Open Heart {Under Revision}

Chapter 53- The Endearment

I gazed at the stars, little dots but thousands in number covering the black sky. Up there, their positions looked fixed yet ever changing. They were like a distance call to my heart. To inspire dreams from the other worlds.

The black before them had a velvet quality, like the air had been thickened somehow. The starry night above was better than any software imitation. There were lighter patches, clusters of faint and bold light, the constellations altered according to the time of year. These were the same stars that greeted the ancients, the same ones that would be there in millions of years

"It's beautiful." I said, moving closer to Ethan as the chilly winds kissed my skin.

"It is." He replied, tightening his arm around me.

We were on the floor of his large balcony, which spread like a semi-circle, large enough to fit in a lot of things. The bedroll under me was soft, but nothing was comfortable compared to Ethan's body. My hands slid across the ridges of his abdominal muscles, feeling the hardness still.

Even with the way he had shown me how he felt, the words defying the passion undone, I could feel the gears turning on his head, just like his shoulders, tensed. I made my hands up there, slowly pressing circles in a soothing manner. My legs were twined with his, under the blankets and I was stark naked. He was not.

He had said, tonight was just for me. Just for me.

Our day will come.

"What's wrong?" I asked. We laid side by side, facing the starry sky with my arms draped over his shoulders.

He twirled a piece of my hair and sighed, "Not wrong....it's just." He turned to me, "I think in a lot of ways I have failed you."

I turned to his side, plopping on my elbows to look at his face, "What?...No..Ethan, why are you-"

He stopped me by brushing his fingers on my cheek, "When I first read your application...I saw the most intrigued and mysterious profile. I saw the brilliant potential you had compared to what others did, and I wondered what were you still doing here. I thought you would be taken by the most developed companies." He looked at me softly, "And I knew what an outstanding....ground breaking doctor you could be if you had someone to push you...to challenge you." His eyes lowered below his long lashes, "Just like Naveen had done to me."

My heart broke for a moment at that time, seeing him with such sadness. His fingers absently played with my hair, "And...I am no longer there with you. At Edenbrook. And in two days, we are about to find out what will happen. I don't want to think the worst case...but Charlotte. If I had been there...maybe you wouldn't be-"

I silenced him by leaning forward and giving a tender kiss to him, "You did. You didn't fail." Another kiss generating a deep rumble from his chest, "I am glad that I learnt from you, from someone who knew the difference which mattered in every case...in every life which ever entered for treatment. And...I don't care what happens tomorrow. It's inevitable..." I smiled, "But you told me remember, we are doctors...fighting the inevitable is our job."

He pulled me to him, pressing me against his chest where I heard the faint beating of his heart. His breath ruffled my hair and pushed away the coldness of the surrounding. I traced a line on his chest, saying, "Naveen is like a father to you, wasn't he."

"He is...since I was not close to my parents and the time I joined Edenbrook...my mind was" he paused finding the correct word, "Versatile."

I stifled a laugh. Versatile? Hmm...one more word to describe Ethan.

I stayed like that, a blanket covering us and his body generating the hearth to counteract the weather. My mind drifted to my family...to my parents. The way I had been with them, our destructive relationship. Their failure to be a good parent to me. Apparently I blamed evolutionary biology for my painful memories. I wished I could put them in the garbage can where they belonged and forget. Or better yet had them buried deep underground or somewhere inside the mountains in Nevada where they stored radioactive wastes. I was told that our brains were hardwired from caveman times to remember the bad stuff more to help keep you alive. Which was hard for me to believe because what I needed was the absolute silence from the monsters and the cascading transcendence of positivity.