John and Marlena (Finally) Get a Q!

Chapter 119 - Morning Grace

"John?" He felt her fingers touch his arm with the lightest of touches before she pulled them away. But in that brief moment, he had noticed that she was trembling. And when he looked up, he found fear misting her beautiful hazel eyes. "John, we can fix this. Can't we?" Her voice was small and panicky and his heart gave a familiar lurch.

"Doc....." he didn't know what to say to her.

"John, you have to believe me, it's completely different. What we have to what I had with Gene. That was nice but it can't compare to what we have." The words flowed from her lips desperately, almost tripping over themselves to make him believe her. "I told him I loved him, and I did, but in a different way. In a way that a friend loves a friend. I tried to kid myself that it was something more but John it wasn't. It wasn't like *this*." She took his hand in hers and slowly lifted it to where her heart beat just below her heavy breast. Pressing his fingers against the gauzy material, she looked up at him beseechingly. "I love you with my whole heart and my soul. No one makes me feel the way you do. No one ever could." She could feel his fingers relax a little under hers and it gave her a spark of hope.

"Being with you makes me feel like I'm whole. Like I'm the person I was always supposed to be. And without you, there's just part of me missing and I can't live my life like that anymore." Looking up at him, her lips moved, imparting the almost silent words, "Please don't ask me to."

"Did you even think about me when you were with him?" His voice was raw with jagged emotions. He felt like he was on some kind of roller-coaster even as she spoke, wanting so desperately to believe her and let the resentment slide away into the darkness. But even at the same time, the questions still gnawed at him, begging for answers that he wasn't sure he wanted to hear. But he had to know; he had to understand this in his head and his heart before he could let it go.

Swallowing, Marlena stepped back.

"I did my best *not* to," she said awkwardly, not knowing what he wanted to hear. But he was being honest, uncovering the very real insecurities and fears that he harbored and she could only offer him the same in return. "I tried not to and for the most part, I was successful. I didn't want to hear or know anything about what you were doing. It was just too painful. But now and then I just couldn't help it and I would remember something we had done, or you had said and...." She shook her head, remembering the flash of memory that she had experienced when she was in New York, on the top of the Empire State Building. It had been so startling to her at the time, that a seemingly benign act of passion was enough to provoke the most breathtaking of memories. But it shouldn't have been so surprising. If she'd only been honest with herself. Because, as he had from the time she had first met him, at the most unexpected of moments, John always came back to haunt her.

She should have known then that it was hopeless.

"You didn't even think about me when you were in bed with him?" John asked miserably, anguish once buried deep in his head, finally slicing free.

"I *couldn't* John," she replied in tears once again. "It was like there was this hollow place in my heart where you had been. Like an empty room, and as long as I kept the door closed, I could almost forget how dark and cold it was. But if I let thoughts of you in, I wouldn't have been able to fool myself anymore. So, I just tried not to think of you at all." She could see the hurt playing across his face, and she felt wretched. "John you must know what it's like. How could you have slept with Kristen all those months.... all those years, if you were thinking about me all the time?"

"I didn't at first," he admitted in a hoarse voice, "but as time went on, sometimes I just couldn't help it. I'd close my eyes and there you were."

"Did she ever know?" Marlena asked in a small voice.