Teddy

Chapter Twenty Four: Please come back to me Allie

"Where are we going" Allie asks curiously. She studies the route ahead on the GPS and gazes out of the window.

"You will find out soon my love" I smile, and look to her as she glances away, her red hair tucked up in a tight braid that rested upon her head like a crown, honestly my favourite of her braids, because she looked beyond beautiful, and quite the warrior queen I knew her to be.

I reach out and rest my hand on her thigh, and she reaches instantly for it, threading her fingers over the top and pulling it into her lap.

Some things didn't change. Allie still took my hand, and if she had stopped that...I think I would have felt as if all was lost, but she did take it. I would take hers with a firm grasp and guide her back to me... to us, and our forever, where once she felt safe and confident, and now she felt a little lost and unsteady.

Alberta and I were always each others firm ground, always steadying each other and keeping each other above water. There was never, even as years apart were being lived, never a time Alberta's presence didn't ground me, because we together had always made a whole.  Allie was currently pulling away, and it was sending our entire world off balance, the changes were subtle and to the outside world perhaps, we appeared, just the same, and there were no obvious signs that something had blown us off course. The truth was, that Allie was strained in her belief in me... and in us. I woke every morning and found her on the opposite side of the bed, it was glaringly obvious that Allie had started to walk a path alongside mine, but not the same one. I felt an incredible ache return, that I hoped was long subsided, and that ache, it filled me with absolute dread.

***
Our destination wasn't even an hour from our house, the White Mountain national forest.

I had rented a gorgeous cottage for the weekend that sat in an elevated position overlooking the incredible mountain peaks that sat upon a valley of trees in the forest surrounding it. This place was somewhere we loved to visit together, the mountains reminding us of home. The sunsets that would lower through its peaks, they made us both feel as close to heaven as you could get. It had been a year or so that we hadn't been up to visit, but this was the place I knew would ground us whilst we tried to work through the weight that was suddenly throwing us off balance. I just had to hope that I could reach Allie, reach down to that seed that got planted and pluck it out because Alberta had no need to ever worry for our future or what she was or meant to me. She was quite literally everything, and my future was her, and her alone... I needed her to feel it and to believe it.

"Is it the white mountains" Allie asks, turning excitedly as her hand pulls mine against her stomach.

A smile spreads across my lips "it is" I admit "but not somewhere we have stayed before... it's incredible Allie. I scouted it out recently, and honestly when I stepped out onto its veranda and saw the view... it's you... it's all you. I have wanted to take you back there ever since"

She lifts my hand to her lips and places a kiss on the back of my knuckles softly. "I can't wait to see it"

"I love you so much" I confess, slipping my hand from hers, and instead cupping her soft jaw "so much" I add quietly, softly running my fingers down her cheek.

I turn to find her eyes on mine, and looking back to me lovingly. She places her own hand over mine, against her cheek "I know" she replies quietly.

"Do you" I ask her, letting her go and concentrating on the road.

"Of course I do Willa" she says, as if it's ridiculous to suggest she didn't. She reaches back over and takes my hand back into her lap, reclaiming it.

"Allie ... something has changed and it's scaring me"

She looks to me quickly, her second hand cupping mine in her lap so that I was encased in hers. "Willa don't be scared" she begs "I'm sorry" she pleads "If I made you feel that way"