Ill-Gotten Memories

18. Lovable

There was no height, nor depth, capable of exceeding my struggle.

In all my years, I couldn't begin to measure how difficult this evening had been for me; containing my true feelings for Barbara over the last few hours had become an athletic sport... and I was no athlete. Every touch, every word, or sigh of her lips, rendered me all the more powerless.

I abandoned logic and my better judgment. I ached to consume her, just as the night before. She made me so weak.

But I may have just ruined everything.

She was looking at me as though I were crazy. And at this point, maybe it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. Twenty-five years was a long time to wait on the woman you loved; only God knows the kind of toll it takes. Whatever those implications were, I was losing the will-power to keep my feelings at bay, and the real me was slowly emerging.

... A man she didn't recognize.

It hurt me to think that she had no memory of our encounters in high school. I knew her childhood was traumatic, to say the least, but how she could completely erase me from her memory banks, I couldn't fully understand. To be fair though, much of her mind was occupied with that monster who sexually abused her, and who could blame her? If she chose to throw away that section of her life then, all the better. She needed to take any means necessary to heal from her trauma, even if it meant forgetting me.

However, she was probably not too concerned with the short, lanky fellow from high school. I had confessed my love and she was... not taking it well. Barbara was speechless.

Embers of disbelief burned through the haze that had left her eyes cloudy and drunken. "You don't have to do that." Her voice trembled beneath a certain shyness, partly embarrassed. Did she think I was playing along with a silly assumption of hers? Because I wasn't.

"Do what?"

"This." My Love didn't quite know how to put it yet, darting her big, delicate eyes around the room. Then, composing herself, she sweetly tapped me on the arm. She'd molded her disbelief into something stronger, something to assure me with. "It's okay, really. We can put this behind us."

I should have seen that coming.

"Barbara—."

"—And just so you know, you weren't supposed to see my arm. I didn't plan for that."

Just as I suspected, she thought I was attempting some type of heroics to satisfy my own ego. Whether it was her ex fiancé, Glen, or another low-life she'd dated, someone had manipulated her into thinking this way, and I had my suspicions, but one thing I knew for sure was that she did not need me or any man to be happy. I hoped she realized that. And while it may have been true that I felt a deep responsibility to protect her from the Shaw's, I couldn't save her from past traumas. Only God could take away that pain. And she had to let Him.

To be clear, Barbara wasn't my project. I loved her because there was no one else like her in the world.

"I know you didn't."

"Okay, good." She pulled away, fixing her posture, and took a deep breath to gain some sensibility. "Then I'm letting you off the hook."

The only reason Barbara would feel the need to "drop the charges" would be because she felt I had wronged her. Or I had overstepped my bounds. Admitting how I felt about her couldn't have been the crime she painted it to be... could it?