𝘿𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝘿𝙪𝙤 ; 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙨 𝙎𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙗𝙮 [ BOOK 2 ]

TWO

CHAPTER TWO; MY BOY

There was something about Charles that drew people to him. Caroline guessed it didn't hurt that he was a good looking boy; but it was more than that. He was quiet, but not out of painful shyness. It was a reservedness, like a conscious choice to observe the lie of the land before he got involved.

Yet he wasn't stand-offish, he remained friendly faced and welcoming in body posture. It wasn't like he sat down one day and planned to be like that, it was just the way he was. Thomas never saw him go out and deliberately make a friend, they just came to him. There was nothing threatening about him, nothing at all. He was an easy listener, a good audience, giving encouraging feedback laced with intelligent comments.

He worked hard, he got his work done. Only once in a while would he sink into a sulk over getting some school work wrong, it didn't happen to him often, and he had poor tolerance for the feeling when it did.

The boy looked at her with his head askew on his grubby neck. He'd woken up to the movement on the mattress he'd been placed in and his eyes took Caroline in without moving and she knew behind those hazel iris's there were calculations going on.

"My sweet, sweet boy." She murmured with delight. "Mummy's home."

"Mummy?" He sat up on the bed immediately, his tone but a disbelieving whisper.

It was as if every sound that escaped their mouth was set to the frequency that would shatter his heart to pieces again and again and again. From the doorway, Thomas tried to smile but he couldn't. In the way that Caroline embraced their son without a second to waste, holding onto him as though her life depended on it, he envisioned what it would have felt like to have his own mother witness the growth of Charles.

Caroline's cries turned into full body wracked sobs. Still in denial that John had passed, she couldn't believe that she'd been absent from her son's life for a whole year. In those estimated three-hundred-and-sixty-five days, he'd sprouted, blossoming into a beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed boy. He looked nothing like his father nor herself, but perhaps it was for the best. He was an individual who was gorgeous in his own unique way and Caroline couldn't believe that she'd birthed a being so perfect.

"Why are you so sad, mummy?" Charles's tiny fingers wiped at her wet cheeks.

She sniffled, glancing to Thomas with a genuine grin before turning to Charles to place a kiss against his forehead. In his eyes, she saw a soul before its years. He spoke with sincerity, caring deeply for those around him, especially his own mother who he barely knew, but he knew enough to know that she loved him just as much as he loved her.

"I'm not sad, sweetheart." She held his body close to hers, feeling his fingers entwine around her neck, afraid to let go. "I'm just happy that we're here together. I've missed you so so much."

Tommy's face came out from the shadows, craggy features suspended between grief and joy. Seconds pass, her brain taking him in, struggling to comprehend that he wasn't one of the pictures kept beside her hospital, that he was real. Her brain couldn't formulate a thought, at least not one based in any language, and if she didn't touch him soon, her atoms would tear themselves apart.

How the ground between them was erased, she'd never recall, but one moment they were apart and the next they were morphed into a single being. The warmth of his body met her cold skin, giving her hope like he always did before the coma. One of his hands clasps around my lower back, the other wrapped around Charles to draw him into the embrace. With each soft touch more tears fell, tears neither of them wiped away. After so many days, they had the chance to make new memories and wasting time isn't on the agenda.