, without access to Tom’s wardrobe of t-shirts. I looked up at my fiancé again, and asked softly so the others couldn’t hear, “Can we talk?”

He nodded just once and squeezed my shoulders, but I could feel the edge of ice in the gesture. Announcing for James, Michael, and Lisa’s benefit, Tom said, “I have a room booked at the DoubleTree for the week. I’m taking Abby with me. Did y-”

Michael interrupted, “But we’ve got some notes for her.”

“We’ll have time tomorrow before curtain,” scoffing James said.

“I hired the coach for everyone.”

His brother stared Michael down, silently bidding him to hold his tongue. The muscles of Tom’s jaw worked under the skin, absorbing the full impact of the sibling rivalry between the brothers and the silent tug of war that he had with Michael over me and my presence. Lisa withdrew from the huddle as the testosterone within our circle increased exponentially. Defensively, James replied, “I’m sure Abby’ll want to spend time with her fiancé while he’s available after driving all this way to see her. We’re taking up enough of her free time in the next few months.”

To dispel some of the tension, I offered helpfully, “I’ll be back at five tomorrow… plenty of time for rehearsal, notes, and warm-ups.”

“Perfect,” James smiled. “Rest up. Excellent performance tonight, Abbs.”

“Thank you. Tom?” I tugged at my fiance to bring him back from his staring contest with Michael.

All his forced good nature from a few minute earlier had slipped from his face, replaced with the stoic proud man standing at full attention in defense of his woman. Although James stepped in to relieve me for the night, there was no doubt that Tom would’ve been definitive and victorious in taking me with him. The cold as steel attitude replaced the jovial gentleman supporting his fiancée’s career. The muscles of his stomach tensed under my grip at Michael’s reluctance to let me go. I tried again, “Love?”

Coming back to the present, Tom pushed a smile to his lips, politely offering his hand to shake in James’ direction. “Well done. You’ve got a powerful play there,” he nodded at the stage mutely lit by the ghost light in the center. After he shook with James, he turned and masqueraded through another hand shake with Michael. A silent power play warred between the two men before Michael seceded and retreated towards the back of the theatre. The eloquent speech about the themes of the script and the well-handled material quickly died in Tom’s throat after sizing up his opponent.

Finally, Tom and I exited arm in arm out the front entrance of theatre into Manchester night life. When we were out of sight of my coworkers, he unwrapped his arm from around my shoulders, taking my hand in his instead. Determined and hotly angry, my fiancé led me to his hotel a few blocks away, keeping his mouth shut in a scowl. I had to run to keep up with his pace and length of his step on his long legs, in his eagerness to get me away from Michael.

I didn’t dare ask or say anything since Tom was hot under the collar about the entire situation. My insides bubbled with anxiety, knowing that I entertained some of this, aggravated it by playing both sides. When the hotel room door closed behind us, I didn’t have time to take in the breathtaking view of the twinkling city outside the wall of windows or the straight edges of the modern furnishings or the tasteful swatches of color around the room.

“Goddamn it, Abigail,” Tom growled angrily, digging his hands through my hair and crushing me to him. Seething with rage, Tom crashed his lips on mine, his tongue pressed into my mouth. A surprised yelp caught in my throat as I surrendered completely to his demands on me. I could taste his anger, his need to claim me, and his undying love for me along his moist demanding tongue.

As much as I craved his touch, he needed to give it. Tom’s formidable physique caught me between him and the wall against my back. His large hands clawed from my hair down around my shoulders to my breasts, squeezing the soft flesh in the cups of his fingers. His weight on me was the only will I had to stay on my feet, his attention on me turning me to liquid lust.

Ripping his mouth from mine, he growled my name again before swallowing my response again. He thrust his hips into me with a sharp jerk and fed him an encouraging moan. My man was back in my arms and my heart slammed against my sternum at the thrill, the exhilaration of being so needed. This didn’t solve our problems or band-aid it, but we needed an alleviation of the tension between us, find a way to reconnect.

Asserting his sure hand into my jeans and knickers, his fingers found my wet heavy center. He pressed two fingers into me and groaned, “Who do you belong to, Abby?”

My head lolled back against the wall with a thud, his command over me and my body what I yearned for. With heavy lids, I looked into his gray gaze and breathed out, “You.”

His fingers relentlessly plundered my center, lifting me higher and higher. His thumb circled my clit, the sweet spot sending shots of pleasure through my body. Rasping, my fiancé demanded again, “Say it, Abby.”

“THOMAS!”

“Who do you belong to?”

Gasping and writhing, I sobbed, “You, Thomas! You!”

To punctuate his claim over me, he confirmed it with a swift and brutal love bite along the nape of my neck. Suddenly I was freefalling over the precipice of ecstasy, his mouth, his fingers, his body delivering the sweetest torture, rawest euphoria.

Like a man possessed by carnal sin and unguarded ownership, he stripped both of us from the waist down. He scooped me up and deposited me on the bed across the room without polish. He crawled over me, and drove his cock into me forcibly. I keened and hooked my legs around him, pulling him into me, without reservation clinging to him with every fiber of my being.

Jealousy drove him to this, another man possessed him to this, and my passivity drove him to this. I relished in being with him, needing this even more than he did. Waves cresting and crashing along the breakwater, Tom and I were lost in our passion for one another, the give and take, the push and pull. After the face off with Michael, my man needed to prove that he won, that he still had me. There was no doubt in my mind that he owned my heart, my soul and any other part of me that he wanted or needed from me. I willingly gave him my all.

Breathlessly, he insisted, “Abby…”

“Thomas!”

“Again.”

“Thomas!”

“You’re mine.”

“I am.”

We came apart and undone together, finding each other in our climaxes, cementing our bond, stubbornly grasping each other.

As we floated back down, we shared small kisses, completely pretzeled around the other. He whispered into my lips, “You’re mine.”

Squeezing him closer, I answered, “I’m yours.” 

__________________

Chapter 12: Sore

Summary:

Sore

I woke in the middle of the night, around four, maybe five in the morning judging by the sky still dark, with a hint of black turning to blue. My fiancé’s long strides on bare feet traced the threads of the carpet, from one end of the window to the other again and back and forth, a tiger in a cage. The curls of his hair protested as he raked his fingers through and over the top of his head. The tension that he’d fucked out with me earlier revisited, and set his shoulders, coiled tight with stress.

Coolly, I tested, “Tom?”

He paused in his pacing momentarily, but resumed as if I’d said nothing at all. I watched his silhouette against the window and the sky beyond twice more before I sat up in the center of the king-sized bed. There would be no sleep while my man was climbing the walls. “Tom, I’m so sorry. Please come back to bed.”

“No, Abigail.” The force of those two words and the anger behind them sagged my shoulders, the weight of all I’d done and not done bearing down on me. “You told me this wasn’t a problem, that he wasn’t a concern.”

“He wasn’t at first. I never thought that accepting that book would lead to him challenging you.”

He huffed an exasperated sound, his feet treading back and forth. “Why did you? Why lead him on?”

I shook my head, searching for my motive that had lost its meaning in light of all the trouble Tom and I were facing. “I thought I had to. He’s my boss. This tour-” It all seemed so trivial now with Tom annoyed. My quiet and my avoidance in causing waves created a tsunami of emotion on both sides and I was drowning in the middle.

“I wish you had told me.”

I wish I had too. Maybe I was too stubborn in my ways. When I worked for the BBC and encountering trouble with boss man Dennis, I didn’t tell Tom until I’d been given my walking papers. I repeated the same pattern, not talking to Tom, shielding him from the truth of Michael’s crush on me. Looking down at my fidgeting fingers in my lap, I cursed my fear and anxiety always getting in the way. My shyness kept me from speaking up then and now, and I hid until my world was crumbling down around me.

“Abigail!” Tom’s stern shout pulled me from my thoughts, his tone too harsh that it tore me up. I’d missed him questioning why I hadn’t told him when I had the opportunity.

I didn’t know I was crying until I heard the tears in my voice. “I want to go home!” The exclamation cut through the tension, leaving behind my bleeding heart. “I don’t want to be here! I want to be home with you!”

An absurd wish that Tom came all the way to Manchester to rescue me invaded the very center of my brain when I saw him in the theatre. He would take me back to London and I wouldn’t have to face Michael, or how poorly I handled things with him or wait to marry Tom or have to spend the next year away from everything I held dear.

I wanted to go home. “When I had my arms around you tonight in front of James, Michael and Lisa, I nearly quit. I wanted to give up everything and go home with you. If I stay, our relationship suffers. If I quit, my career is over. If I stand up to Michael and return the book, my career is over.”

“Abby, you don’t know that!”

The tears streamed down my face unbidden before I could try to stamp them down. From yesterday morning and the confrontation with Tom, they’d been just under the surface waiting to spill over again. I shook my head and hid my face behind my hands, surrendering to the flood of emotion. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to put my relationship with you in jeopardy anymore. I want to go home!”

“Because you want to run away and hide or because you want to avoid a confrontation?”

Sorting through all the reasons I didn’t want to be in Manchester, and working. “Neither,” I murmured softly. “I want to be with you.”

“Abigail…”

“Tom, this entire episode of my life, my career, my personal life – it’s been a – a catastrophe. For every step forward I take with you, it sets me back two steps in my career. For every step forward I take in my career, it sets me back two steps with you. It’s not worth it. I choose you!”

My man, reacting to my tears, climbed into the bed with me, to try to calm me down. “Abby, my love…” Tom pulled me deep into his embrace, devoting himself to assuaging my tears. Wrapping his arms around me, he let me expend some the worry that I’d been carrying around. “Abby,” he cooed. It took a long while, sitting with my fiancé before I calmed down enough for either one of us could talk. “Abby, you’re- I think- you’re panicking. You’re homesick and you’ve internalized everything that you’ve been feeling, hiding away.”

“I didn’t want that book, Tom. I didn’t.”

“I know that, but there are consequences to all of the decisions you make. You’re still so afraid of confrontation and standing up for yourself. But, Abby…”

My fingers curled around his hand, clutching my man to me. “I’m not blaming you, Tom. I know I made a really poor decision and it was my mistake. But all day on the bus as we drove further and further away from London, I wanted to be going the opposite direction.”

Tom sat me up again and we faced each other cross-legged holding hands, offering as much comfort as he could. “Let me throw some things your way.” I nodded. “Subtract the tension of Michael, do you still want to go home? If Michael wasn’t a concern…”

“I don’t want to endanger our engagement.”

“Abigail, look at me. Hear me.” He brought my left hand up to his lips and kissed the diamond ring that he put there. “That isn’t going to happen. You’re mine and I’m yours. No matter what happens, we’re going to work through this obstacle.”

“I never meant to upset you so much.”

Tom nodded, taking a deep breath, his chest rising and falling with the effort. “Deep down, I know that, Abby, but you’re still hiding from me. I thought we were past that. I thought you could come to me.”

“I thought the truth would hurt you. I didn’t want to hurt you. You’ve never handled another man’s attention for me well. And you were already suspicious of Michael… Tom, please don’t be angry with me. I’ll make this right.” I caressed my fingertips from his temples down the length of his face and then cupped his sharp cheekbones. Repeating my plea from three years ago to remind him that I could stand up for myself and had with him, I said urgently, “Don’t let go!”

In the muted daylight, my eyes beseeched him with every part of our history not to let go, not to give up on me, to release some of the anger that he held for me. “I love you, Tom. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Abby, I’m not going to let you walk away from this contract because you’re scared. This is a big step for you, and I don’t think you want to risk your career.”

“But Tom, Michael…”

“You don’t know what will happen.”

“And us?”

“We’ll work on healing us. I told you yesterday, Abby, I’m angry with you now, but I don’t want to be. I’m not giving up on us. I’m sore that you kept a secret from me, but it’s not the end of us. You forgave me in time when I hurt you. I can forgive you for hurting me, it’ll take some time.”

________________________

Chapter 13: Ruin

Summary:

Ruin

My Abby was trembling when we arrived at the theatre in the late afternoon for her to get notes from James after yesterday’s performance. After a tense morning of discussing our future and the state of us, her anxiety was exceptionally high. She was terrified of losing me, losing her career and afraid that she’d be left alone with nothing.

Keeping up the pretense that everything between us was perfect, I held her hand and plastered a smile on my face. This man was not getting between Abby and me, and I’d be damned if he got in the way of her and her dreams. Her performance as Bea the night before was a tour de force, and she was destined to greater things, if she could get over this thing with Michael. As angry as I was for all the things she’d done and didn’t do, I was going to be there to support her.

We waved to James and Lisa on stage, refocusing lights and setting the stage for a quick rehearsal before the performance. Abby walked to the back of the theatre, pulling me along with her, her step quicker than usual. Before we entered the green room backstage, she looked up at me seriously. “Stay with me.”

I nodded, just once as I wove my fingers through hers and opened the door for her.

Clutching my hands in hers, she finally confessed, “I don’t want to feel the loneliness that I once did. I- That time was so dark – for me. I avoid feeling like that or making someone else feel that. I didn’t want to alienate my boss, Tom. As misguided as his feelings for me may be, he could be feeling that isolation like I did.”

She was struggling to put it into words without laying blame on anyone. She stared at the duvet beneath us, her eyes weaving over the muted floral print, for some direction, some way to explain her mindset. This woman, my woman was all heart and her ability to care constantly amazed me. Sighing and avoiding my eyes by focusing on our clasped hands, she murmured, “I care for him as a friend and coworker, I can’t help that. I never anticipated that he would question what you mean to me or try to take me away from you. He’s never been that forward or assuming before.”

Extracting one of my hands from her, I propped up her chin again to look at me. “Abby, can I share something with you?”

She nodded, her eyes glossy with unshed tears. Her eyes were undoubtedly the windows into her soul, a perfect blend of innocence and a lifetime of suffering. She was so youthful, yet under the surface that pain of being left alone was always there. From losing her parents and living alone for so long, she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. And yet…

“Aside from keeping a secret from me, the reason I’m so upset about that book… You accepted it, Abby. When it came down to it and he tried something with you, would you be strong enough to turn him down?”

With me in tow, Abby went directly to Michael, who was making notes in his script with a coffee in one hand and a pen in the other. She was holding my hand tighter, her knuckles white from the effort, and yet she was still shaking. “Michael, may I speak with you for a moment?” Her voice wavered with nerves, forgoing all forms of polite greeting in order to get through her plan. I suddenly realized what her plan was, though she hadn’t mentioned it.

Michael looked up from the script and stood, for custom or from her serious expression, I couldn’t tell. “Absolutely, Abby. What can I do you for, hon?”

She tapped her ring finger, the one with my ring on it, along the back of my hand to indicate that she had this under control, and for me not to object to his referring to her with a term of endearment. I pressed my lips together and let it slip by unchallenged. “May I give you a hug?”

I called upon every strength in me not to object, but I trusted Abby after our discussion this morning.

Her eyebrows shot up her forehead and she threw herself into my arms. “Of course I would.”

“How can I know that for certain, Abby? How can I know that you wouldn’t avoid that confrontation? How will I know that you would choose me when all was said and done?”

She shivered, squeezing me tighter as she released a tormented sob. “Because- I need… you. I love you- with every fiber of my being. Nobody ever cared… to pull me out of my shell… like you have.” Her breath and pronunciations were ripped laboriously from her throat with her anguish, the staccato and clipped words more noticeable with her misery. “You’ve been stubbornly- tenacious. You wouldn’t let me disappear… into myself, and you were the only one… who tried.”

Her petite frame shook in my arms, her guilt consuming her once more. “Please don’t doubt me, Tom. Please don’t doubt… what you mean to me. I-I-I- can’t bare it- I was meant- no, born to be your Abigail… I belong to you. No one else- will claim me… and- more than that- I don’t want them to.”

The worst visual in the world, for me, was seeing Abby cry. It tore at my heart; she’d seen too much sadness in her life. Feeling her wracked with sorrow, shaking with the effects of another sob was worse.

Beyond torture.

Beyond abject anguish.

I’d seen her tears, felt her cry too often and it ripped me to shreds now.

Similar to when she forgave me for blaming her of infidelity.

Similar to when she thought I would ask for our engagement ring back.

Similar to when she tried to give it back.

“Abby, shhhh…” I caressed her back, soothing out the stress in her, absorbing some of her pain. I could never doubt that she loved me. I wanted to erase this part of our history, take back how much we trusted each other. But that book… Michael… her secret… it all hurt. “Abby, I’ve got you. Shhhh. I’m here.” I held her as close as possible as she coiled around me as she never had before.

Through her whimpers and weeping, I heard her apologize again and again, until she exhausted herself or my lulling her worked. She left shuddering and sniveling, every part of her wrapped around me, gripping me with an iron will. “Abby, look at me.”

She obeyed slowly, stalling for time, afraid of what I might say. “We’re going to get through this, my love. We’ve come this far, Abby. I’m not giving you up. I just need time…”

Abby dropped my hand, stood on her tippy toes and circled Michael’s neck with her arms. Silently she held him for an exaggerated moment. I looked away from them, hating that Michael’s eyes were closed in the pleasure of her arms. At the same time, I knew what she was doing. She was saving our relationship and her career simultaneously, in her way, in her compassionate healing manner.

She was the first to break the silence as she pulled out of the embrace. “Michael, I really enjoy your company, you’ve been incredibly kind to me. Our discussions during rehearsals were fun and enlightening, and I’m so grateful to call you a friend.”

A look of defeat crept onto Michael’s face as Abby spoke, and he suspected what she was doing. Abby was choosing me over him.

She reached into her bag that she placed on the table to hug him, and produced the book in question. “I believe this belongs to you. I never should’ve accepted your very generous gift, but it wasn’t meant for me.”

Michael stared at the book in his hand, and I could’ve sworn I heard his heart shatter into a million pieces. But it wasn’t about my Abigail, rather the woman he was replacing with my girl. He heaved a great sigh, his wide shoulders and physique inflating and deflating. “You’re right, Abby,” he conceded softly.

She smiled gently, taking up my hand again. Her trembling was still there, but she was calming. She was making a stand for herself more than anything else, softening the blow to Michael’s ego to maintain her professional and personal relationship with him. “You and James have made a huge impact on me, and I’m so grateful for your belief in me. I hope that you can see past this personal wrinkle, because I love working with you and your brother. This project- it’s very personal for you and him, but it means a great deal to me too.”

Abby took a deep breath and gripped my hand a little tighter in hers. Beseeching him in her charming, adorable, almost bubbly way, she asked, “Are we still okay Michael? Still friends and coworkers?”

“Tom, please tell me that I haven’t ruined us?”

___________________

Chapter 14: Remedy

Summary:

Remedy

Pride bloomed in my chest, boosting my admiration for my Abigail for her standing up for herself to Michael. No doubt she still carried some guilt for leading him on in any way, but she’d made a huge step. I felt male arrogance for her distancing herself from the other man, claiming me as her true love. I knew she was terribly worried about her future with the tour, wanting to remain attached to the show, but avoiding any awkwardness with Michael. Abby let him down easy, dulling the blow to his ego as best she could manage.

Her devotion to me inspired her to stand up for herself, to the man that had been pressuring her passive-aggressively. Overall, she did it for herself, declaring her freedom and independence from her shyness, her timid nature that stilled her voice when she was uncomfortable. She wouldn’t allow her reserved disposition get her swept up in things or situations she didn’t want. She wouldn’t let anything get in between her and what she wanted, and all she wanted was me and her career.

“Still friends?” Abby repeated hopefully, ready to flee with me if he was unreasonable.

“Naturally, Abby. I was wrong to put you in that situation. Forgive me,” Michael said remorsefully.

“Of course. No hard feelings.”

“If I’m honest, it wasn’t about you. I fancied the idea of you, your bubbly personality to fend off the bitterness of Isabelle leaving me.”

“You still have me as a friend, a petite warrior against the badness. Okay?” She questioned once more for herself more than for him.

Michael nodded.

*

I woke in the middle of my last night in Manchester to my Abby curled up in a chair by the window staring out over the darkened horizon, crying. Croaking over the sleep in my throat, I commanded in hushed tones, “Abby, come back to bed.”

She didn’t budge, only sniffled into a tissue she had in her hand. We weren’t back on solid ground after earthquake Michael with a Tennessee Williams book shook Abby and me to the core. She was beating herself up for keeping that secret, hating herself for swaying my faith and trust in her.

Folding the duvet and sheet back, I got to my feet and stalked across the room to ease her troubled mind, cease the tears tracking down her beautiful face. I knelt beside her, my knees abused by the course rub of the carpet, but nothing compared to the visual of my beloved’s red blotchy cheeks. “Abby…”

I wasn’t sure what to say. Countless times over the past week I’d been with her in Manchester, I confirmed time and time again that we, our love, would survive this setback. I was still smarting from the secret and her entertaining another man’s affections on her, but knew I’d get over it with time and distance from the event. Abby hadn’t done it to hurt me, and there was some comfort in that, but I was still licking the wound.

Her watery gaze leveled on me, shakily inhaling, the sound rattling around her chest, she asked, “Tom, are we ever going to be us again?”

“Of course we are.”

“When?”

“Patience, Abby. We’re working on it. I can’t give you an exact time or date. Forgiveness doessn’t work like that.”

She looked so small, and her sobs shook her entire physique, her conscience laying another blow, knocking her around like a ragdoll. “I… I can’t… I can’t… wait…” She shuddered, tearing a gaping hole in my gut. “I… I need you… to love me… You’re the only… one who does.”

“Abby.” I couldn’t reach for her hand to calm her. She was hugging her left arm to her chest, her hand balled into a fist, our engagement ring under her chin as a material possession of us to hold on to in her gloom. I placed a hand on her knee to touch her as her soothing method of choice. “My precious Abigail, I do love you. I’m a bit…”

She shook her head, the fear shining through the tears. “How? I was awful to you. You don’t touch me… like you used to… all the passion… gone… I’m… I feel… any day you’re going to ask for the ring back… you don’t even pet my hair anymore… I miss us.” She covered her face as the ugly sobbing took hold of her. She mumbled in her hands, the words too garbled to make out what she was saying.

Instead of clarifying it, I got to my feet again and picked the sobbing woman up into my arms. In hushed tones, to mollify my girl, I whispered, “Abby, wrap your arms around my neck.” My primary concern was to assure her that the trouble between us was behind us and to soothe her. With a little distance from the incident and a little time, I could forgive her completely, but my Abby wasn’t a patient person by nature.

My fiancée obeyed, eager to follow whatever command I gave her, to remain as connected as we were. She buried her damp face against my neck, seeking a place she fit against me, searching out our intimacy. I carried her to the bed and lowered her onto the mattress with her head on the pillows, spreading myself over the top of her.

Abby, the tactile creature, needed to feel as much of me as she could possibly get to calm down, rid herself of the melancholy. Verbal cues didn’t work for her like they did me, she needed the physically tangible confirmation. I rested my body on her, the bed and pillows depressing under out combined weight.

She was always clingy with me from the beginning, but this desperation was different, more severe a reaction. This was a monstrous frantic cherishing embrace, a deprivation of all she’d been missing since the secret got between us. She was trying to recapture us back to a previous happier time singlehandedly by her iron clad grip around me. Her tears wetted my naked shoulder as I uttered, “Sh, Abby. I will always love you, Abby. We’ll be alright.”

“Tom… please…” she breathed anxiously, fingers digging into my back. “I love you… don’t leave me.”

I repeated my pacifying words as I nuzzled her hair, inhaling her peach smell, murmuring words of encouragement. “You’ve worked yourself up, my Abby. We’re going to be okay.”

“Don’t be mad at me anymore, Tom… please, I feel so alone.” Her worst fear realized, and my eyes suddenly stung with tears of my own.

Around a lump in my throat, I thickly intoned, “Hey, hey… You’re not alone.” I lifted to look into her eyes, to promise myself to her, to pull her out of the darkness she’d sunk into. “You’re not alone. I won’t let you go back there.”

Her claw like hands loosened and moved from my shoulders to my face, grasping me as though I would vanish. Her tearstained face and red rimmed eyes looked determined. “Please, Tom… pretend for tonight that you’re not angry with me. Just for tonight, make love to me.” She leaned up and planted a hungry kiss on my lips. “Please,” another kiss. “For tonight,” another kiss. “Make love to me, and have it just be about us. Remind me that I’m not alone,” another kiss. “Please.”

A long pause passed between us and she held her breath, waiting for me to decide. I captured her lips in a searing, torrid kiss. In that instant I realized that my hurt, my pain wasn’t as deep as her need for forgiveness. The tide turned and we both needed to love each other, release the tension and the toxins that infected what made us work as a couple. This wasn’t about my feeling territorial over her or her proving a point, this was about Tom and Abigail.

I settled my body between her spreading legs as she widened them for me. As much as she needed to feel me love her, I needed to share myself with her. I kept the pawing beast inside me that always claimed her safely caged, so the man that loved her so entirely showed her his true self. I wanted to replace every minute that she felt the emotional isolation with my caress on her soft skin. For every tear she’d shed since this whole mess began, I would make her feel loved.

Gently I thrust my burgeoning flesh against her center, our kiss passionate and caring instead of feral and vicious like my first night in Manchester. She broke away from the kiss, her whimpers pleading, “Love me… please love me.”

I shed the boxer briefs I’d been sleeping in quickly before tugging Abby’s knickers from her legs. Her flimsy nightgown came away from her easily until she was laid out beneath me, naked, vulnerable and breathtakingly beautiful. Caressing the length of her legs, I stroked my hands from her ankles up to the inside of her thighs, tuning every cell of her body in harmony with mine. I squeezed the pliant softness of her thighs in my palms, splaying her legs wider still.

She moaned and squirmed, inviting my fingertips against her moist heat. Passing my fist over my hard, erect flesh, I lowered myself over her once more. I lined my cock along her slit, firmly seated against her without pushing inside her body. I hovered above her propped up on one arm. “Abigail, hold me against you.”

She circled my neck with her arms and my waist with her legs. “Just pretend-”

“Abby,” I brushed my lips on hers. “No make believe necessary, love.” I eased my flesh into her body, the warm wetness hugging me, gripping me, pulling me deeper within her. “I love you, Abigail. You’ll never be alone.”

“I love you,” she breathed urgently.

I gently rocked against her and Abby moved with me. Her hands clenched against my shoulder blades, her heels dug into the small of my back, her eyes locked on mine. I fed words of love, adoration and forgiveness into her mouth as my hips slowly rolled into her. Abby hung onto me, breathing in all the phrases, all the caresses, all the kisses, and all the thrusts of my flesh into hers greedily, taking what she needed to heal.

Our mending fences and finding our way back to each other was swift. Abby’s blissful orgasm followed closely behind mine. She wouldn’t let go until I did, biting her lower lip and concentrating on my pleasure over hers. When it was all over, she curled into me, found her place against me and fell asleep. She was emotionally, physically and mentally drained from the events of the week and beyond, the colossal mess of Michael and the book, and alienating me and herself in the process. Sleeping in my arms after we made love was her remedy and mine for all that happened between us. Once I knew she dozed off, I surrendered to slumber too.

_____________________

Chapter 15: Blanket

Summary:

Blanket

‘Babe, I need some help. Can you call me? – Abby xoxo’

‘Babe? I need you. I’m not sure how to tell you this but my tour is over. I need you. – Abby xoxo’

 ‘Babe, I’m a bit stuck at the mo. I need some help getting home. – Abby xoxo’

‘Tom, please don’t be mad. We can chat when I get home. I need some help with that bit. Please talk to me. – Abby xoxo

‘Tom, I love you so much. I’m stuck in Blackpool. The tour’s off and I’d like to get home. – Abby xoxo

 

I knew that I was in for a rough go of it when I finally got a functioning iPhone back in my possession. But no amount of warning could’ve cautioned me for the worry that punched me in the face and invaded every pore of my being. First was the shock and disbelief that I accumulated twenty voicemails and fifty messages in two days. But then the visceral sickening dread stole my breath; something happened to my girl and I wasn’t there for her.

“Tom?” the plaintive timid cadence of my fiancée intoned. A shaky, unsure breath sounded on the voicemail. “I really need you. The tour… Tom, it’s over. Please…” The phone clicked off, and my heart seized in my chest. The message was from hours ago and I wasn’t there for her.

Luke’s voicemail was the most recent and that was time stamped nearly three hours ago. “Tom, mate,” the harassed strained tone of my publicist sounded through the receiver. I recognized the tone immediately as stressed professional with more than three tasks requiring his immediate attention. The edge made his speech clipped and precise, using phrases that deliever the most information in as little time to move on to the next catastrophe to fix. “I’ve got your fiancée on the train from Blackpool. I’ll collect her from Euston in about an hour.” Disappointment edged into his voice, “She needed you, mate.”

Speed dialing Abby’s mobile, I sprinted out of the Apple store.

*

“Luke! Luke! Open the door!” Pounding on the door with my curled fist in quick succession, I called urgently, “Luke! Open the door!”

Three more raps, and then I peered into the window, desperately trying to see through the drapes, the ones placed over the window to discourage that very behavior. Spatting out another curse, I pounded on the door again, on the verge of breaking it down.

“Luke! Damn it! Open the bloody door!”

Finally my publicist cracked the door open a mere sliver, clearly maintaining an unequivocal obstacle in my way. “Tom, go home. Enough of this,” his tone was even, calm but the meaning quite stern.

“Where is she?”

“She’s here, but she doesn’t want to see you and I don’t want you to hurt her anymore. She’s had her fair share.”

The desperation seethed through my bloodstream, and it took all my self-control to refrain from throwing myself at the door and barrel through until I found my girl.

Gritting out, through my clamped jaw, I insisted with flared nostrils, “I need to see her!”

As if in argument and defiance, Luke said smoothly, “She called you first. You had your chance to be there for her when she needed you.”

“I’m not arguing with you, nor will I explain myself to you, Luke. This is between me and her,” I stated simply to his face. I shouted over my friend’s shoulder, “Abigail!”

Luke pushed at my chest calmly, to get my attention but definitively assert his position in this. “Tom, mate, she doesn’t want to see you.”

Pleadingly, “I need to see her. She doesn’t understand.”

“Tom, she’s exhausted. Let it go.”

Growling, “She’s my fiancée. I can’t let it go!”

Luke clicked his tongue, his brown eyes alight with accusation, “Then where were you when she needed you?”

I narrowed my eyes on one of my best friends, feeling every bit that he was my worst enemy. I slammed my fist into the door jamb in bitter frustration. “I didn’t know! I only got her messages and your voice mail now! I came straightaway!”

He furrowed his brow in confusion, shaking his head in disbelief. “Abby said she’s been calling.”

“She very well could have. I’ve been on set for two solid days. My iPhone screen shattered, and I couldn’t get to the Apple store for a replacement until tonight. You were working with Emma this week, so I didn’t send an email. I finally get to my messages half hour ago and all hell broke loose while I was out of contact.”

Luke indicated my trousers pocket for me to produce the new device as proof of my explanation and my intentions with Abby. I pulled it out to verify that I was now in possession of a brand new phone, and I saw his bodyguard demeanor slip ever so slightly. He sighed resignedly, “She’s been inconsolable since she couldn’t get you. She thought you weren’t answering because you were angry with her. She wouldn’t let me take her home to your place.”

I punched the door jamb, the wood whining under the abuse. I needed to get to my girl and this conversation was only delaying me in getting to her. The boiling urgency scorched in my veins and I held tight to the raging temper with white knuckles. Baring my teeth once more, I bit back the irritation with myself for not being there for my girl when she needed me. “Luke,” I said to the welcome mat beneath my black loafers. “You know I love you as if you were my own brother but I’m not dissecting my relationship with Abby with you. Please let me see my fiancée. She needs me.”

“Tom, hear me out,” inching the door open reservedly. “Marry that girl. Shit or get off the pot. That girl deserves better than being strung along.”

“Luke, damn it! I’m not stringing her-” I stopped abruptly and fumbled for the box in my pocket. Before this argument spiraled out of control and either one of us said things or did things we’d apologize for later, I revealed the wedding bands I purchased for Abby and myself. Calmly and quietly, I told him, “I’ve been planning our wedding since I got back from Manchester five weeks ago. I admit we had some trouble at the beginning of her tour, but… Luke, I’m not angry or upset with her. Please let me in to see her.”

Mercifully my publicist opened the door and gestured for me to enter, his eyes trained on the rings. “If you hurt her anymore, Hiddleston, I’ll kill you myself. I don’t care that you pay most of my wages.”

Tucking the rings back into my pocket for safe keeping for the surprise wedding for my beloved, I slapped Luke on the back, dismissing this incident between us as a non-issue. “You’ll see her down the aisle, won’t you?”

“If she still agrees to marry you…” He pointed me in the direction of his guestroom.

Hastily, I tore through to the back of his flat to find my Abby curled in the smallest ball in the middle of the mattress, cowering under a blanket, snuffling against her stubborn tears. In the muted light, I could see her shivering under that blanket, her emotions raw and exposed. She pulled at my heart, hating that she was so vulnerable to having her heart broken, but recognizing that she was all heart and exactly why I loved her so deeply.

“Abigail,” I murmured.

She didn’t change places or move to greet me, but remained as I found her.

I went to her, drawn to her, seeking to absorb some of her heartache with my touch as she so needed. I needed my happy excitable Abby back, afraid so much had happened to upset her that I’d never see her smile again. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her deep into my embrace, warming her, comforting her, loving her.

A few minutes ticked by and Abby didn’t move. When I thought the silence between us would stretch on, she rolled over towards me burying her face in the folds of my shirt, her tiny hand kneading the material. Soothing her with caresses over her hair and softly spoke words of comfort, I held her as close as possible. “Abigail, tell me what happened.”

“The tour’s over,” she said sadly, her voice shaking from her overwrought emotions. “Michael reconnected with Isabel… and, and, and… took off for Rio or Vegas or something. In Blackpool, their festival… when James, Lisa and I… we got to Blackpool… the, the, the festival was canceled… theatre suffered a water main break… supposed to do the four week run there, but instead… over, just over.” She took a sobering breath, her confidence rocked by the destruction of her career.

“Baby.”

“Tom, what am I going to do now? This will be a huge blotch on my CV. Who’s going to hire me now?”

I held her closer to be there for her as her support, her family. “Abby, we all have things on our CV that we aren’t particularly proud of. That doesn’t mean that-”

“I couldn’t survive on the BBC, and now touring… I’ve failed, and I failed you.” She whimpered and snuggled closer to me. “I was awful to you.”

“Sh, sh, sh… Abby… Abby, I forgave you weeks ago; please believe me when I tell you that. I left you in Manchester with two of my t-shirts so you wouldn’t miss me too much and you could keep me close to you, something to sleep in at night.”

 A little shuddering sigh shook her breath as she sighed, “I was stranded in Blackpool with no way to get home- not knowing if I had one anymore.”

“Baby, your home is always with me. Always, that will never change. Abby, I forgive you. Forgive yourself.” Since I left her on the tour in Manchester, we talked nearly every night through Skype or Facetime, but she couldn’t let go of the Michael thing. She was so focused on what nearly tore us apart that she couldn’t forgive herself for the mistake.

“I couldn’t get you. I thought… I… you’re angry with me.”

“No, I’m not angry with you. My phone wasn’t working. That’s all. I will always come for you, baby. How did you get stranded in Blackpool, Abby? What happened with James and Lisa?”

Instinctively she curled itno me for comfort. Her voice was muffled by my shirt. “James went back to Manchester and Lisa decided to stay with a theatre friend she knew in Blackpool.”

The hint of annoyance moved into the pit of my stomach that neither one thought to see her safely to transport back to London. “Did they see you to the train station?”

She nodded hesitantly, “But they don’t know how lost I get. James was in such a rush to get the very next train, he left me at the ticket booth, and my queue was longer. He couldn’t know that I had no idea what to do from there. I only ever had to get from Norwich to London before on my own, and that was ten years ago.”

“So you tried calling me?”

“I did, Tom, but I couldn’t get you. I kept trying and trying. I finally had to call Luke because I didn’t know what else to do.”

I petted my hand over her hair in my way. “No, baby… you did what you had to do.” I pulled her closer, swallowing her distress with my embrace. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you. I broke my phone, had to replace the bloody thing.”

“You weren’t ignoring me?”

“Baby, no. You’re my Abby always.”

“Are we going to be okay?”

“Abby, you and I are perfect. No animosity, no bad feelings. You don’t need to feel shy or reserved with me.”

She sighed tracing the crease of my shirt with her fingers. The lines along her forehead, the signs of her anguish were easing off. I stroked my hand over her hair, a constant reminder of my love for her.

In the quiet of the room, she asked, “What do I do now, Tom? In twenty-four hours, my life is unrecognizable and my head is spinning.”

“Do you believe in this show? Do you want to continue with it?”

“Yes, of course. This part has meant more to me than I ever thought.”

I propped her chin up to level her gaze on mine, “Then I’m going to get your show back for you.”

____________________

Chapter 16: Favor

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Favor

Lugging more large brown bags than I cared to count through the front door, I dropped the result of five hours of retail therapy with Tom’s sister Emma, on the floor at the mouth of my home. I called into the quiet flat, “Tom? Babe? You here?”

I heard the crack and whine of my fiancé’s computer chair from his study followed by his heavy footfalls along the hardwood floor. “Here, Abby,” he answered before he appeared down the hallway. He crossed to me, took my hand in his and leaned down to give me a sweet kiss.

Surveying the damage I’d done to my plastic at my feet as I toed off my black flats, my man inquired, “So shopping was successful then?”

“Successful as in spent entirely too much- a lot more than I ever intended- and left my credit card cowering and weeping in the very bottom of my bag, then yes!“

Broadly grinning, Tom asked, “What did you buy?”

“More appropriately, what didn’t I buy?” I looked down at the bags trying to remember, as there was only one purchase I cared about and that had gone home with Emma for safe keeping. I couldn’t tell my man about that overly optimistic investment, not yet. Furrowing my brow and scrunching my nose, I shrugged, “To be honest, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a blur, all beyond the thrill of obtaining the things and the high of having the things.”

“Are you still high from the getting the things?”

I nodded happily, smiling for him, searching for a clue as to where we were, if he’d truly forgiven everything that I put him through. To avoid the elephant in the room, I went for babbling, “I’ll have to return the things with no job to pay for the things, but I really liked getting the things. I think my plastic might forgive me.” Steering away from the whole forgive issue as that might be the red herring, I quickly changed subjects, “Emma was fun. She got the things too. It was her idea to do the shopping. Do you think Visa will go to her for payment?”

Pulling me into the living room, Tom didn’t scold me for leaving my shoes and purchases in the pass through as he usually did. We were in a weird place since I got in from Blackpool yesterday. I was scared that he still held some resentment for the whole Michael book debacle, and I felt he was hiding something from me. I was on the fence, torn between he loved me and he was still angry or any moment he would ask for the engagement ring back.

When we returned from Luke’s, Tom stole away to the mess he called a study for thirty minutes before joining me in our bed. We didn’t make love and I wanted that part of our relationship back. I could read so much of his mood in how he made love to me. I’d felt forgiveness five weeks ago while in Manchester and I was able to sleep then, but there was a weird atmosphere between us, and I couldn’t quite grasp at what was off.

My first day at home after the unexpected end of the tour was to spend it with Tom, but he said he had some work to do. Emma called to check up on me and offered an afternoon on Oxford Street and Bond Street to combat the feeling of failure and depression. I could probably be facing audition after failed audition if Tom’s solution of saving my tour if he actually had the power to do that didn’t pan out. I didn’t know his plan yet and I didn’t understand how he could save my show.

Sitting on the sofa, Tom folded me in his arms and kissed my temple, then pet my hair in his way. I blinked away tears at the gesture, hope filling me that we were okay after all. He stroked his hands down my arms to my hands, caressing small circles into the backs of my palms. “Abby, my Abby…” His fingers played with the diamond ring on my left hand, and my heart hammered in my chest.

I wanted to beg and plead for him to keep me, but I couldn’t quite say anything. His expression was so serious, but he was touching me, his possessive pronoun before my name was there, allowing me a modicum of comfort. “I spent today calling in some old favors. I want to produce your show- not single handed as I don’t have the money for that- but I want to help.”

I wasn’t expecting that, and the shock must’ve showed on my face. My man smiled, and raised his hand to cup my cheek, his thumb outlining the pout of my lips. I leaned into his touch and the quiet of the moment washed over us. I could forget all the ill will, all drama that surrounded us for the past two months. I could be Tom’s Abigail again.

“I spoke with James. He’s on his way back to London. I spoke to my old contacts from Cheek by Jowl and a few people at the Donmar or have a connection to the Donmar. We’re looking to re-launch the show.”

“Truly?”

“Truly, my Abigail. James has agreed to step back as director to help revamp the play, reimagine it. He’s bloody fantastic at what he does, but he wrote the script and I think he’s too close to it. We want to see someone else pull some of the stronger elements out. He’s totally on board with that idea. I’m hoping to get a female director to get at some of the more delicate themes, as it very much about Bea and her struggle as a mother.”

I was gobsmacked. In the matter of two days, my life had done an about-face, twice over. Tom was determined to make my dreams come true, it seemed, and he found a way to do it. “You want to be involved… with me?”

“Baby… in every way. Personally, professionally, emotionally, physically, spiritually… in every way.”

Bowled over and clambering for something to hold on to, I sniffed and then threw myself into his arms. I stared at my bags in the hallway, unseeing but my eyes wide open, processing all the information. Tom really had forgiven me, washed all the bad blood between us, and was turning over a new leaf. He was very much starting a new journey in his career, just as I was trying to do with this play. We would face this new frontier together.

“What… wh… what do… what… oh my god, what do you need me to do?”

Tom’s hand rubbed circles into my back with his hand, calming and comforting me, holding me tightly to him. He laughed in the back of his throat. “Be prepared to face this thing like another mountain to climb. Same character, new direction. It’ll be a lot of work, and you were so tenacious the first time. Can you duplicate your excitement this time round?”

“Y-y-yes. Of course. I love the character.”

Adjusting our positions, Tom set me on his lap and sat back on the sofa, bringing me with him. I found my place against him, head cradled on his shoulder, my forehead pressed to his neck. I inhaled his rich spicy masculine scent and realized I was home, truly felt at home with him, in his arms, on the verge of a new adventure with him. It was a quiet downbeat, a calm before the storm. I curled into him, listened to his heartbeat, clutched my fingers in his shirt and found my equilibrium.

A short while later, Tom said, “Big dinner for tomorrow night for brainstorming. Everyone’s coming here, so we can figure out a new schedule, rehearsals and performances. We’re going to look at the festivals that the show is booked at, see if we can’t get some true West End producers to see it. With any luck and an obscene amount of hard work, we’re going to get this production back to London.”

“My beautiful man, thank you. Thank you for believing in me,” I whispered.

He lifted my head from his shoulder to look into my eyes. “I have believed in you since the first time you opened your mouth to apologize for tripping into my arms… and into my heart. You’ve been there ever since, Abby.”

Before I could say anything more or cry from sheer relief and brimming over love for this man, he kissed me. I was once more reminded that I found true love in his kiss. His lips massaged mine deftly, placing me under his spell as he so often could. I combed my fingers into his hair and completely surrendered to any and all affection he could show me. We didn’t need to make love for me to know he loved me. I felt it in his kiss.

Until…

“One more thing, Abby… I invited Benedict to help produce the play.”

_________________

Chapter 17: Annoying

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Annoying

Looking around at all the heads in our living room, I was feeling overwhelmed, my head spinning with all the new developments in my life in just a few short hours. James was huddled over the piano with our newly appointed director called Kathleen and Lisa dissecting the script page by page, line by line. They would get loud for a few short minutes, and decrescendo into dulcet tones, almost following a piece of music. Luke was sitting on the floor in the corner, nursing a beer and doing what he did best: organize, research and prospective schedules. The ruddy ponce Benedict was sitting on the sofa with two other men, a bloke called Eddie from Tom’s Cheek by Jowl days and another bloke called Kevin from Ben’s uni life.

The trio were discussing strategies for travel and accommodations, crunching numbers and driving Luke mad with every change. One of them would mention a festival or transport option to Luke and that would send him off in a flurry of checking his laptop and shouting back particulars, running scenarios, plugging in new variables, new situations.

My fiancé was sprinting between the living room and the kitchen refilling drinks, laying out crackers and cheese, apple slices, celery sticks, carrots and dip. I was kicked out of the kitchen twenty minutes ago, my man concerned I would hurt myself with all the knives out as I hadn’t yet managed to cut a vegetable without injuring myself in the process. I wasn’t useful in planning a new itinerary because the men were all talking care of that. I already leant my input in about the character with Kathleen, James and Lisa. So there I stood, in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, struggling to catch up.

That’s when the front door buzzed with more newcomers. Tom was collecting plates for the huge order we placed for takeaway not ten minutes ago for everyone. He called to me, “Baby, can you answer the door, love?”

On autopilot, I nodded and glided to the front door to greet Tom’s sister, Emma, and her boyfriend of nine months, Mike. Emma pulled me into a sisterly hug as she already considered me one of the family. We’d become very good friends in the years I’d been seeing Tom.

Brightly, she asked, “Who’s here? What’ve we missed?”

Tom whistled from the kitchen and waved over his head to his sister and Mike. They both called a hello in response, their enthusiasm energizing the room and the almost electric air in the flat. I closed the door behind them, walking with them into the living room. “James, Kathleen, Lisa, Luke, Ben…” I rattled off, waving them into the melee that was my living room.

Emma oohed, “How’s that going?” She squeezed my hand, seeing the confusion I was feeling.

I laughed, swimming against the tide of the whirlpool of uncertainty I was circling, “I’ve avoided him so far. I’m hoping to maintain that distance.”

As Mike and Emma joined the crowd, I retreated back to my previous spot in the hallway, wearing a blank, bordering on bewildered look. Emma peeked over the heads of the trio of men on the sofa, and smiled a comforting smile and winked. We were closer since our shopping spree the day before, the two of us aware of something nobody else knew. I knew she wanted me to be an official member of her family and I still felt something missing between Tom and me. There was a weird atmosphere between us, not unpleasant or dark… just weird.

I brushed it away as Tom came to me after putting more plates of hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table for our guests. Noticing my disconnect from the work party, my man came back to me and put his arm around me. In an instant at his touch, I was earthbound again with Tom’s hands on me. I looked up into his eyes, the gorgeously blue warmth and wondered again what he was hiding from me, or if I was imagining this tiny crack between us.

He nuzzled against my hair and squeezed me around my middle. “How are you, my Abby? Incredibly irate with me?” he asked, stealing a glance in the direction of Benedict.

“Almost even keel, for now, but don’t make me talk to him,” I replied. I tucked myself under Tom’s chin, laying my ear against his heart, circling his waist with my arms. I knew he’d forgiven me, his actions spoke volumes, dedicating himself to my project. He was doing all of this for me, making my dream a reality. We were talking again and there were no more glares or accusatory stares or awkward conversations. Yet I felt him withholding something, or I was driving myself crazy with worry that he was.

“Almost?”

“I’m a bit overwhelmed, wrapping my head around all of this.”

“All for you, baby. I’d do anything to make you happy.”

Encouraging me into the throng of activity, my fiancé led me to the unoccupied oversized chair in the middle of the group on the sofa and Luke in the corner. Tom sat down first, then pulled me down into his lap. I plucked my laptop from the coffee table and opened in on my lap, so I could pretend I knew what was going on. I opened my color coded calendar, the one that had been counting down the days until I became Mrs. Thomas William Hiddleston. My man noticed and squeezed possessively along my hip.

I could feel his excitement or nervousness or anticipation in his grip. With a flat full of people, I couldn’t ask him what was happening with us. I kept searching his eyes, windows into his temperament, but they only twinkled with his adoration of me. A knowing glance edged with a dash of humility flashed over his features, and… I was puzzled.

“Abigail,” that voice, the one I heard in my nightmares, spoke to me, dripping with arrogance and condescend. I turned to shoot daggers from my eyes at the Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh, he’d never let me forget that he was Benedict and there and irritating. “Seems we’ll be working together again. This day couldn’t come soon enough, cupcake.”

I spat back at him, “Bite me.”

Emma, Mike and Tom all started laughing at my retort. They all knew of my feud with the tosser from day one. Ben claimed that he had nothing against me, but he lived for annoying me.

That smarmy grin pulled at his mouth, “Ever the feisty one… always a pleasure, Abigail.”

Tom felt me tense, ready to strike out at the man that became the bane of my existence. My man stroked my back and whispered in my ear, “More bees with honey, baby. Bees with honey. Sweet for sweet.”

I looked at my love and said seriously, “You did this on purpose.”

He smiled dryly, “Just smile and nod, baby, and be your sweet, bubbly, excitable Abby.”

“That might physically pain me, Hiddleston. Must you punish me?”

Another grin played over his lips, one that matched his irritating best mate across the coffee table from us.

The git actually offered peace, “Can we try putting our differences aside for the greater good, Abs?”

I looked back at Tom, “Can’t I just throw the sugar bowl at him? That’s sweet, right?”

The entire room erupted in laughter at my questions but I was deadpan. Anything to wipe that self-satisfied grin off his long face. “She’s always so colorful, your girl, Thomas.”

Before my man could respond, I shot back, “I’m only just getting started, you twat.”

Tom squeezed me again and warned softly, “Abby.” I shrugged at him, giving him ‘the bug-eyed he started it’ look.

“I can go all night, sweetheart.”

“Is that the promise you make all the girls?”

Everyone in the room cackled uproariously, most of them having been privy to one or more of my verbal sparring contests with Ben. James was our director when we appeared on stage together, and became a referee between us. Emma and Mike had been in attendance to a number of dinners with Ben there as well. This was normal behavior between us.

Tom spoke up for me this time, “Ben, must you antagonize her every time?”

“I can play nice when she withdraws her claws.”

Baring my teeth, I growled, “You have so much more to worry about than my claws.”

Diplomatically James stepped in to break up the tension between my rival and me, diverting the conversation back to the matter at hand, the tour and the new arrangements. Tom inhaled my scent as he snuggled me deeper into his embrace. Luke was talking about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival starting in a month’s time, around the first week of August, and how we could get the back our spot if we were ready or could be ready. James was eager and wanted to get back out sooner. I flipped back and forth, keeping tabs on what they were talking about visually on my calendar.

As the room took up its previous vibe of everyone talking at once, Tom whispered to me, “Abby.” He stalled my hands working the touch pad with his and stole my attention away from the color coded calendar I’d made a few weeks ago. His fingers fondled the ring on my left hand absently over the keyboard of my laptop. Was his hand shaking on my hip? When I looked into his eyes, he held a look of hope. “Abby, we’ve been through so much lately, and every day, I fall in love with you. You find new ways to surprise me, and devote yourself to me – I’m the luckiest man in the world to have your dedication and your heart. I adore you with every beat of my heart. Will you marry me? Still? Will you be my bride and make me the luckiest man to ever find love?”

Earnest modesty, something so rare in my solid self-assured man, colored his features, laying him vulnerable and bare for me.

For me.

Tears of happiness and joy burned and stung behind my eyes, but I was beyond happy and relieved to shed them. Wordlessly, with the stereo of our friends in the background, I nodded, pressing my lips together to keep the elation from spilling over and giving us away. He brought my engagement ring up to his lips and kissed it, renewing our commitment to one another.

My optimistic purchase that I made with Emma was perfect after all.

______________

Chapter 18: Together Alone

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Together Alone 

James offered up casually, sipping from the cuppa I made everyone after dinner, “I could probably get our reservation back for Birmingham next month… Lisa, what are the dates again?”

Luke jumped in, as he was best with schedules, “That’s the tenth of July.”

Tom sat forward and held me closer, tighter and his fingers flexed along my hip. “That leaves very little time for rehearsal.”

Kathleen, my newly appointed director, piped in, “Very little script rewrites necessary, though, if we start right off.”

My man blocked again, “I’m not sure we’ll have all the money we need in place to get the coach back by then.” There was something in his grip on me that told me that another reason was at the root of his refusal. He’d been doing it all night when it came to starting the tour back on its feet so quickly.

I was still seated upon his lap with my arm curled around his neck. I scratched my fingers in the back of his hair, stealing his attention for a moment to look in his eyes to suss out what was going on in his head. He was adamant about the touring and gaining moneybag producers that could bring the show back to London, except for this one point. I didn’t see anything but determination in the brief glance he gave me.

Ben spoke up from across the table, his head twitched once slightly, working out a solution. “We can put them on the train, just to get them there and we can worry about transport out while they’re there, easiest enough to solve.”

The room erupted in arguments for and against adding this particular stop back into the schedule. Softly, out of earshot of everyone else, I said to Tom, “Babe, there’s nothing for that month, leading up to the Fringe Festival. We have to check in at the end of July, but… we could make it to Birmingham.”

He gave me a conspiratorial look, shook his head in the negative, and gave me the universal ‘sh’ with his lips. He wore his stoic, determined face, so I kept it to myself and let everyone fight it out. I felt Tom squeeze my thigh above the knee and I knew we were okay, we’d talk privately once everyone left.

*

“Abby, I whispered against her ear, my hands hugging her silhouette as I pressed her into the wall. We were finally alone, my sister and her boyfriend, the last of our guests, just stepped out the door after helping clear the mess that the meeting left behind. I could still hear their voices outside the door but my focus was back where it should be, on my girl. She was glowing, her cheeks pink with the elation of our promise and renewed commitment to one another. Her vitality and energy flowed through her veins and I felt her exuberance when I touched her. She almost vibrated with her excitement of becoming my wife.

My Abby was a living embodiment of a plasma globe, buzzing with energy. When I touched her, a lightning bolt of sexual awareness and pure unconditional love zeroed in on that spot, transferring all that emotion from her to me. She was alive, more alive than I ever felt from her.

I felt unstoppable, indestructible and immortal with her love for me. I was proud to a fault, but nobody could touch this woman’s devotion to me. I wanted, with every part of me, to be the man she loved with abandon, and I would be. She deserved the best.

“Abby,” I repeated, breathing hotly against her hair. I felt her surrender, willingly submitting to whatever I wanted with her. My hand skimmed up her ribcage above her blouse, but I could feel her warm instantly. Her response to me echoed that of her effect on me. This tiny precious creature with a heart of gold had me, positively had me. She cast her web around me three years ago, and I was caught. She’d wrapped me around her little finger. She owned me heart and soul.

We had so much to talk over, but I suddenly didn’t care. She was going to be mine, and I wanted to celebrate with her in the way we communicated best. “We’re finally alone.” My hand caressed up to her breast and cupped the pliant flesh under the cotton of her blouse and the lace of her bra underneath. I looked down at her and her eyes were closed, her head lolled back, her skin turning the prettiest shade of pink. Her white button up accentuated her cleavage, making them look full and delicious. I couldn’t wait to have them in my mouth, savoring her, every morsel of her, my Abigail.

My thumb rubbed evenly over her nipple, the susceptible flesh tightening and ridging under the pad of my finger. Even under her blouse and bra, she was so responsive to me.

“I… wanted…” she breathed out, her chest rising and falling a little faster with my thumb swirling over her swollen nipple.

“What did you want, baby?” I rasped in undertones. She was captivating in her arousal and couldn’t drag my eyes from her slightly parted lips and her blushed skin. She was beautiful and I was enthralled, ready to give her… deliver her anything she wanted. I would crawl to the edge of the world for her.

“With you… to be…” she whimpered when I raised my other hand to her neglected breast, treating it with the same slow steady swipe across either nipple. “I wanted… to be… alone… with you.”

I began kneading my hands on her breasts, pulling a keen inhale from her. Abby’s signature peach smell filled my nosed and overwhelmed me. Her scent always increased with her arousal, my body following suit. If Abby was ready to be loved, I was ready to love her – always. I couldn’t deny her anything, I wasn’t strong enough.

Hitching my voice even lower, I asked, “Did you want me to touch you like this?”

“Oh God, yes!” she mewled quietly.

Blood coursed through my veins and raced to the flesh between my legs, steadily stiffening, pulling, stretching. The pressure in my groin built until it was fighting against the zip of my trousers. When I rubbed my erection against her, she moaned wantonly. Her hands made contact with my forearms, running up until she’d hooked them around my neck, pulling me closer.

“Abby, open your eyes. I need to see you.” She did, and her beloved blue eyes were blinking up at me with infinite adoration and lust founded from her deep feelings for me. It was seeing my love for her reflected back at me. I never could’ve anticipated when I took her in front of a mirror that she’d ever become so dear to me.

Our eyes locked on one another as I unbuttoned her blouse one by one. My fingertips teased the flesh underneath, keeping her engaged in every move I made against her, for her. Parting each side of her shirt, my gaze dipped to the newly exposed skin and her undergarment, a pastel floral print. I drank her in, devouring her like I’d never seen her before. It had been five weeks since I’d truly seen her naked, and I was going to enjoy every moment of getting her into the state again.

“I’ve missed you,” I confessed, peeling the material down each shoulder, exposing more skin, more freckles, more beauty marks, and gloriously smooth skin. I nibbled a line from her shoulder to her elbow on each arm, puckering her skin in aroused gooseflesh.

Abby guided me back up to her lips and eagerly kissed me, displaying just how much she’d missed me. Her mouth was hungry, nipping and licking until she found my tongue with hers. She stirred the need to take her right there in the hallway of our flat. I couldn’t stop to take the last few steps to the bedroom, it was too far.

As our kiss deepened, I unfastened her bra and stripped that too from her body. I dropped to my knees before her, unbuttoning her jeans. She watched me, my eyes trained on her, my digits working to get her free of all her clothing. I laid butterfly kisses along her hips and belly. Her fingers threaded through my hair, holding on to me with a firm grasp. I slipped her out of her pants and her knickers, and helped her step out her clothes.

She was gorgeous, her beauty unmatched and I adored every inch of her. She leaned heavily into the wall at her back, her legs weak with her need for me. I ran my hand up the inside of her leg from ankle to her thigh. I paused at her erogenous zone at the apex of her legs, shy of her sex and I squeezed that spot. She cried out with undeniable desire. She slid down the wall, her need consuming her, her limbs shaky. I caught her easily and laid her out on the floor.

She pulled me down on top of her, nearly begging me to put an end to her torment. “Tom, please… I need you… please. Make love to me.”

I couldn’t deny her anything, especially a request like that one. Hovering above her, I pulled my cock from my trousers, leaving them open at the tops of my thighs, unable to waste the moments to be free of them. I needed to be in her, surrounded by her, intimately the closest I could physically be with her.

I placed the head of my length at her entrance, moist and warm and ready to accept me. Slowly, I eased into her, inch by inch, meeting absolutely no resistance, her body pulling me deeper and deeper until I was fully sheathed in her body. Her thigh muscles were like vice grips around my hips, locking me in place. Her hooded eyes were staring into mine, and she leaned up to kiss me. Her passion pounded through her, and I could feel her spirit.

“I love you, my Abigail,” I murmured against her lips.

“I love you, Thomas.”

With my words, her legs released me just enough so I could move within her. We moved together, finding our pleasure as one, with each other. I cradled her as much as possible, not wanting to hurt her on the solid hardwood floor. Her moans and gasps of rapture confirmed for me that she wasn’t in pain. I set the rhythm of my thrusts into her in harmony with her chant of my name, craving it all the more.

Abigail was amazing, the heat of her, the moistness, how her body gripped me. I was in her body, allowed there as I was in her heart. With every stroke into her body, I needed another. Her fingers clawed at my back, grazing the skin underneath the shirt I still wore with pink trails, evidence of how tightly she gripped me.

Grunting with every flex of my hips into her, I could feel the pressure of inevitability building in my cock. Abby was close, her body rippling around me, pulling me back into her flesh – and, I pressed, deep.

We came apart together. Abby sobbed with her orgasm as my climax tore through me. I rocked with her, savoring every last bit of pleasure we could find in each other.

Breathless, sated, sweaty, we laid together, finding our way back to Earth together with tiny kisses and caresses.

Her fingers combed through my hair, and she giggled under me, my weight pressing her into the floor. “Our bedroom is right there.” She pointed over her head, in the direction of the doorway a few meters away.

I kissed her neck and chuckled, “It was too far away. I needed my Abby.”

She beamed up at me, her fingertips tracing my cheekbones gently. “But this reminds me that the floors need re-doing.”

“You were not thinking that ten minutes ago, minx.”

“You stripped me on the floor that needs stripping.” She dissolved into little chortles of laughter.

I laughed with her as I eased off of her and helped her to her feet. Her muscles quivered with the aftershocks of her release, so I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. We fell into bed together and curled up as we usually did, her head on my chest. I kissed the crown of her head, as she moaned contentedly. I brought her left hand that was resting on my sternum to my lips and kissed her engagement ring.

All I could think of was marrying her. The subject had been on my mind for months, trying to figure the right time, the right place, the invitations, the flowers, the orchestra. The realization hit me that all of that didn’t matter.

Only Abby mattered, and making her happy.

I rolled her over on her back, so I could look at her face. “Let’s elope. Run away with me. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

_________________

Chapter 19: Lazy

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Lazy

I stammered helplessly, “You want to… you… want… you want to… elope? With me?”

“Abigail,” he grinned at my obvious look of stunned shock, no doubt looking like a deer caught in the headlamps. Well known, well respected Tom with the countless friends, family, connections was offering me a chance at my biggest wish and desire to be Mrs Tom Hiddleston. “Abigail, my heart, my love, my life, I want to marry you. I don’t care about the pomp and circumstance, celebrations, ceremonies or soirees. I only care about you, making you happy, making you mine. Run away with me. Be my bride.”

Around the time that he called me his life, I burst into happy elated tears of joy. I squealed and descended into giggling sobs of complete contentment. Both arms hooked around behind his head and squeezed tightly, clamping my man to me. I felt his hand splayed over my bare back, soothing the excited heaving in my chest. The rush of excitement made me dizzy, and my temperature soared. A warm happy glow settled in my belly and my heartbeat quickened with it. “D-d-do… you- mean it?” Another exhilarated sob bubbled up out of my lungs, unable to catch my breath.

I could feel Tom shaking with laughter more than I could hear it over my noises of jubilation. He pulled me up from my position on the bed. Then his hand was stroking my hair as he held me to his shoulder, and more thrilled guffaws escaped from deep within me.

Around his mirthful sounds, my fiancé said, “Baby, you’re shivering.”

“I’m excited!” I screamed between more giggles.

Holding me tenderly, with reverence and unmasked humility, he breathed out, “Oh, Abby… my Abby.” I could feel it in his possessive grip on me that every ounce of energy, happy squeal, sound of excitement and tear of elation that flowed from me, he felt it tenfold.

I pulled away from him only to hold his face gently between the palms of my hands. “Do you really mean it?”

Fighting back his own emotion, respecting the avalanche of mine, he nodded curtly, his solemn face a front so he didn’t cry. I could see the warrior in him, clinging to his pride and bravery. I knew he loved me, and he was my rock, my foundation, my structure, though it swayed subtly in those moments. I got a peek of his vulnerability underneath rare cracks of his strong shell, and all those little weaknesses surrounded me. He was so confident with an ocean size soft spot for me.

“Are you sure that you don’t want to set a date so all your friends and family can be there?”

His arms slid up under mine and curled up my back, scooping me towards him again, enveloping and surrounding me. He shook his head. “I don’t need all of that. I just need you in pretty frock and someone to pronounce us as husband and wife. If we elope, if we do this, Abby, will you feel you’re missing something?” Those big blue intelligent and intuitive eyes searched deep within mine for the truth. He pet my hair in his way, coiling strand behind my ear. “You’ve missed out on so much in your life, I don’t want to rob this, your special-“

“Our,” I corrected softly.

“Our special day. We can wait for your calendar to countdown the days, if you want the big wedding.”

My hands dropped from his face to tangle in his shirt, as my gaze faltered from his. I studied his Adam’s apple, watching the rise and fall when he swallowed anxiously. Dragging my fingers to the buttons of his shirt, I worked on unfastening them, weighing up what I wanted most of all. I adored being alone with Tom, when it was just the two of us and our little life together. But I did also love his family as my own and his friends, I’d grown very close with his loved ones, with one glaring exception but I could ignore Benedict Cumberbatch. I loved the idea of a big party with a great many people celebrating the love that Tom and I found together.

Peeling his dinner shirt open and off his shoulders, I cheekily asked, “Can’t we do both? Elope now and then a big party in a few months?”

He captured my wandering hands and brought them to his lips to bestow a kiss on the palm of each. “If you want both, Abby, you will have both.”

I squeaked gleefully and crawled into his lap, curling against him. In the contrast to the busy night we had in our flat with all the people brought in to fix my show, Tom and I shared a quiet moment to cement us back together. As we sat together, my fingertips traveled along his arm in a lazy path from the crook of his elbow up to his shoulder. I placed my head on his other one, still feeling jittery from the idea that I could be married soon when I thought I would have to wait another half a year.

I pulled my man in for a long, languid, relaxed kiss, enjoying the taste and the intimacy that was so alive between us. Once we broke apart, I gave him a tiny smile, relieved that we managed to get back to where we were before my mess up with the book and Michael.

“How soon do you want to get married, love?”

I bit my lower lip and gave it a good think for a full minute and finally answered, “Yesterday, last week, last month, last year…”

He chuckled, kissing my temple. “I’ll see what I can do. I excel in some things, but I have never once turned back the clock.”

“Hiddleston, you’re not trying hard enough,” I said over a stifled yawn, the evening stretched long.

“Am I disturbing your nap?”

I giggled, draping both my arms around his neck and yawning again exaggeratedly. “Sorry, babe, I’m knackered. Can we have a lie-in? It’s been a rough few days.”

He kissed the top of my head and untangled from me. Tom placed his hands on my hips to help me get up from the bed to use the toilet before bed. “A lie-in, yes… then we can plan our escape from London.”

A few minutes later, we were both in bed, cuddled in our usual sleeping position with my head on his chest. The darkness in the room was the perfect recipe to put me out for the night. I could feel myself drifting off, Tom’s heartbeat and even breathing were more soothing than the rain pattering along the windowsill. “Tom? I have a confession.”

I heard a sleepy grin color his question. “Are you awake enough to tell me?”

I moaned in assent, my tired brain phrasing it before I spoke it. “I want to marry you. So much that I even bought the dress. I’ve met one half of your requirements.”

Caressing my back, he lulled me into dreamland. “I know you did. Now go to sleep, baby.”

______________________

Chapter 20: Unfair

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Unfair

“She only wants to marry you. She doesn’t care where or when – the sooner, the better for her. She only wants to make you happy,” my sister told me practically, placing condiments from the cupboard on the countertop beside me.

I leaned against the solid surface in my kitchen, arms folded across my chest and watched Emma retrieve things from around the room as if she owned the place. She and Abby spent a lot of time together, and Emma was well aware of Abby’s shortcomings in the kitchen. I popped a crisp in my mouth and chewed it slowly, pondering Emma’s belief. In my heart of hearts, I knew that what she’d said about my fiancée was true and her wanting to get married. In quiet moments, I saw her admiring her engagement ring, twirling it around her finger and making the light catch it in different ways.

 

Abby was attracted to my confidence but in this, I was feeling less sure. I’d made plans to marry her when she returned from the tour in a half a year to prove to her how much I wanted her. With the tour on hold for the immediate future, it was all I could think about. While she was still in Blackpool, I’d booked a hall and reserved a date for a church to have a surprise wedding on Christmas Eve, the day I admitted to her and myself that I was in love with her, the day we truly started dating. However, I cancelled both, as planning without her knowledge or input felt like I was stealing something away from her that she’d never recover.

“Emma, she said yes again. I asked her while we were waiting for the takeaway to arrive. I asked her to marry me again, and she said yes!” I was amazed that she ever agreed the first time around, but the truth that she still wanted me, after all we’d been through, stole my breath, caught me up short. I glanced over my shoulder to the crowd in the living room, my beloved snapping at Benedict. I swore that I almost heard her growl like a tiger at him over the din of too many chatting people. She was the most precious woman to grace my life, and she was about to breathe fire on my best friend. All I could do was turn away, shake my head and smile to myself.

A fiery, passionate female, my Abigail.

“Well, there’s your solution, big brother. The woman loves you and wants to marry you, has agreed to it twice now. Do something about it.”

“I have, but I cancelled the bookings.”

“Why?”

“Emma, she’s… She lost so much, missed so much…”

My sister stopped in her tracks and turned her full attention to me. She stepped closer to me, offering a sympathetic ear and some understanding as a close outsider. “And you’ve helped regain some of that, Tom. She was a painfully shy girl that curled into herself as a defense mechanism. I still see her do it, but she’s better than she was.

“Abby never thought to travel outside her little comfort zone, she’s made friends because of her confidence with you. You gave her a purpose… and she’s about to unleash on Ben,” she said, laughing and watching the events unfold in the other room. She jutted her jaw in the direction of the living room, smirking at my girl standing over my best friend, scolding him for one reason or another, about ready to put him in a chokehold. I shook my head again, bringing my focus back on my sister and our discussion.

Emma repeated, “You gave her a purpose. You have her someone to love, you gave her an identity, a family and a home. When you met her, she was beginning to peek her head out into the world already. She might’ve found her way, but you provided a confidence to look. She craves your guidance and your decisiveness, so anything you decide will make her happy.”

I stole another glance at my girl, and she blessed me with a pure bright loving smile. I blew her a kiss as I said to Emma, “I want to give her the world, and she deserves nothing less. But whenever I make a decision about the wedding, it feels wrong. She-“

“Then ask her. Ask her what she wants. She isn’t going to love you any less if you don’t have all the answers for her this time.”

“I’m of two minds on this one, the big lavish fairytale wedding because she loves that kind of thing or a small ceremony with just the two of us.”

Emma tsked me quietly, “Ask her. Although I suspect she’d marry you tomorrow by her tree in Leicester Square with a cup of Starbuck as her bouquet.” She patted my chest and returned to the task in the kitchen.

*

“I can’t believe you did all this actually!”

Abby was seated between my legs in the living room on our oversized chair with her laptop upon her legs. I had my arms about her, reading over her shoulder. She hid our mobiles somewhere in the flat an hour ago while we planned our escape from London to Scotland to elope.

“Baby, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. I didn’t know the details, only a vision of you in a pretty dress.”

She placed the computer on the coffee table to turn and look at me without tangling with the wires. “Let me get this straight…” Her face was a beautiful shade of amazement, her eyebrows lifted, the corners of her mouth turned up, her eyes bright. “You’ve already tried marrying me before?”

I chuckled at her choice of words. “I booked a hall and a church, but I thought better of it.”

“You know how successful whisking me away is, Hiddleston.”

I brushed her hair back and then stroked my hand down it in my way. “It’s always been successful, baby, but I have bruises and ringing in my ear from the kicks and screams of protest.” I was referring to her birthday surprise when I took her to Brighton, the spur of the moment date nights, and the Disney party with the dress code. “It’s the knocks about the head that made me remember how much you love surprises. Throwing you a wedding wasn’t the best idea I’ve had.”

She nuzzled my nose briefly and said, “But very romantic… I’ll give you some credit.” She turned back, leaned back against me and pointed to the computer screen. “I like this option better, running away to Scotland, getting married in a castle. It’s special and perfect.”

“Auchen Castle? You like the looks of that one?”

She sighed happily. “They have a whole wedding package, the ceremony, the flowers, the cake, the makeup, the hair, the photography and the suites for us and your family.”

“My family? Do you want them there?” I breathed in her peach smell, closed my eyes, and listened to her talk. She never ceased to surprise and amaze me with the depths of her compassion.

“Yes, your mum and Emma – Mike, too, if she wants – your dad, Sarah and her family, if they can come. I’d like to include them, babe.”

As she was naming everyone, I understood that she wanted to surround herself with the people she loved and trusted the most. Since her family couldn’t be there, she chose her new family, embracing the next chapter of our life together.

“…And Luke, if he’ll come. I’d like to ask him to give me away.”

“He loves you, baby. He’d give anything to be there for you.”

Together we booked an executive wedding at Auchen Castle. It included five days stay at the castle, four days of rest and relaxation, spy time, bonding with your family, and the marriage on the fifth. We chose the eleventh of July, 2015, only a fortnight away, as our wedding date and immediately called my family. As soon as everything was sorted and we’d put the payment through for our reservation, we sat back together to revel in what we accomplished.

“You manipulated me, Hiddleston,” Abby said out of the blue. “Unfair…”

“Did I? How so?”

She twisted around in my arms to give me a faux stern look. “You sent me out shopping with Emma to get my wedding dress. You duped me, sir.”

“I did. I did it for you, love. I wanted you to pick out your perfect dress. I wanted it to be your choice, not something Emma or I picked out in a rush or on surprise.” Sincerely I explained, “My sister didn’t tell me that you bought the dress though, until after you said yes to marrying me again. I didn’t know that part of it. But I very much want this to be your day.”

“Our day.”

I nodded once to appease her, knowing that this was very much her day. “How much trouble am I in?” I asked her with a smirk, seeing her put-on serious expression melting into a flirtatious grin.

“A lifetime,” she whispered into a kiss.

__________________________________

 

Notes:

A picture of Auchen Castle: http://66.media.tumblr.com/019f41f6de59961bffec8e6c603b271c/tumblr_n5fsi74brx1tbbqooo2_500.jpg

Auchen Castle Website: https://www.auchencastle.net/about.html

Tom and Abby’s Wedding Package: https://www.auchencastle.net/weddings/package-inclusive.html

I took some artistic license for the amount of days that are included in the package because I need those days!

Chapter 21: Heartless

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Heartless

I was actually nervous, with the shaky hands, quivering voice and erratic heartbeat. I’m not sure why as I couldn’t imagine why he would deny me or accept me. I stood in the bathroom, smoothing down my hair again unnecessarily. My fiancé wound his arms around my waist from behind and joined my face in the reflection in the mirror. Grinning warmly, Tom complimented, “You’re radiant this morning, baby.”

My eyes shifted from his in the mirror, attempting to calm my racing heart. I reached for the comb to keep my jittery hands busy. Tom wrapped his hand around mine before I could get it. “You’ve combed your hair half a dozen times, baby. You look gorgeous.”

Obsessing about my hair, my makeup, and my clothes since I woke this morning, any activity gave me an excuse to occupy my nervousness. No matter how much I groomed or fixed or scrimped or scrunched, my looks made no difference between a yes or no, or alleviate the reason for my asking. Sinking into Tom’s embrace, I asked, “Why would he say yes?”

I watched my man kiss my ear lovingly in the mirror. “Why would he say no?”

Sadly, I looked down at the cluttered vanity, seeing none of it, “He holds no responsibility to me.” Tears clouded my eyesight, that unwelcome sense of loss taking its ugly hold on me. Listlessly I dragged my finger along the sink’s edge, for something to do, busy my mind. I should be happy, and overall I was; I was marrying Tom in a fortnight. This was the best time of my life. But I was having the best time of my life without two people I loved most of all.

My parents. My mum and my dad.

They couldn’t see me marry the man of my dreams. They’d never even meet him.

Sensing my mood and my need for sympathy, tenderness, Tom said, “Abby, Luke loves you, baby. That’s not a responsibility, that’s you!”

The crippling sadness consumed me and the same tears I’d cried for twelve years poured down my face. Tom turned me around in his arms and held me to his chest as I cried. He smoothed his hand down my back, caressing some comfort into me. This wasn’t foreign for him, he knew what this was about.

Snuffling, I sobbed, “I miss them so much… still.”

“I know you do, baby, you always will,” he said softly into the top of my head.

“I’m not sad about getting married. I’m upset that they won’t see me on the best day of my life. I feel guilty for being so happy when they can’t be there… I have no right being so happy when they aren’t here anymore. I feel heartless and unfeeling…” The shame of life moving on without them felt like a huge disservice to what they meant to me. I thought about them every day, on the tube, or on my walk from Starbucks to rehearsal, riding the coach.

In quiet moments, I remembered them, how much they loved each other, how much they loved me. Dad came home every afternoon at the same time, and found mum first. He would kiss her hello and tell her he’d missed her that day, and one trait he missed.

“I missed your one persistent curl just here, Jane.”

“I missed the slight lift of your eyebrow on this side.”

“I missed your laugh.”

“Oh, Abby, of course you do. You are the most compassionate person I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. You could never be heartless if you tried. You bring them, your mum and dad, with you in your heart and your memories. They still live on there, and they’re watching over you.”

I tried so hard to keep my parents deaths quiet. I lived through it, I’d suffered the loneliness and the depression of being without them for so long. I kept small mementos that I went to when I felt their absence the greatest. But today was different, I couldn’t flip through my mum’s scrapbook of concert tickets to feel better about this.

“I wish I didn’t have to ask someone else to replace my dad.”

Tom cuddled me closer with that possessive squeeze, the one that reminded me that I belonged somewhere now. My man was my family now. “You aren’t replacing him, no one could ever replace your dad. He’ll be there in spirit, watching over you, loving you as much as they day you were born.”

Fresh tears rolled down my face as the wave of desperation washed over me, helpless against it. I burrowed closer to Tom, needing to feel his love as the loss loomed ever closer.

Leading me out of the bathroom, my fiancé held me to him before the memorial for my parents that he had made for me as a Christmas gift last year, a shadow box of silhouetted cameos of their profiles and various mementos. Underneath my mum’s cameo hung her favorite earrings and her engagement ring. Underneath my dad’s cameo, his employee identification card and the old key to their garden shed. Between the two facing silhouettes were their wedding rings and a copy of my birth announcement from the paper that Tom spent some time hunting down.

“Tell me something about them, Abby… something you’ve not told me before.”

Staring through my tears at my treasured remembrance that Tom put together for me, my mind flooded with memories. I focused in on a few that I could explain easily. “Dad had an Ian World girlfriend and I wasn’t allowed to tell mum about. He fancied Anneka Rice from Treasure Hunt.”

He chuckled, rubbing circles on my back. “Now I know where you get it from…”

“He’d imagined a whole different life- spending so much time driving around on the bus gave him a lot of time to let his mind wander. Somehow mum was still in it, in Ian World, and I was still there too. He really just fancied watching her bum, and wanted her around to watch in the flesh.”

“And your mum?”

“Mum always wanted to be a music producer, but never followed it through. She and dad met at a Rolling Stones concert when she was a teenager. They were married when he was discharged from the army early when he permanently damaged his leg. She couldn’t pursue her dream because she helped him get better. She never regretted it, choosing dad over her career, but that’s why she was so into music.”

Tom refocused my tears into some of the good memories I had of my parents, and calmed me down in the process. “You dad sang You’re My Best Friend by Queen to your mum every day?”

“As long as I could remember… mum told me once, when I turned sixteen or seventeen… right before he died, that he used to sing Squeeze Box by The Who!”

Tom was laughing this time. “Woo! Highly inappropriate for lil Abby!”

“That’s what she said… when I was born or a little bit after that, mum wouldn’t let him sing it anymore, at least not in front of me.”

The tears were gone and Tom was wiping the wet streaks away with his thumbs. “So your parents’ song was You’re My Best Friend?”

I giggled a bit with a nod, “Yes, after Squeeze Box.”

“Baby,” his eyes softened as he grew serious. Stroking his hand over my hair in his way, he gazed into my eyes, drawing my full attention. “You’re my best friend. Would you mind if it is our wedding song?”

I was speechless by the touching and tempting offer. It would be a dream come true that Tom approached me with a wedding song. As tribute to my parents and how much Tom and I meant to each other, it was perfection to me. I couldn’t speak with the new flood of emotion, love for Tom, love for my mum and dad, sadness for my mum and dad. I simply nodded, fighting back another bout of tears that would surely fall if I let them.

Softly, Tom said, “It’s what you mean to me and I love you.”

“I love you too.”

After we shared a chaste kiss, my fiancé asked, “Can you- would you- I’d like to visit your parents before we get married. We can leave next weekend, stop in Great Yarmouth before going on to Scotland. May I take you?”

With apprehension in my voice, I admitted, “I’ve not been back since I left, Tom.”

“I know you haven’t. I’d like the opportunity to ask for your hand in marriage. I want to have them be a part of your wedding day.”

“Our wedding day, Tom.”

*

The room was quiet, and I was desperately harnessing my racing heart. Tom was in the kitchen brewing a cuppa for newly arrived Luke, and this was my moment to ask him. I kept a mantra running through my head that he was not a replacement, merely a stand-in for my dad. Luke loved me, I knew that, and considered me a little sister he never had.

“Luke?”

“You alright, doll?”

“Yes, I’m- mmmm… I wanted to ask you something.” I looked at my hands, twisting around themselves, wringing and grasping. I’m not sure why I was so anxious. I took a deep breath while Luke remained quiet, respecting the time I needed to collect my confidence. “As publicist, you don’t know this, but as very close friend, I have to tell you. Tom and I are eloping in a fortnight.”

I could see the publicist prepping statements and strategies in his head, but the friend spoke, “It’s about damn time.”

I smiled at his joke, politely, the tension dissipating with the lightheartedness of the moment. “Would you attend? I’d really like to have you there.”

He reached across the expanse of the coffee table and squeezed my hand. “For you, Abby, anything.”

Carefully, annunciating every word, I asked, “At the ceremony, would you give me away?” I gave him a wide-eyed, hopeful look.

“Abby- doll- I’d be honoured.” He stood and pulled me into a brotherly hug. 

______________________

Chapter 22: Childhood

Summary:

The Road To Something Better: Childhood

Glancing down at me, Tom surveyed my mood, how I was managing and coping with where he brought me. Incredibly attentive he waited for a clue, a word, or a reaction from me before saying anything. He was ready to take on my hurt and my pain, if I needed him. But surprisingly, I was calm and serene when I stepped inside the sanctuary of St Nicholas’ lawn and cemetery in Great Yarmouth, the resting place of Ian and Jane Morgan, my parents.

“I’m okay, baby. You’re here with me,” I promised softly, respectful of the tranquility and the peace of the Minster courtyard. My eyes misted over from all I lost, but I blinked them away. Though it was Tom’s suggestion to come here, this was very much for me, to face my past and look towards my future.

He nodded silently, matching my step as I found my way along the green grass to the resting place of my parents. I clutched his hand as a source of happiness and stability. I missed my mum and dad powerfully, but I didn’t have to suffer the grief. I felt the pang of profound loss, but I didn’t have to let it break me still.

I stood at the foot of my parents’ graves and took a deep calming breath, to combat the melancholy that was pushing through my serene front. I placed the flowers that I bought from the market by the modest headstones. Tom held back, patiently waiting and giving me a moment alone, but always ready to pick me up if the loss overwhelmed me. Before returning to his side, I kissed my fingers and reverently touched each marker.

Solemnly I took up my fiancé’s hand again, and looked up at him with tears in my eyes and a wistfully sad smile. I nodded, “I’m alright. It hurts and I miss them, but I’m alright.” The raw lump in my throat made me wince when I swallowed, but I held steadfastly to my present, Tom and our life together.

“Would you like to stay for a bit? Before we go to the beach?” he asked thoughtfully. Without waiting for a response, he began to settle himself on the grass, pulling me down with him.

Reclining back against my fiancé, I sighed, taking in my surroundings, a place I hadn’t been since I was a teenager and my skin prickled with the memory of nearly half my lifetime ago. My brain worked back, recalling the day I left. Despite Tom having heard the story before, I told him again, “Five months after the death of my mum, I stopped here on my way out of Great Yarmouth. I never thought I would come back… believing the pain too much to endure. Today looks like that day, overcast, grey, typical seafront midsummer day.”

Tom played and wove his fingers through mine, over and around, grounding me in the moment. I focused on our hands as a constant form of solidarity between us as I rambled on, just needing to talk, “I pocketed the money from the sale of my childhood home, settled everything with the estate solicitors, unloaded most of their belongings and mine, to make my way to London and create my new life. Mum couldn’t bring herself to change anything in the house when dad passed- she took to sleeping on the sofa so she didn’t have to sleep alone in their bed. I think that’s why when she got sick, she didn’t want to get better; she wanted to be with him.”

Seagulls squawked and sang in their flight overhead. Under the shade covering of the trees, a light cool breeze ruffled and rippled the leaves against each other, mimicking the sound of the waves a short stroll down the boardwalk. I was a few days shy of the anniversary of the day I turned my back on my home, everything I ever knew, to run away.

I wasn’t alone this time, and I didn’t feel the neglect that I had then. Tom circled my waist with his arms, anchoring me in his comforting and supportive embrace, reminding me that I was no longer alone. He rested his head along my shoulder with his lips at the nape of my neck. The bells of St Nicholas chimed the midday mark behind us. We sat upon a blanket we borrowed from Mrs. Danvers at the bed and breakfast we booked, Henrys on the Prom, to spend a few hours by the graves of my mum and dad.

I felt his lips massage against my skin when he asked, “Do you need to talk to them?”

“No. I think I’ve been talking to them in my head all along, ever since I left. I think I just need to sit here, with you and be here… just be here.”

Tom allowed me to fall silent, and he followed suit. He was beyond what I hoped he would be in this small detour along the way to a castle in Scotland where we would be married in less than a week. He watched over me, provided his support by being with me, holding me, allowing me some peace of mind that I’d probably been without since I left.

“Mum always wanted me to find a nice bloke, to marry and settle down with,” I said after a long while. “She was so proud that she married my dad. I remember… this time at the zoo, I was a little girl, around ten… we went to the zoo almost every year as celebration when the school year was over.”

Tom brushed his lips across my temple, listening intently, keeping my buoyancy.

“This one time, mum fell in love with the otters – they fed them as a show there, at the Thrigby Hall… and mum loved them. Dad got up in the middle of the show, went to the gift shop and bought her a stuffed otter… a stuffed animal otter.”

I offered a little giggle up at the memory of mum’s face when dad landed back in his seat beside me. “She adored that toy. Oh! And it had one of those certificates, dad had donated to adopt one for a year or something. Oscar the otter was our honorary pet for a year in mum’s name. She was awfully proud.”

“What did little Abby get?”

My heart expanded in my chest with Tom’s attention on me. He genuinely cared about where I came from and the stories I told about my parents, my childhood, where I came from. “I didn’t get a toy that year, I wanted a sticker book instead. Dad got me a sticker book of all the animals in the zoo.”

“Is that when your mum told you to marry a nice bloke?”

I shifted slightly in his arms, to glance over my shoulder, to assure myself that he was real. Smilingly, I said, “Sometimes she couldn’t get over how lucky she was with my dad. That day, at the zoo, when dad trotted off to get my book, she gushed. She held me in her lap, under a big tree on one of those zoo benches and she told me how blessed she felt that she was put on this earth, in his path, to be his companion.

“We watched him walk into the store together and she said, ‘Abby, my little darling, that man right there is a good man. You find yourself one like that and you’ll never want for anything.’”

Tom stroked his hand down my hair in his affectionate way, his face brimming with acceptance and devotion. In an instant, his lips met mine in a sweet endearment, feather-light, heartfelt, perfect. When he pulled away again, he brushed his thumb over my lips silently.

Overcome, in the moment, I croaked out, emotion lowering and breaking my voice, “She was right, Tom. She was right! I found my one and I never want for anything more with you.”

He whispered, “My Abigail.” With that, he pressed his forehead against mine and breathed me in.

We spent a good long while in the cemetery, soaking in the atmosphere and each other. It’d been a fair stretch of time that Tom and I found quiet minutes together, but we made the most of them. Eventually we decided to enjoy the rest of our day along the seafront, eating more than we should, walking in the sand, playing arcade games, and riding the carousel.

As we made our way across the car park away from St Nicholas towards Great Yarmouth market to get our chips for lunch, the sun burned through the clouds brightening the afternoon and bathing my hometown in rare sunshine. At the edge of the market, Tom and I looked at each other, knowing that we’d gotten what we came for.

My parents granted us their blessing for our marriage.

__________________________________________

Notes:

Pictures of Great Yarmouth and St Nicholas
1 - https://66.media.tumblr.com/570ac5b02dc276dc18cf8975105c94a1/tumblr_n6klv5yRWW1spf01to1_640.jpg
2 - https://66.media.tumblr.com/d211e3fdeaab3425fb438fe761a230e1/tumblr_n6klv5yRWW1spf01to2_500.jpg
3 - https://66.media.tumblr.com/173f61694aaa34a26fa787b538071448/tumblr_n6klv5yRWW1spf01to4_500.jpg
4 - https://66.media.tumblr.com/017eed6b7ec7077528795dab4fcdba95/tumblr_n6klv5yRWW1spf01to5_500.jpg
5 - https://66.media.tumblr.com/9c854762277694d5610cf30d1d23029e/tumblr_n6klv5yRWW1spf01to6_500.jpg

Chapter 23: A Little Detour

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: A Little Detour

“Abby,” I ventured softly. I didn’t want to startle her out of her reverie but the silence was overbearing. I thrived on her exuberance and happiness. Seeing her sit in the passenger seat so quiet and so still was unnerving. “Please talk to me. This is so unlike you.”

She turned slowly from staring out the window at the sheep farms, deserted windmills and rundown barns speed by, seeing none of the landscape, rather her concentration on her memories and the place, her hometown, we left about an hour ago. A tentative smile pulled at her lips, her shy timid nature, the one I knew when we first met, written on her face. The desire to show me that she was alright showed plainly but she was stuck in her inner hiding place.

“I’m alright… just… thinking,” her tone wistful.

With most of my focus on the road ahead, I stole a few glances in her direction. “I need to know that you still want to move forward, baby. Do you want me to turn back?”

She shook her head, and turned back to the scenery, ignoring the rest of it, staring off blindly along the flat English countryside. Abby settled deeper into the bucket seat and stayed unnaturally quiet for a long stretch of road. The white noise of the rubber against the motorway and the air beyond the windscreen stretched out for kilometers ahead, and I thought I might go mad with the terrible prickling need to pull her out of this reflective state.

I glanced over every few minutes to make sure she wasn’t crying. She was subdued, sobered by her visit home after thirteen years. Whenever she needed me to be, I would be there for her.

“Thank you, baby,” she said sweetly, out of nowhere about thirty minutes later. “You’ve been more than good to me.”

The statement of gratitude was unexpected. Dragging my eyes from the road, I reached for her hand across the center divider, holding and squeezing it in my unwavering support of her. When I looked at her face, she wore that look, that one look that expressed her feelings for me, the love, the trust and the hope of our future. The intensity hitched my breath in my throat that I’d earned that, something I always dared to want. This woman-

This woman moved me.

“You did all of it yourself, Abby. You’re stronger than you think you are, and you handled this with grace and acceptance. You are a marvel, and you never cease to amaze me.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Tom… I never would’ve gone back. But I know now… I know what it’s like to visit.”

Against my better judgment, I asked, “Do you want to visit again?” I hated poking at old wounds, but that wasn’t my intention in asking. I didn’t know where she was emotionally, and I worried for her. She always kept things to herself until they imploded on her. She’d been so quiet the past two days. As was Abby’s coping mechanism, she hung on me, clung to me, absorbing every ounce of affection she could, and I doted on her.

Visiting home, for her, exorcised her demons, the guilt of leaving home, the only life she knew, and not returning. All of that shrouded her, too afraid to face the truth of it. Abby had closed off that part of her life in a neat little box, never to be opened, but this journey gave her some perspective, at least I hoped so.

She shrugged, her eyes momentarily focusing out the window beyond my head to the field beyond. “If I had reason…” She didn’t articulate, and she didn’t need to justify it. I thought I understood what was unspoken there.

Putting more kilometers between us and Abby’s treacherous past, we sped along the motorway, pacing with the traffic heading north and farther. We were still looking at another three to four hours before we reached Scotland. Restless Abby was on holiday, and since she was subdued she didn’t torture me with her favorite tunes, like the Spice Girls or the boy bands she was so fond of loading onto the MP3 player in the car. For road trips, Abby usually prattled about Top Gear and their switch-up on the reasonably priced car or the new Aston Martin they raced around the track. As much as it drove me mad, I missed her babbling this time.

To draw her out, “Did your parents take you on road trips when you were a child?”

A reminiscing smile graced her face in an instant. She bit her lower lip between her teeth and turned as much as the bucket seat would allow in my direction. Our clasped hands rested against the console, Abby leaning over towards me. She placed her other hand on my knee to share in her excitement. “Mum used to build me a fort of blankets and pillows in the backseat. When I was a wee little girl, I was afraid of driving past big trucks, like eighteen wheelers- those! She built me a fort so I would see them and I could read or play with my dolls for the long journeys.”

Her eyes lit up with the memory and her happy bright disposition was coming back out, bit by bit. Unweaving my hand from hers, I pulled her closer, her elbow leaning into the center console. I kissed the crown of her head, her delicious peach smell tickling my nose. Ever the creature of habit my Abby, I recognized where all her little quirks came from and I found her undeniably irresistible for them. I was convinced that her safety pink duvet spent more time wrapped around her than I did.

Her little hand on my knee moved up along my thigh. Tenting her fingers, she playfully scratched multiple times in quick succession. She made my heart soar, knowing that she was gradually emerging from her cocoon of quiet. She told me with that small gesture that she felt better, more herself. She then nuzzled my neck, small butterfly kisses ghosted along my skin. She sighed, “I love you, my beautiful man.”

“I love you too,” with all sincerity. My girl was a part of me, in my blood, in my bones, and forever in my heart.

Abby rested against my shoulder and I kept her under my arm for the next hour of our journey. It was silent, but the oppressive fog of doubt had lifted. Her hand on my thigh traced patterns that only she could discern, and I liked it, didn’t want her to stop. That caress spoke volumes of her liveliness, vitality and her presence in the moment with me.

“Thomas,” she intimated in a whisper for unmistakable desire. The reedy low murmur spoke directly to my groin, and the little minx knew what she was doing, her effect on me. The caress along my thigh became more deliberate, brushing, teasing, coaxing. Within seconds, she had me hard and straining against the constricting trousers.

A low rumbling moan escaped from my lungs in response, her possession over me powerful and complete, her need for me stealing my focus on my driving. I shifted in my seat, easing my foot on the accelerator.

That same tone sounded in my ear, her goading and taunting me seducing me under her will, “I spy with my little eye a turning up ahead.” Her hand found my erection and stroked with the palm of her hand.

I nearly veered off the motorway, the ministration too good to ignore and she didn’t stop.

“I need Tom and Abby time. I need you. Make me feel alive.”

No longer than five minutes later, I was in the backseat with her and we christened my car amongst the pillows and duvets that Abby brought for our road trip. She was my Abigail again, her pensive mood forgotten. 

_________________

Chapter 24: Anticipation

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Anticipation

Eternally grateful and thoroughly thankful, I stood at the foot of an impressively ornate king-size bed and stuttered a hearty gracious thank you to my future sister in law. The bed was strewn with every type of purchase that a bride to be could need or want, and many variations for me to choose.

“Emma- I’m… I’m – well, I’m speechless. Thank you,” I uttered shaking my head in disbelief and complete shock.

The petite blond enthusiastically threw her arm around my shoulders and scanned all the garments, accessories, and gifts. Rightly proud, she granted, “Yeah, I did pretty well. As self-appointed maid of honor-“

I gasped. “I forgot…  I should’ve asked… oh, Emma, you would’ve been my first-“

Squeezing me with a surprisingly strong grip, she answered me sincerely, “No worries, Abby. You’ve been running on little to no time, between rehearsals and running away with my big brother.”

“How did you do all thing?” I gestured emphatically at the array of gifts for me. “You managed to find a tailor to alter my dress around my rehearsals, schedule my fittings and measurements and then shopped for everything else.” Utterly gobsmacked, I lolled my head towards hers and incredulously stated again, “Thank you.”

“Ah, don’t mention it. My tailor, Mr. Landis, adores me, would do anything for me. Besides, you’re taking on my big brother, brave girl,” she teased with a sly smile and a toss of her head. “To me, he’ll always be the older brother that tormented me with bloody boring movie trivia and learned how to snog from my best friend Marianne.”

I giggled at the recalled memory, “Tom told me. You refused to talk to him for a year after that.”

“Ah! I swore not to, but the persistent sod talked at me until I had to tell him to shut his gob.”

“He told me that too. He’s so stubborn.”

Our conversation faded, and I could hear the sound of bagpipes a few floors down, not clearly, but enough to wiggle in my ear and remind me why I was here, where I was, and the implications of all of it. The bedroom we stood in smelled of rich mahogany, the plush china rug added to the rich intricate detail of history and wealth of all Auchen Castle. The old castle had an aura of understated authority and heritage. The grounds were kept to match the Southern Uplands terrain, manicured woodlands and expansive green gardens.

Emma, the first of Tom’s family and wedding party/guest to arrive, had met us at the castle Monday afternoon, and immediately whisked me away from Tom to discuss details. She locked my phone in her suitcase to limit my contact with my husband to be. From her behavior, she cracked down on any time with my intended, with the exception of seeing each other during our meetings with the wedding planners. If she had had her way, Tom and I wouldn’t have seen each other for a fortnight before the wedding.

“Shall we get started with choices?” she offered excitedly. Emma loved shopping, and I still had purchases sitting in bags from our last excursion before rehearsals for my show became overbearing.

I nodded, matching her level of enthusiasm with a soft squeal.

“First thing: undergarments.” She dug through her heaping pile of bags and boxes, and array of colors, stripes and brand names from all over London. Her modest car had been packed to the brim with every option that a forgetful bride could choose. “We’ve got to keep all the lady bits in the right place in the dress. All that frilly organza or whatever can misplace things.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t keep from nervously laughing. It wasn’t so much that Emma would see me in close to nothing, which she had at my two dress fittings that peaked my nervousness, it was the strange Hiddleston family dynamic, one member putting me in undergarments for the other to take off. Emma matched several selections to my dress, the color, elegance, style and functionality. She laid each of them out, side by side, and fetched my dress from the closet for comparison. She took my dress out of its protective plastic layer and hung it on the wardrobe.

I’d picked an Alfred Angelo Disney Fairy Tale Bridal dress, inspired by Cinderella’s ball gown where she meets her Prince Charming and ultimately future husband. Although Tom and I weren’t exactly dating at the time, I dressed as Cinderella once upon a time, our costume themed cast party, our first show together. Our reconciliation after a major break-up centered on Cinderella’s castle built for me by Tom. With our history, I thought it worked perfectly for me and it was divine on me.

The embroidered lace over white satin strapless bodice with a hint of a sweetheart neckline complimented my breasts dropped to a delicate v line at my waist below a tasteful rhinestone encrusted belt that fit snugly to my middle. The floor length skirt was layered in satin and gentle netting, flared from my hips.

When I first tried it on, I knew it was my dress, tears sprung to my eyes and Emma awed at the elegant bride to be that I became in the bridal shop in central London. In an instant, a blink of an eye, there was no hesitation or second guessing or trying on other gowns. It was stunning and it made me feel beautiful, worthy of marrying my best friend.

When Emma laid out each set of lingerie to wear under my gown, I got that similar sensation when I put on my dress for the first time. I was drawn to a Lise Charmel Love Concerto white strapless bra made of silk chiffon and lace detailing with a little diamante crystal in the center. The thought of wearing it made me feel feminine and I wanted to be married in that. Emma brought along the matching suspender belt, thong knickers and stockings. Touching the delicate material, I remarked, “I don’t think Tom’s ever seen me in something so delicate or this many fancy things all in one go. It’s so pretty.”

“He’ll love you in it. Dare I say, as much as he’ll love you out of it.”

Picking up the thin lacey knickers, I fingered the bows along the back. “I love there little bows in the back… so girly.”

Emma amusedly watched as I held up each item to me. “Well, that was easy, a lot easier than I thought. You picked my favorite.”

While she packed up the rejected purchases, I put the delicate garments aside for checking the size later. I wasn’t worried as Emma had my measurements from scheduling and going to my fittings with me back in London. Shuffling around the large lush bed, the other woman laid out an assortment of shoe boxes before me. Embarrassed, I admitted ruefully, “I’m so ashamed. I never thought of shoes!”

Emma laughed, “I know. You step out of them whenever you get a chance. I think I’ve seen you more barefoot than with shoes on. That’s why I’m here, and I brought choices. You can pick heels or flats, plain or decorated.” Methodically she revealed each of the pairs, almost exactly the same wedding shoe.

“I feel like I’m shopping in my hotel room.”

“That’s because,” she pulled each shoe out of its box and displayed them on the top of the cardboard. “You are. Now with these, I went half a size up just in case. I’ll have time this week to run into town modifications, like heel grippers or sole cushions or arch support, possibly soul grippers too. Whatever you need, you tell me.”

Bewildered, I was humbled by her devotion to making my wedding day easy and worry-free. My eyes dated from one plain flat open toed shoe to its sister, the high heeled version, to the flat that was lace covered with a sapphire and zirconia clip and its sister, the heeled version. Each complimented the dress and I was to cry happy tears. “Emma- I… this is… I’m-“

Tidying up the last of the shoes, she looked up to see me floundering in the speechlessness of the happiest week of my life. “Abby, hey…” She returned to my side and touched my arm reassuringly. “We’re family, girl. Tom…” She trailed off, shaking her head, her expression slipping from attentive to pensive. “My brother- he’s been serious before. When he allows himself to do it, gives himself permission to care, he commits to it, whether it’s his career or his relationships. Abby, with you, there’s more to it than giving himself permission; he’s devoted. There’s more to it than obligation, or doing what is right. He wants to do right by you, for you… whatever that may be. He adores you, and he would move heaven and Earth to make you happy.”

She paused in her monologue to turn me to face her, having captured my complete attention. She admitted, “I’d already volunteered, but he recruited me to be everything you need me to be to be ready for the wedding. He suspected that you needed a girlfriend/sister to help, especially with crazy rehearsal schedule they had you on before you left.” She pulled me into a sisterly embrace, and I relished in it. “Family!” She announced with a squeeze.

Quieting the tears and the lump in my throat, I said, “You’re too good to me.”

She let me go and stepped back. “Bah! You deserve a ton of good after everything you’ve been through, and Tom will do short of killing to make you happy, make your dreams come true. How many girls have two weddings in one year?”

I nodded silently, counting my blessings and feeling the truth of where I was and what I was about to do. I was more than happy, more than content, more than fulfilled. Tom was going to claim me as his in four days, and orphan Abby would belong somewhere. Dreamily the uneven green grounds outside the window caught my focus. The grass broken up at random with craggily grey rocks surrounded a gorgeous calm lake, spotted with a few ducks and a pair of swans. Rain was expected more of the week, but that couldn’t possibly get me down.

“Hey, Abby… shoes, girl. Which?”

I inhaled sharply and returned to present after thanking my parents silently in my head. I could feel their presence in an inexplicable way. Mum would’ve been so proud to see me as a member of a new family. Embracing that, I looked at each pair of shoes in turn and forged ahead with wedding day plans.

Against my normal everyday style of flats, I chose the lace covered satin open toed shoe adorned with the oblong diamond and sapphire clip as a tiny accent.I placed them on the floor, stepped into them, and took a few circuits from the window to the door to get the feel. “I like there, but they are a little loose. I might fall out of them when we’re walking on the grounds outside.”

“No worries, missy. I’ll be some things to fix. But these are them?”

Grinning, I exclaimed, “I’m getting married!”

My smile was contagious and Emma caught it. “Yes, you are, and in those shoes! You’ll look like a princess!”

I slipped out of my wedding shoes and placed them with the dress and lingerie.

“So,” Emma sing-songed. “That’s most of you sorted. I brought an array of veils and barrettes and tiaras for you to sample, but you’ll have to decide on makeup and hair before we delve-“

“Did you leave any wedding apparel back in London?”

Emma smirked like her brother, something I’d seen her do before. This was one of those times that they were obvious relatives. “They were all so you, I could picture you in them. I couldn’t narrow it down. I didn’t know what you would prefer. It’s your day, so I brought it all.”

“I owe you at least six years’ worth of Thursday night drinks.”

“Yes, yes, that’s true. I may have to join you on tour to see that you make good on that.”

*

While Emma was distracted with all the extras, I stole my phone back from her. I found a message from Tom. ‘How’s my beautiful bride to be? – T xx’

The events that were about to happen swirled and burst with a bloom of pure elation. Reading those words made this real and made my head spin, dizzy with happiness. ‘I miss you, my beautiful man. Emma the angel has forbidden me from seeing you. Do you think I can give her the slip? – Abby xoxo’

‘You want to elope from our eloping? – T xx’

I rolled my eyes, the fancy tongue arrogant man. ‘I fancy you for a reason, and I know now it’s not your sense of humor. :-P  - Abby xoxo’

‘Cheeky Abby, my favorite, right up there with randy Abby. – T xx’

‘And cranky Abby? Impatient Abby? Shy Abby? – Abby xoxo’

‘I love each and every one of you. Four days, four more days. – T xx’

‘Can’t come soon enough, my beautiful man. I love you! Is your dad here? – Abby xoxo’

‘He’s here with me. We’ve been discussing some things. – T xx’

‘Give him a hug and kiss for me. That’s incredibly specific. Don’t think I got all those details. – Abby xoxo’

‘When we’re married, love… when we’re married. – T xx’

‘I can’t be cross with you now. Well played, Hiddleston. – Abby xoxo’

‘Mrs. Hiddleston, I’ll see you tomoorw. We meet with the florist. – T xx’

‘Emma might make me wear a paper back over my head, so I can’t see you. – Abby xoxo’

‘I’ll get in there with you, baby. I miss you too. Love you! – T xx’

__________________________________________

Notes:

Some photos to go along with Abby's in room shopping with Emma.

Abby's wedding dress: http://item4.tradesy.com/images/item/3/weddings/alfred-angelo/12-l/alfred-angelo-226-cinderella-wedding-dress-330988-2.jpg
Abby's wedding lingerie: https://66.media.tumblr.com/ea62614b4d8a9b649769ed23b50165bf/tumblr_inline_n6zi1714V61qjt29y.png
Abby's wedding shoes: http://cdn.idealpin.com/thumbnails/thumb-81624.jpg

Chapter 25: Zoo

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Zoo

Tom and I were given two hours with the wedding coordinators on Tuesday morning for our Saturday afternoon ceremony. The staff of Auchen Castle was willingly discreet about our plans and Tom’s minor celebrity status until an official announcement had been made by Private Eye Entertainment, something Luke was working on his end. My man was keeping a low profile for the few days we were at the hotel as there were about three weddings a day, and he didn’t want word leaking out of his whereabouts.

A lovely woman called Victoria who smiled like a sunflower and smelled of begonias handled us first. The interview was informal and not what I expected of a florist. Her airy slow paced speech was easy to follow and instantly I liked her. “Thomas and Abigail, you’re to be married on Saturday. How wonderful!” she said referring to a small notebook in front of her, marking something quickly with her yellow pencil with a flower topper where the rubber usually sat. “Please tell me something about the two of you, individually and as a couple.”

Tom smiled for me, filling my belly with that warm fluffy feeling. My heart skipped at bit and it took everything I had in me not to go to him. Emma forbade any contact, both of us under strict orders to pretend that we weren’t seeing each other. She was taking the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding to the extreme. I reminded her kindly that I wasn’t supposed to see him the day of, and she insisted that it should be a week to build the anticipation. After this meeting, I wouldn’t see Tom again until the ceremony.

My beautiful man’s eyes didn’t leave mine as he answered the pleasant woman’s question. “We’re both actors, and met performing a play together four years ago.”

Victoria cooed, “How very romantic.” She scribbled another note on her pad.

Tom stopped her before she said anything more. He gently commanded, “Please forgive me if this seems abrupt or not the way of things, but I want to make something perfectly clear.”

The elderly lady gave him her full attention and nodded her assent, hanging on his every word. The statement didn’t seem to surprise her or rattle her. Tom was always confident, taking control of the situation before we truly got started.

“I don’t want to appear rude or impolite… but whatever Abby wants, I want her to have it.” He turned to look at me and simply said, “I don’t mind about cost or logistics. If there’s something she wants, I want to see it happen.”

Shocked, I breathed out, “Tom!”

He turned back to face our florist, “Victoria, you must excuse me for being so blunt, but Abby deserves everything her heart desires. If she wants roses that smell like daisies or orchids that look like baby’s breath or a flower that only blooms in Australia during the month of January, that’s exactly what she’ll have.”

Struggling with the announcement but not the motive behind it, I warned once more, “Tom!” I wasn’t that difficult or demanding, and I wanted our wedding to go as smoothly as possible. Details didn’t matter to me as long as there was someone to name Tom and I man and wife in a few days’ time.

The florist grinned. “It’s quite alright, Mr. Hiddleston, Ms. Morgan. You’d be surprised the number of grooms and fathers of the bride we get that demand far more than that, before they arrive sometimes. I’m here to facilitate every fantasy every little girl has about her wedding day. So, Abby, do you have anything in mind?”

Sheepishly, I shook my head, feeling a little in the spotlight after Tom’s declaration. My pulse raced, knowing that he loved me that much to give me free reign, but I relied so much on his guidance, his confidence. I loved his assured decisions since he was usually right. Naturally I wanted Tom’s influence on our arrangements, because this was about both of us, together.

Victoria saw my unease in the fidgeting of my hands and changed how to approach the interview. “That’s alright, honey. Do you have a picture of your dress with you? I can make some suggestions based on…” she trailed off as I pulled my phone from my bag. She poker faced her perusal of the dress and wrote another quick note on her pad. She trained her face into a mask of passivity as she turned to Tom. “And the groom… has the groom decided on something to wear?”

Wordlessly, Tom nodded once and produced a swatch of his family’s tartan from his trouser pocket.

“Abby, if you were to choose a flower to be the most prominent throughout, which would you choose: tulips, lilies, roses, freesia, gardenias, orchids, peonies, hydrangeas, or…?”

I glanced at Tom briefly for guidance, but he was watching me for my reaction. He prompted me with a nod that made it clear that he was allowing me to make the decision for us. Hesitantly, I stammered, “Wh-when-when I think of… weddings, I think of roses?”

She nodded encouragingly, giving me some confirmation. “Very classic, very romantic,” she approved. “How do you feel about thistles? Dressing to match the groom?”

“I’d like that very much!” I shyly stated.

“That’s great! If it’s alright with you, I’d like to match some of the color from Tom’s tartan into your bouquet and the other flower arrangements for the ceremony and your reception.”

Softly, I asked, “Can you show me samples?”

Victoria spent the next ten minutes showing Tom and me some of her previous weddings. She subtly asked probing questions as to which arrangements or beaded accents or what kind of packages we expected. She watched our reactions for what Tom and I responded favorably and inconspicuously made notes on her notepad. I fell in love with the white rose buttonholes featuring a pearl in the center, while Tom loved seeing his tartan bow at the base of every display. The florist recommended a teardrop shaped bouquet considering my height and stature, but I chose rounded with a silk covered handle topped with a jeweled ring.

As she summed up, Victoria offered, “If you have any questions or suggestions, thoughts or ideas in the next few days before the ceremony, don’t hesitate to contact me. I want to be sure that you’re happy on your day. I don’t want to keep you from the rest of the planning…,” she indicated me with a happy grin. “As long as the Mrs. is pleased…”

Gratefully I nodded, derailed by her referring to me as the Mrs. Tom had called me Mrs. Hiddleston in a text, but it was another thing completely to get verbal confirmation. My brain folded in on itself with the deeper meaning within that simple moniker. Another surreal moment that stole my breath away… I was getting married. I was living out my ultimate fantasy, and I couldn’t quite believe it, even after all the shopping, sampling, waiting, counting, bargaining, hoping, wishing, wanting. I was finally going to belong to someone, my someone, my Tom.

The next hour was a whirl of menus, cake tasting, music picking, ceremony options, favor planning, and the one thing that made my head spin, photographer packages. By the time, the fourth person sat down to talk with us about making decisions, I was going stir crazy. I fidgeted and squirmed and generally felt uncomfortable. We were cramming months’ worth of planning into two hours. It was wonderful, exhilarating and exhausting.

Tom sensed my unease and politely asked the chef for a few minutes alone with me. The man excused himself and closed the door behind him, leaving Tom and I alone. “Abigail, comer here, baby.”

I looked down at my bouncing knee, avoiding eye contact with my fiancé. I shook my head and whispered, “I’m not supposed to…”

“Baby, I don’t care what my sister says or what tradition calls for. Come here,” the tender command tore through the tension.

I closed the gap between us in three steps and I went to him, as I’d been craving to do since we entered the room. The instant he touched me, all the anxiety and pent up energy I’d bottled up whooshed out of me in a single exhale. Tom pulled me down into his lap and reached up to caress my hair, erasing all my worry. “Still want to run away?”

“More than ever,” I said smiling weakly.

“My impatient Abby, Saturday’ll be here before you know it. Next week, we’ll be on our honeymoon and away from the zoo that is my family.”

“Emma’s… well, she means well.”

Tom grinned slowly, his tongue peeking out between his perfectly white teeth. He combed his hand through his hair, pulling at the top curls. “You haven’t seen my dad yet, and my mum arrives tomorrow. She’ll have a plan for you. Sarah arrives Thursday with Luke. We have the rehearsal on Friday, and then Saturday.”

“Why do we have to rehearse? I know how to say ‘I do.’”

Fishing for a compliment, “And that you will love, honor and obey your husband?”

“Not bloody likely, you ponce. When has that ever worked in your favor?”

Laughing, he leaned in and kissed me neck adoringly, inciting a pink blush to color my cheeks. “That was worth it, just to get the sass back.”

I hooked my arms around his neck and, with a wistful tone, stated, “I wish our wedding was about Tom and Abby. I feel like we’re getting lost in the details.”

“We won’t let it, baby. We’re getting married, and that’s all that matters. It’s about us.”

______________________________

Chapter 26: Gifts

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: Gifts

“Abby, precious girl,” Diana awed sweetly, erasing all my insecurities and intimidation instantly that I usually felt in her presence. She grasped my hands tightly in hers, her firm grip squeezing my fingers together. The entire Hiddleston clan were so assured, I wandered if I would ever outwardly show that amount of courageousness. “You are positively glowing!”

Tom’s mum arrived early Wednesday morning with Emma and I at the castle entrance to greet her. The older woman smiled when she was around those she loved, and despite our complicated history, she smiled for me. Reserved and conservative Diana kept me at a distance for the first two years of my relationship with her son. I couldn’t blame her as she was there for the gold digger, the fame seeker and the cheating actress girlfriends Tom dated before me.

Diana and I met in passing when she attended a performance of the play Tom and I starred opposite each other as husband and wife, the production in which we met. She suspected the nature of Tom’s arrangement with me at the time, though she never spoke of it. I knew she didn’t approve by her formal coldness and clipped speech she presented me. Like mother, like son, both were understandably leery of my intentions with Tom’s career on the rise when we started our affair.

Distrustful of me even after Tom and I got romantically involved, his mother didn’t warm to me until I proved that I genuinely cared for her and the rest of the family. At Christmas, I gave her a gift that she wanted, needed and expressed a serious interest in some months previously. In that gesture, I confirmed for her that I not only fell in love with Tom, but the other members of the family, including her. The unease and ice between Diana and I melted that Christmas Day, and I would never forget the welcoming hug she gave me. She accepted me as her son’s girlfriend.

My soon-to-be mother in law reached up and tenderly stroked her thumb over my cheek, “A lovely blush to your cheeks, love. You’ll make a beautiful bride.”

The energy of the week, the momentous better life change of single to married kept a permanent lump of gratuitous emotion in my throat. Everyone that I came in contact with were so kind, so accepting, and so attentive on me since arrived at my wedding location. At a moment I could burst into tears of untold elations. My sweetheart and I would be married shortly. Heartfelt and sincerely, I whispered, “Thank you.”

Diana then hugged and kissed her youngest child, patting her affectionately. The two women exchanged quick pleasantries and stories of event that happened since last they saw each other. After a rapid fire back and forth, Diana said, “Emma, be a love and fetch some things from the boot for me. Two cases, the blue one that I won playing bingo and the black one. Abby and I will meet you in the suites.” Jangling keys passed from one set of hands to the other. “I have gifts for Abby, but we need a bit of a chat.”

I watched as Emma turned on her heel and walked off in the direction of the car park to do as her mother instructed. I wanted to object, denying the need for anything more from either woman, but afraid that I would offend them.

Diana circled my waist with her arm and guided me, leading me towards the manicured and well-maintained garden and grounds of Auchen Castle. “Before you tell me that you don’t need anything or I shouldn’t have, Abby, I’m going to tell you that I absolutely had to do this.” We rounded a corner together around the stone wall of the castle’s exterior, over the green lawns and clipped shrubs along a tread path. A singing lark flew overhead in rhythm of the rustling leaves of the trees under the lowlands overcast sky.

“Now, my sweet Abigail, do you have some time to walk with me?” Although she posed it as a question, she plainly wanted to have this chat now.

I nodded, “I do. I have an appointment with the hair and makeup artist in about an hour.”

“More than enough time,” she mused, briefly starring down at our matched step along the gravel path. “And you met with the coordinators yesterday?”

“Oh, yes,” I confirmed quietly, fingering the petals of a flower as the stones and gravel crunched under out footsteps. “Tom and I made all the arrangements yesterday.”

Diana acknowledged this as if she knew it already, nodding once. “Tell me, is Tom listening to you? Is it everything that you want?”

I bowed my head and offered a shy nod. “He’s been deferring to me on a lot of it.”

She patted my arm lightly, drawing my attention. “I know how… decisive my boy can be. Bull headed – just like his father. If he doesn’t listen to you, I’ll set him right.”

I smiled at her descriptor for my fiancé. He certainly was decisive and assertive most of the time, precisely how he was confident. Those were some of the traits that I found so attractive in him. I assured his mum in my quiet way, “He’s listening and he’s hearing.” Skeptically I added, “I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions, for us.”

She comforted, “It’s a wedding. There are no right or wrong answers.”

“Of course, that’s true. I rely so much on him, but he wants our wedding to be my day.”

The wise elder woman smiled knowingly for me, muffling a small laugh, “Enjoy that, sweet girl!”

The encouragement landed perfectly and I couldn’t stifle a bubbling nervous giggle.

“Eat that up, Abigail. Take it where you can. My son… as modern and progressive thinking as Tom is or believes himself to be, he’s very old fashioned at heart. Chivalry and romance aren’t lost in him, but well hidden sometimes. Allow him to do this for you. He’ll tell you what or when something becomes important to him.”

I sighed, my gaze raking over the expansive garden. I expected to see more people about, but the courtyard was mostly deserted. “I don’t want it to be my day, I want it to be our day. I wouldn’t be the bride without my groom.”

Diana halted our small stroll to look at me directly. “In his thinking, he knows that. Forgive me for being so blunt, Abby, but he’s wanting to compensate for your misfortunes that came before – losing your family, your isolation. The situation beyond your making… It went from bad to worse in one year for you. He knows that he can’t fix that or make it right or better, but he can give you this – a whole lot of wonderful, see that you are provided for, content and loved. He’ll let you know what’s important to him…”

I trusted in her and in Tom’s love for me, the rest would fall into place as it should. I forced myself to be patient, to let these next few days run their course. I would become Tom’s wife and I didn’t have worry about the details, only marrying my beautiful man and writing my vows to him.

As the patience is a virtue mantra played over in my head, Diana led me to a stone bench to have a seat. Slowly, she stated, “Family is important to Tom, as you know, and I admire how you’ve respected that – my place in his life, Emma’s, Sarah’s – everyone’s place or role in his life. He strives to keep your family’s memory alive. I hope you know that much.”

I nodded, running my sweaty palms over my denim clad thighs. I missed my parents acutely, and these past few days were a lesson in masking that, withholding those tears. My Tom did so much to keep my parents as part of our lives with his gifts for me and his constant questions about them.

Diana gazed at my profile, her concern radiating from her. “Tom wants your parents’ spirit at the ceremony. You know that, don’t you?”

Staring into my hands, I nodded. “He brought me home, sat with me at their grave.”

“Tom entrusted me with something to offer you for the ceremony when you two are married.” From within her light blue cardigan, she produced a small black crushed velvet pouch. “In honor of your family and as a welcome into mine, I’d like to offer you some options to fulfill the wedding tradition of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in your shoe. If you would allow me…”

*

I admit it; I was stir crazy without Tom, out of my head with wanting him. Impatience set my body on high alert, wanting to see him, hear his voice, feel his touch. All the wedding preparation increased my love for him and I thought I might go mad with wanting to be in his arms. I felt deeply in love with my husband to be and I needed that tangible confirmation that he was real and I wasn’t living some fantasy.

I was doing my best to remain calm, to be patient, to accept everything that happened around me and for me, but I missed Tom. From deciding my hairstyle and my makeup, to scheduling my manicure and pedicure with Emma, to sitting down in the garden to write my vows, every action centered on Tom and my future with him, but I couldn’t be with him. The more I lectured myself to be calm, to be patient, the more I wanted Tom.

As a child, I always created scenarios in my head of my future husband, my dream location, and my parents there to give me away. My reality never came close to my fantasy world, my reality unquestionably better with the exception of my parents not being there. I always imagined that I wouldn’t get along with my in-laws, since I’d heard nightmare feuds that happened between the bride and the mother of the groom. I thought I’d get married in the back garden of my row house in Great Yarmouth or in a church. I dreamed of a large wedding party complete with a ring bearer and a flower girl, a harpist, and a long flowing veil.

My reality was preciously better, marrying my best friend in a castle in Scotland with his family, the very people that had taken me in as one of theirs. My man included me in his family, each one taking care of me in their own unique way. More than ever before, I felt included and admired, and most importantly, I wasn’t alone.

There were so many activities going on at the same time, the cooks preparing our wedding meal, the florist arranging flowers, the venue cleaning and sprucing the grounds, the photographers gathering film. So much in motion, but I felt disconnected from my intended. His sister wouldn’t let us interact or talk or even text anymore. Emma arranged the rehearsals to be handled separately to keep Tom and I apart until the actually ceremony. All at once, it felt like the event itself wasn’t about Tom and me starting our life together as man and wife.

I missed that part of it. I missed him. I missed us.

And so help me, if one more person referred to me as simply ‘the bride’ I was going to hurl something at their head. I’d lost my identity as Abby or Abigail or even the future Mrs. Hiddleston.

Friday night, Emma and I were curled up in our big beds, watching The Back-Up Plan on Sky, sharing wine coolers as part of an impromptu hen party. It was my last night as a single woman. Without the alcohol, I would’ve been climbing the walls in anticipation. My hands fidgeted and I couldn’t quite sit still, and that was after two drinks I’d had to relax.

“How was rehearsal for you? Do you feel good? Ready to go?” Emma asked conversationally, as though she couldn’t see me playing with my engagement ring, circling it round and round.

Before I could stop myself, I snipped, “I know how to say ‘I do.’” Regretting it immediately, I jumped at an apology, “Emma, I’m sorry, truly sorry.”

Taking it in stride, she waved me off, “Ah! It’s nothing. I know you’re anxious.”

“More than anxious. I’m the very definition of jittery. Have you talked to him?”

Taking a swig of strawberry margherita from her room temperature bottle and grimacing at the taste, Emma nodded. “Yeah, I talked to him this morning. He’s fine.”

I’m not sure why I asked since there wasn’t anything specific I wanted to know. I just needed to talk about my fiancé before I went running through the hotel corridors, looking for him.

“He’s just as anxious, Abby, but you know, in the manly way.”

Before I knew it, we both dissolved into chortles of laughter, from a little too much alcohol and imaging a manly anxiousness that in no way suited Tom. Tension in the room dissipated and I felt better for it. At least between Emma and me, our friendship could stand a little abrupt conversation with no thought of it. Although it was her call to keep Tom and separated before the ceremony, I held no ill will for her. She only wanted to add a little anticipation, romance and mystery to the week.

As if my wanting him called to him, Tom knocked on the hotel room door, interrupting our girly giggling. “Emma! Abby!”

In a flash, Emma bolted for the door and flipped the chain into place, flattening herself against it to keep me away.

I was right on her heels, desperately grasping at her to get to the other side. Emma was entirely too strong for me, and I was a beat behind her. “Tom!” I cried, struggling with Emma comically to get the chain. We looked like two hens flapping at each other, bouncing from foot to foot. I’d cut left, and she’d block me. I’d lunge and she’d be there. Giving in and admitting defeat to Emma’s surprisingly strong and stubborn will, I pouted, “She won’t let me see you!”

My friend smiled victoriously, “Your wedding is tomorrow. Fifteen hours, twenty-four minutes to be exact.” The insinuation implied that we’d survived another few hours.

“Emma,” Tom’s muffled voice boomed through the obstacle. “I don’t need to see her, but we’re getting lost in the details. Let it be us, Abby and me, for a few minutes.”

She rolled her eyes at me, but relinquished her stance. “The chain stays in place. He’s still not supposed to see you before the wedding.”

I pleaded with her silently with my eyes, giving her my best puppy dog look to give in and let us see each other.

Silence hung between the three of us, before Tom spoke again, unable to see the begging, “Emma, we are grateful for all the time and energy that it takes to put our day together.”

My eyes shot in the direction of the door, widening at the utterance. Tom referred to it as our day. Finally. I wanted to weep in relief and fulfillment. He was getting what I’d been saying all along, and craved his touch more than ever before. Reverently I ran my fingertips over the smooth surface that separated me from my beautiful man. My shoulders relaxed and all the pent-up frustration of not seeing him or talking with him released from my chest.

“Emma, please, crack the door so I can hold her hand. For a few minutes, then I’ll go. Promise.”

Tom and I were not a detail, we were the focal point. All the details enhanced the experience of our day, but our union was about how much we loved each other. My heart expanded in my chest that Tom felt that too.

Reluctantly, Emma unlocked the door, eased it open and stepped out of the way. She remained close by to ensure that Tom didn’t and couldn’t see me, or neither one of us cheated.

“My Abigail,” Tom said softly as his long elegant fingers appeared in the gap at the door.

Like a bee to honey, my hand flew up and lined with his, palm to palm, finger to finger. My hand looked noticeably smaller than his, but the most important thing was instantaneous, Tom and me. That tiny contact brought us back into focus.

Threading his fingers through mine, Tom clasped my hand. I felt his strength, his support, his love, and I melted. In a touch, he eliminated the entire world and minimized my world to the two of us.

The enormous emotion I felt for this man defied all rules, all logic and all description.

“My beautiful Thomas.” I pressed my forehead against the surface of the door between us, wishing it away, willing it in vain to disappear. Our hands wrapped around each other was the most beautiful and perfect site I’d ever seen. I never felt more loved than in those stolen minutes with his hand in mine and mine in his.

“Sit with me, Abby,” he gently commanded, almost in a whisper plunging us into our cocoon of intimacy. My man knew exactly how to control our environment to bring the events back to us. Together we lowered ourselves into a seated position on either side of the door, our hands remained clasped affectionately.

“Talk to me. I need to hear you talk.” His voice sounded strangled, strained, holding tight to his emotion. That was my man, the strong masculine proud exterior with the great soft spot for me.

Tears filled my eyes, holding tight to my emotions. “I’ve been thinking… and I didn’t get to do this before we left with the crunch of rehearsals.”

His fingers flexed around mind, holding my hand together in his.

“When I restain the floors, I want to repaint the foyer.”

I heard him laughing lowly on the other side of the door, the tension drained in an instant. “How long has that been bothering you, baby?”

“Before the tour started, I wanted to fix it up.”

He was still chuckling, “And you’ve been shopping already.”

“I have. Step number one, before I decide I’m going to do it. Shopping makes me want to fix things up.”

I could hear his smile when he spoke again, “No more shopping for you.”

I blew a raspberry at him, “Tom, you cannot keep me from my mecca.”

His thumb caressed over mine, and I couldn’t help but want to crawl around the door and onto his lap, where I belonged.

“Abby,” his raspy voice soothed the ache to be so close to him. “I had something made for you, for the wedding. If you could wear it…”

I heard the weight and the importance in his voice. This was something that meant something to him, imperative to him, just as his mother had told me to expect. “Anything for you, Tom… anything!”

Taking a pregnant pause, Tom considered how to proceed. “Only if you want to, baby.”

“Our day, Thomas. Our day. If you want to see me in something, I will do it for you.”

__________________________

Chapter 27: The End: Part 1

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: The End, Part 1

At the exact same moment that he lifted his fist to lightly rap on the door to alert the moment that he was happily ready to do his part, Luke Windsor was nearly trampled by a petite maid of honor in soft blue. The door flew open and his mate’s sister fell into his arms with a spectacular thud. The sudden impact and the melee of arms and legs confused the beings in motion to a shocked standstill in the doorway, facing the opposite direction than intended.

“Luke!” Emma whooshed.

Recovering from the collision, Luke greeted, “Emma.” He assisted in setting her back on her feet, chuckling to himself that normally he set Abby back to rights.

“Luke, I have to run,” she informed him, checking her appearance and adjusting her dress.

“How is she?” he nodded toward the open door.

Emma smiled lopsidedly, “She’s fine, beautiful… dressed… and as calm as a cucumber. It’s unnerving to see her so calm, nothing like yesterday.” Inching around to head back to the hallway, the woman indicated over her shoulder. “She hasn’t eaten much so I’m going down to the kitchen to get her something, if I can.”

“Is your mum in there?”

“No, she went down to check on the room. I’ll be back shortly.” She backed away, following along the wall. “Stay with Abby. I need to get the bouquets. I want to take a final sweep through… just to be sure!”

“Absolutely. Go!” With the distance between them, Luke could admire the ensemble she wore for her role as maid of honor and bridesmaid. She was in a knee length strapless dress, her hair styled in relaxed curls, her height enhanced with shimmery open toed heels. “Emma, you look extraordinary.”

She blew a kiss, mouthed a thank you, turned towards the lobby and disappeared around a corner, fulfilling her maid of honor duties. Her skirt fluttered around her, giving her the look movement and agility that goes into running from place to place, ensuring all the details were as they should be.

Luke passed through the door, securing it behind him before calling into the suite, “Abby? Doll?” The room, though scattered with strewn garment bags, discarded shoe boxes, cosmetic bags, makeup applicators, wrappers, abandoned garments and disrupted furniture, was calm and peaceful. Chaos visited and left behind hours of organization behind, all in the name of love and ‘I do.’ Despite the mess, serenity carried through the main area to a sitting room overlooking the lake, rippling with the rain.

Dutiful Luke found the bride staring out the window over the lowland rain, standing perfectly still, contemplating. He couldn’t read her profile to determine what she was feeling or if she’d heard her friend enter the female staging area.

An absolute vision, an angel in human form, Luke always considered Abby an attractive girl, but this was different. He’d seen her dressed to the nines before, the very definition of beautiful, for various events, but never quite like this. From the diamond tiara that adorned her long blond tresses, styled in loose ringlets to the hem of her floor length white wedding dress.

Abigail dazzled, shimmered, and stole his breath in her statuesque pose.

Gently, to draw my attention, Luke repeated, “Doll? You alright?”

Shaken, I turned to my left, surprised to see someone beside me, reciting my vows in my head. “Luke!” I exclaimed with a smile and a hand over my rapidly beating heart. Demurely, I glanced down at my gown and some of my jewelry, pinching myself that this was my wedding day.

It was within an hour of the ceremony, I was surprisingly calm, collected, knowing I would see my husband soon. The impatience for so much of our engagement and our elopement, anxiously awaiting Tom’s claim on me before his family, the law and a higher being, vanished when I held hands with him around a door without seeing him the night before. My man finally named it our day last night, and my waiting was at an end. My nerves were calmed by his touch.

The reduction of all the details, all the family, all the people surrounding us, brought the meaning and significance of the wedding and our nuptials back to what it should be, about Tom and Abby and our love for one another. In a quiet, less than stressful meeting, Tom needed me as I needed him. I needed his touch and he needed to give it. He needed my verbal confirmation and I needed him to hear it. All the white noise of organization silenced for those thirty minutes we sat together, unable to see each other, but holding hands, being a couple.

Emma took up the station of my worry, my anxiety, and my impatience as her color guard, running about, bouncing from one thought or action to another, a woman possessed. She was, bless her heart, coordinating my case and Tom’s bag that she’d packed for our honeymoon, a destination she knew but I didn’t, arranging things to go back to our flat in London, that she’d deliver herself, not to mention attending to me.

I leveled my eyes on the man that had become a brother to me in the past four years and bit my lower lip. With a flirty, excited bubbly exclamation, I said, “I’m getting married.”

Luke’s face split into a Cheshire grin that rivaled mine, and stepped closer to me, laying a kiss on my forehead. “Yes, you are, doll, and you deserve it.”

I followed the raindrops sliding down the glass on the outside, “Thank you for doing this for me.”

“I’m sorry that it’s pouring with rain on your wedding day.” The look of sympathy crossed his features as he stood beside me, watching the droplets of water on the windowpane.

I scoffed playfully, “I’m not. We had to move the ceremony indoors, but the end result is still the same.” Glancing at the digital clock on the side table, I said, “I get to marry my best friend, my sweetheart in twenty minutes, rain or shine.”

“It’s supposed to be good luck if it rains on your wedding day, so I’ve heard.” Pragmatic Luke found a way to spin the unfortunate or disappointment into a good thing.

I was grateful for so much, his company, his sturdy countenance, his willingness to be there for me. He was so much like my Tom, with his proactivity, his almost rigid straight forward attitude, so focused, and a great respect for the rules and structures in place. “I’ll take it,” I said flippantly with a shrug.

“You and Tom don’t need it. You’re made for each other, and I believe you two have found your other half. It’s inspiring to see genuine true love… so rare.”

“Luke, you’ll make me cry before the wedding… I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the wedding. There’s a lump the size of London in my throat.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into a kiss on my temple. As we separated, he said, “As your brother and the man to give you away, I think that’s part of my job. I make Tom cry all the time.”

We shared a laugh together, and I knew in no uncertain terms, Luke was very much on my side. I was so blessed to have another person, like Tom, dedicated to me, to care for me.

Confirming it for me once more, he turned to me, “As your brother, I have to check that you have everything.”

With a dutiful nod, “Fire away.”

“Something old?”

Lifting my wrist, I showed him a simple dual strand bracelet. One strand made of diamonds, the other made of sapphire, with a bow at the top, cording the two rings together. “My mother bought it at a jumbo sale in a church yard when she was dating my dad. She fancied it for its simplicity and antique look. She had the thing appraised-“

“Let me guess, worth millions?”

I giggled. “Not by a long shot. She learned that it wasn’t worth much more than what she spent on it, but it was dated about 100 years old.” Circling the loose fitting band around my wrist, I said wistfully, “My something old, and something that belonged to my mother.”

Luke pressed his lips together and squeezed my hand in his, not sure how to address that he was there and my parents were not. The small show of support and his love for me, and Tom by extension, were enough for me. I had made the right decision in asking him to be the one to give me way in their absence. He asked, “Something new?”

I pointed to the crown of my head to the diamond tiara on my head, secured with well hidden bobby pins and enough hairspray for every tour gig the Spice Girls ever performed. “A gift from Emma. She wanted me to look like a princess.”

“She’s succeeded, doll. Something borrowed?”

Reaching up, I ran my fingers over the pair of danging teardrop sapphire earrings Tom’s mum had lent me, from her little black pouch the day she arrived at Auchen Castle. She’d done her best to match to my mother’s bracelet, though the diamonds clearer and the sapphires more brilliant in the earrings. I didn’t mind about the mismatch. For me, the thought meant more to me than completely matching color for color, jewel for jewel. “I think Tom’s mum might stop the wedding mid ceremony to get them back. They are very posh, aren’t they?”

Laughing, he shook his head, “I’m quite certain she won’t. Something blue?”

Slightly embarrassed, I giggled nervously. “A gift from my husband to be.” I felt the blush enflame my cheeks, and the heat spread over my face. I lifted the light gossamer material of my gown to reveal my stocking clad leg. Half way up my thigh sat Tom’s gift to me, the most important thing to him. He’d had a lace garter made with his family tartan as the band around the center.

“You’re wearing the Hiddleston family colors! You’re a Hiddleston!”

Squealing, I cried, “I am!” I replaced my skirt and smoothed the material back down. “I’m prouder than I should be, but it was Tom’s idea. I’d wear a wedding gown of his tartan if we’d had the time and he had the inclination.”

“That’s amazing, Abby! I’m so pleased for you!” Taking a step back, he perused my gown and accessories, nodding in approval. “That leaves a sixpence in your shoe.”

“I couldn’t find one. Emma found a silver coin made from the year I was born. She made a little pouch in my shoe under the arch.” As I was explaining, I awkwardly lifted my right foot to point out where my sister in law had fashioned the coin so I didn’t feel it, the last of my good luck charms.

Luck righted me before I fell over in a great big poof of gossamer material and splayed limbs. Laughing with me, he offered another solution from the pocket of his black suit jacket.

I said quickly, “You look smart, by the way, Luke.”

“Thanks, doll.” He unwrapped something from tissue paper slowly as he told me a story. “My grandparents, God bless them, celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary back in March. They are just as in love now as they were at eighteen, so they tell me. One love for their lifetime… Amazing, isn’t it?” He revealed a silver coin the center of his palm, one that I’d never laid eyes on in my lifetime. “Grandma Muriel had this in her shoe sixty years ago. I’d love to see you and Tom together on your sixtieth anniversary and beyond. This is a genuine sixpence coin from the 1800s and I’ll need to give it back… but would you consider this?”

Stunned to silence, I dumbly nodded, beyond words to describe how each person that I came in contact with accepted me to such a touching degree. Beyond myself, feeling almost an out of body experience, I watched Luke kneel before me to replace the replica coin with the real thing.

He patted his shoulders. “Hold onto me, Abby. I’ll get it sorted straightaway.”

I did as instructed. He lifted the gown enough to find my shoe. Luke, in a sentimental mood that sent me reeling, slipped the shoe off my foot and put the coin in the pouch inside. Lining my shoe back into place for me to step in, he held my hands on his shoulders so I didn’t fall.

When he stood back up to his full height, I thanked him as best I could, for all he’d done for me, for Tom, for us. Feeling dwarfed by the generosity, I shook my head, collecting what words I could. “To know a man like you is to love a man like you. I may have fallen in love with Tom, but I also fell in love with everyone in his life. Thank you doesn’t quite match the debt of gratitude I owe you, but until another phrase is invented, thank you.”

With another forehead kiss, he said, “You are more than welcome, Abby doll. We all love you.”

As we embraced, Emma burst back through the door in the other room, her arms and hand leaden with wedding necessities. She dropped everything on the table amongst the chaos, adding to the cluttered feeling in the suite. “The men are dressed and ready. Mum and Sarah are waiting downstairs. Connor, the one marrying you, is standing by,” she announced.

Luke and I followed the sound of her voice to the main room.

“It’s all up to us. Luke, I need your assistance for a moment. Abby, I brought apple slices. Eat up, you’ve got three minutes.”

Despite the endless fluttering butterflies flying around my belly and my sassy nature wanting to taunt militant Emma, I leaned over the table to indulge in what food I could have with ruining or staining my dress, keeping my mouth otherwise occupied. She meant well and she was so much like Tom. I watched Emma dress up Luke’s jacket with the buttonholes that Tom and I decided on. She then straightened his tie and his jacket, patting him to let him know she was done.

When Emma tended to Luke and patted him done, she checked on herself and her appearance to give me a few more minutes. She showed me our bouquets, hers a smaller version of mine and I wanted to cry with how perfect they turned out, better than I could’ve imagined. My sister in law finally hustled me into moving so she could check my makeup, hair, garments and jewelry to make sure I was ready to be married.

Tucking a few random flyaways behind my ear and touching up my lipstick, she said, “My brother – looking mighty proud and handsome, by the way - is pacing the floor downstairs, awaiting his bride. He’s close to putting a hole in the floor or climbing the walls. I think you’ve infected him, girly.”

My hands began to tremble and I glanced at the clock for the 98^th time since Emma stepped back in the room. “H-h-how… how do I l-l-look?”

“Abby, you’re a princess and you’ve found your prince. You’ll be perfect, everything will be utterly perfect,” she said with a smile and handed me my bouquet.

I felt the weight of it in my hand, and I knew, this was the end. This was the end of my road of searching for family, friends, myself, and a home. I found it, my something better, and this was my road to happiness and love. 

______________________________

Notes:

I've kept the links to some of the images that I used as inspiration. Many of them have disappeared since I wrote this a few years ago.

Chapter 28: The End: Part 2

Summary:

The Road to Something Better: The End, Part 2

I stood on Luke’s arm, leaning into him for support against my pounding erratic heartbeat and my trembling limbs. I felt like jelly, completely unsteady, unreliable and weak against the gravity of the moment.

I stared at the closed double doors, recently stained in a lovely oak color, wide-eyed, catching my breath. The momentous occasion caught up with me in those minutes. All week I’d been excitedly exclaiming, ‘I’m getting married!’ Not for everyone else to know, but for myself, to reconcile it and register it to myself, to make it sink in. Yet, before those doors, I still couldn’t grasp that my dreams were coming true.

Abigail Grace Morgan, orphaned at age eighteen, in a few minutes, would become Mrs. Thomas William Hiddleston, and would no longer be an orphan. I would have a husband, a mother-in-law, a father-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and of course, my brother from another mother, Luke.

How many nights had I spent imaging this moment? How long did I hope that Tom would take me as his wife? How hard did I wish for him to tell me the time and place he would claim me as his? Facing the doors to my future, I fault blessed, that someone, somewhere, had been looking out for me.

I wasn’t nervous.

Excited.

Extraordinarily excited.

Excitement surged through me with a force of a tidal wave, swelling and breaking, rushing and flooding. I soared above existence with love for my beautiful man. Within a few short breaths and a few short steps, I would be beside him, for now and for the rest of our lives. I would be his and he mine.

Luke whispered, respecting the atmosphere and the energy coursing through me, “You alright, doll?”

Unable to speak, I looked up at him and nodded.

“You’re shaking! There’s still time to make a run for it, if you want to bail,” he offered, his tone joking, his stance poised for a sprint.

I kept my mouth shut, afraid that my voice would sound shrill and loud, bursting with all the bottled up excitement flowing through me. I shook my head vehemently with a mock expression of disappointment. I turned my bottom lip downwards and furrowed my brow.

“Alright, doll… alright. Your call. Let’s get you married.”

We heard The Bridal March begin on the piano, and my gaze shot back towards the doors that Emma disappeared behind only seconds before. This was my last obstacle between me and my beloved.

As I stared at those doors, my life with Tom, all the good and bad times, all the passionate and quiet times, all the serious and silly moments passed and rushed through my head in a quiet montage.

From our first meeting when I tripped into his arms, the fortnight of desperately trying to avoid him due to nerves, to our first tryst in my dressing room, followed by flirty months of sex and laughs on his sofa. That confrontation in front of Henry, because of Henry. That precious Christmas Eve when Tom confessed that he loved me and wanted to be with me after I finally told him the truth. Our first non-date date. Our first disagreement as a couple and how we fought to figure out how we fit. Our first reconciliation. Our first holiday together to Hawaii. Our three month separation that tested our sanity. Our breakup that nearly destroyed both of us. How we found our way back into each other’s arms. Sneaking into events separately to meet up inside. Traveling together, the pregnancy scare, admitting that we were headed to this very place, working side by side, moving in together, our birthdays and Christmases together, meeting Abby world boyfriends, my broken wrist, his Coriolanus wound, my shutting him out and foolishly trying to break off our engagement, my journey home, Tom’s tendency to know all and not listen, my proclivity for hiding away at the first sign of trouble, his annoyance for my musical taste, his pleading with me to pick up my shoes, his jealousy, my insecurities.

Through all our turmoil and stress, truths and compatibility, one thing remained constant, one thing remained unquestionable, unbreakable, and how much we loved each other.

I blinked away tears of happiness as the doors opened from the other side, not minding who or what did it. My mind couldn’t bend from my primary attention, finding my man. My eyes focused on one person, my one person. He was facing in the direction of the altar, with his head bowed. Every moment slid by, and stretched, elongated as Luke and I took slow step by slow step path, shortening the distance. I watched as Tom’s dad, standing up beside him as best man, touched his son’s arm to let him know that I was there.

Tom took a deep breath, his broad shoulders rising and falling with the calming, centering breath. He turned to find me, his bride, when I was within five steps of reaching him. Blue eyes met blue eyes and we both fell apart, in the best possible way.

The butterflies flew wildly and I shuddered as happy tears poured down my face. I could barely register my hand gripping Luke’s elbow with the force of a vice, hanging on so I didn’t trip over my wobbly legs. I couldn’t quite get over the wide smile and the look of adoration that Tom wore. That couldn’t be for me, but it was!

My beautiful man, the strong, reliable, sturdy man, openly wept like a baby at the first look at me. His lips formed the words, ‘My Abigail’ on a silent exhale so profound that I felt it, deep inside me. His eyes swept down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, and leveling back on my eyes. He was smiling in his silly way, his tongue over his teeth, beyond moved. The sight of me walking towards him, to marry him, overwhelmed him. That soft spot he had for me, that chasm as wide and as deep as an ocean, that breach in his armor he wore with a badge of honor this day.

My heart pounded in my chest at the sight of him, in his full Prince Charlie kilt outfit, the kilt in his family tartan. Tall and handsome, he was tailored to perfection, from his formal black jacket and waistcoat with the large silver buttons, down to his white hose and black and pristinely shined ghille brogues, topped with his sporran and sgian dubh. Everything matched, nothing overlooked to the minutest of details. My Tom appeared bigger than life, arresting my breath in my throat, my face awash with fresh tears.

Luke, beside me, kept me on the straight and narrow until he stood between Tom and me before the man that would announce man and wife. I felt Diana and Sarah’s presence in the room, but I only had eyes for Tom. I was seeing him in a different light, more reflective, more profound. For every hour of happiness and contentment that I’d spent with him, I poured into smiling and crying, he spilled the same amount back to me.

My Tom, not only my friend and my family, but my soon to be husband embodied my other half, the apart of me that I’d been missing since birth, since my creation. I was meant to be his. I smoothed out his edges, and he solidified my softer side. He was brains and masculinity, I was compassion and feminity. I’d never understand how I deserved to be on his arm, but I wasn’t ever letting go.

“We are gathered here today to join Thomas and Abigail together in wedded matrimony,” the Scottish brogue sounded in my ears, but I wasn’t paying attention to him. I couldn’t look away from Tom. We were finally doing this, we were finally getting married. Directing his question to Luke, “Do you present this woman to this man?”

Luke’s chest puffed up with pride and solemn duty. Surely, he announced, “I do.” He turned to me, blocking my view of Tom momentarily, and kissed me once on both cheeks. He unhooked my trembling hand from the crook of his elbow and presented it to my groom.

Pulling himself together, Tom stood straight and gingerly took my proffered hand in his, reaching up with his other hand to wipe away my weepy tears as Luke inconspicuously steeped back and away. Tom’s instant healing touch was all I needed, all I wanted, and bound us together. Heat to ice, I melted.

My man looked beside himself for having me, his beloved, before him, holding my hand in his, and taking in every inch of me. This day, the day he officially claims me as his wife, his lifetime companion, his partner, and the future mother of his children, was a long time coming, for both of us.

If I’m honest, I missed most of what Connor said during the ceremony, completely lost in Tom’s eyes. There were serious words about the definition and sanctity of marriage, the adventure of it, all things I was ready to take on with Tom by my side.

We had chosen an abbreviated non-secular wedding ceremony, much to James, Tom’s dad, distress. He had raised his children in the Presbyterian Church, but each came away from that to the more spiritual than religious belief system. Tom and I decided that since we were eloping, we wanted a short and sweet ceremony, to get on with the celebrating with our family that joined us in Scotland.

“My dearest Abigail,” Tom began slowly. “I… struggled for a long time about your presence in my life. You are this tiny creature with captivating eyes, and you entered like a lamb, quiet, unassuming, delicate… Yet, you – your pull on me consumed me like a lion, fierce, brutal, and monstrous.” He made a small low laugh in the back of his throat as he held both of my hands in his. “To this day, I can’t comprehend how or why or precisely when you became my life, my world, my heart, but it no longer matters. I’m not fighting it or questioning what you mean to me. You simply are my reason for being.”

I shuddered with a fresh set of happy tears. The weather outside was dreadful, dreary, damp and stormy, but my exuberance and inner sunshine filled the room. Peaceful with Tom’s truth about me, my confidence grew. I felt whole. The lost girl was found.

“Abby, my beautiful bride, when I realized and accepted that I was in love with you, truly accepted my fate, my fortunate lot in life of being yours, I once looked up the meaning of your name. Abigail. It means a father’s gift. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I believe that to be unwaveringly true. No doubt that you were your father’s pride, because, Abby, you are the very definition of compassion. You are all heart, all love, all caring, enduringly benevolent, and any father would be beside himself with pride at gracing the world with such a kind and tender soul – your soul.”

Sniffling through my tears, I smiled, gripping Tom’s hands tighter in mine. I was beyond the mere definition of happy, beyond ecstatic, beyond the moon.

“The undying scholar in me couldn’t stop there. Not only did I research Abigail and all the derivatives, but I also hunted down your middle name, Grace.” He shook his head at the memory playing in his head. “I was determined to figure out how you came to mean so much to me…”

A slight fluttering of laughter came from the family and from me.

“From studying Greek in school, Grace comes from the word cheris, or to rejoice. After looking further, it also means sweetness, attractiveness, favor, goodwill, loving kindness, and blessing. Abigail Grace, you are a blessing in my life, and a gift to me that I look forward to treasuring for the rest of my life.”

He took a deep breath, looked down at our hands, and then back into my eyes. “I have spent so much of my life, striving to be the best. As Shakespeare said, ‘Take pains. Be perfect.’ That stuck with me, and I’ve lived by it. The perfect man, the perfect person, the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect professional, athlete, linguist, even lover… But perfection is an unattainable goal, no matter how hard I run or work or play, I will never reach that level. Knowing you, Abigail, knowing you and loving you, you’ve shown me strength in being less than perfect and I’m stronger for accepting my imperfections. You’ve accepted me, and blessed me with your heart and devotion. I’m a better man for it.

“I always believed striving for the best or perfection would make me a… an authority… but the only authority I know, dear Abigail, is your authority on my heart. You fell into my arms four years ago and have been there ever since. Through you, I’ve learned the power of compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness and buckets full of sass.

“So before our family, before your parents watching over us and before whatever higher being there may be, I pledge to love, honor and be yours, through sickness and health, in rich and poor times, through highs and lows, and through any calamity or chaos you cause in the kitchen, to watch over you when you misplace things on purpose, or when you hold my watch ransom when you need extra attention, and even when you reload my iPod with music that no human alive should listen. I will listen. I will dote on you. I will be there for you, Abigail. I vow to love you more than I do today which is vast and great already, for the rest of our lives.”

He had paused for the laughs from his family at the sweet personalized points he added to his vows for my benefit. The earnest speech felt genuine, and there was no doubt that he would dedicate himself to it. Determined to see me happy, this man loved me with all of himself.

There was no time to recover from the tears he provoked from me, the bottomless well of joy in my heart. After following Tom and his way with words, I hoped that my vows to him were just as strong. He deserved so much more than me, but I collected myself as best I could.

“Thomas,” my airy voice sounded quietly in the small room. A big fat tear slid down my right cheek as I looked up at my beloved from our entwined hands. Clearing my throat, I began again, “My beautiful Thomas, when we met, I knew you would change my life. You were the Tom Hiddleston, and I thought, if nothing else, you would boost my CV and people would take me seriously. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever believe or think I would stand with you, pledging to be your partner in life.

“I remember the instant you changed- my perception of you changed from theTom Hiddleston to my Tom. You invited me to your flat the night after our play closed. I was already smitten, I had been since day one, but I discounted it as matinee idol or leading man syndrome. I was smitten and I agreed to your invitation. That night, you were so excited that you’d been cast as a vampire… we spent hours on your computer, researching lore and watching vampire films until the sun came up. You held me in your lap all night, pointing out things, explaining different words in different languages. You let me into your world that night, and I’ll never forget it. I missed Top Gear that night…”

Tom laughed and said, “Uh oh!”

I smiled through even more tears, that memory so fresh in my mind. “But it didn’t matter. That was a special night, because we were just Tom and Abby. No pretense, no barriers, no obstacles… just Tom and Abby. I knew I’d found a friend in you, even if you still scared me to bits!”

We all giggled together, my penchant for the shy and the guarded around him well known, even to his family. I was the meek little thing that sat at Christmas dinner that first year without saying fifteen words to anyone, including Tom. I was polite and respectful, but didn’t speak unless spoken to, as was my way of dealing with people.

“For every bit of shyness I showed you, you returned it with equal amounts of confidence. For every step I took to get away from you and the attraction I felt for you, you took two to stay ahead of me. For every silent moment when I couldn’t find my voice to speak, you were there. For every moment I felt alone in this world, this great big intimidating world, you filled in the void with your poise, your care for me.”

I took a deep shuddering breath, willing my tears back to make it through the next part. “Nobody ever invested the time or the determination to draw me out, to get to know me, to care for me, to love me, as you did. You wanted to fix my timid self-consciousness, or fill my lonely existence – you wanted to fix everything wrong and make it right.”

I could feel the tears warring to push through into huge sobs, the culmination of the years alone and the years filled with contentment flooding through me. Tom adored me, I could feel him in those moments, supporting me, rallying behind me as he always did.

“Tom, my beautiful, beautiful man, you can’t fix everything, but you got something right.” The rest of the room faded into a dull gray, as my eyes bore into his, shimmering with the naked truth I felt. “You gave me hope, and a purpose and a family.”

My husband to be didn’t mask the tears or the impact that statement had on him. He sucked in a lung full of air and squeezed my hands even tighter.

“You, Tom, made me whole and alive again. You found me, the real me, hidden behind her broken heart and misery. You gave me something I was sorely in need of: a family, people to love, people to love me, a home. For me, a home isn’t a structure or a building, more a foundation of emotional support, something I sorely needed after losing mine, the one I’d known and been grieving for a long time. You brought me back to life.

“You once told me that we’re two halves of a whole, no opposites… but together, we’re complete. I promise before everyone I hold dear to love you completely, wholly and without question. I will stand by your side spiritually and physically if you need me. I will continue to be your balance. You are where I belong, and I will honor all my promises from now until the end of time, even when I test your patience, or when I need a stern lesson in not dog-earring your books, or when you question or doubt the time you spend away from home. I am your Abigail.”

Thankfully the Officiate asked for the rings from Tom’s dad to complete the ceremony. Touching Tom’s face, I swiped gently at the tears there, grateful for the opportunity to tell him all that I felt since we met.

Connor asked, once he had the rings, “Thomas, would you place this ring on the ring finger of Abigail’s left hand and repeat after me please?”

The wedding band Tom had chosen matched my engagement ring, ensuring that I could continue wearing it. The lovely thin silver band ring wrap surrounded tiny diamonds, their clarity matching my ring already there. The cool metal slid into place easily, fitted perfectly.

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Connor prompted.

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

“All my heart’s affection, all that I am…”

“All my heart’s affection, all that I am…”

“All that I ever shall be and everything that is a part of me…”

Tom’s voice broke, as he repeated those words, “All that I… ever shall be and everything… that is a part of me…”

“I give to you now, my wife.”

Tom sniffed with the weight of this part of the ceremony, and I couldn’t contain much of giddiness. This was it. We were doing this.

Tom beamed, “I give to you now, my wife.”

Connor stated the same thing for me, and I spoke the same words to Tom, as I slipped his silver wedding band, custom made to match mine, on the ring finger of his left hand. “I give to you now, my husband.”

The Officiate then stated, “Please look into each other’s eyes and remember the first day you met, the first kiss you shared, the day you realized that you were with your future spouse, when you knew this was the one, this was the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. Today, you both have committed to the vows and the promises to love, honor and protect each other, and I charge you to keep to those vows that you’ve spoken. Remember that you are holding the hand of your very best friend right now. Always be quick to forgive each other. Never forget that love is not only an emotion but a commitment that is sacred and something you will cherish every day of your lives. If you both agree to all these things, please say ‘I do.’”

As one, Tom and I spoke those two words together.

“I do!”

“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

My belly did a somersault, and my heart leapt into overdrive. Tom and I were married, really truly married.

Connor smiled, “Thomas, you may now kiss your bride.”

Anticipating that part, my man pulled me into his arms possessively and lowered his lips to mine. My hands cupped his head to mine, sharing in our first kiss as a married couple. Demandingly soft, he massaged his lips over mine. I felt his hands move from my cheeks to the small of my back, closing the gap between us. We barely heard the small smatter of clapping from our family over the hammer of our hearts. We finally did it.

As Tom separated from me, he whispered, “I love you.”

Grinning wildly, I returned the sentiment. “I love you.”

Connor stated, “It is my honor and privilege to present for the very first time, Thomas and Abigail Hiddleston.”

Together, we turned to our tiny congregation and showed them our clasped hands. Their applause followed us as we exited out the doors that I came through as a single woman only minutes before. In the hallway, Tom pulled me into his arms again, and kissed me passionately, as a true husband towards his new bride, before we greeted our family. This had been genuinely about us, and our brand new life together.

 

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 63 of Tom and Abigail Series