Disclaimer: All characters are property of the seven network.
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A Love Before
He'd stood, feet shoulder width apart, hands buried in the pockets of his red board shorts. He had worn a warm smile on his lips, the same one he'd promise a thousand times over was only for you.
But now…Your head throbbing, you fell to her knees on the cool sand that winter morning, and the jolt of the fall moved through you, from your knees to your hips, and up your spine.
Your whole body, though, already ached.
It had ached for him in the long hours of the week past. It had ached to once again feel his touch. To hear his voice.
Tears welled in your eyes, and each trickled down your face, stopping at your chin.
In your hand you held a crumpled yellow note, with letters of blue smudged with tears. They were your tears, and it was his address you held. His address, penned in Peter's handwriting.
Your breathing slowing from the panicked gasps of air those long minutes ago, you stared across the ocean. You watched, your heart breaking one beat at a time, as the amber-kissed waves moved to and fro.
It had been your fault.
In your desperate need to see him, you had brought on all this pain.
Curled up on the sofa in the midnight hours those days ago, you had cried over the memories you had once shared. Your tears had wet the piece of paper as you promised yourself you would only send a photograph, just so that he could see how much like him his son had grown to be.
In these few short years, though, while you had distanced yourself from every emotion, from every fleeting thought of the man you had promised to love forever...you had only loved him more.
And now, he was gone forever.
His eyes had pleaded, and while you had seen the tears in his eyes, you hadn't seen the stabbing pain in his heart.
You had told him, your voice weak, that it was better this way. Better that he stopped loving you, and from the broken look in his eyes you knew he hadn't. He wouldn't...because he promised. And unlike you, his promise was forever.
His hair longer than it was the last time you ran your fingers through it; you had placed one last, tear-filled kiss against his lips, before telling him goodbye.
You had stolen that kiss, one that had never been yours to take, and it had made everything you had told him so much worse. His pain was your doing, but you knew you could never forgive yourself, just as you prayed he never did.
But that had been your intent, hadn't it?
And your words...those painful, heart aching words...they had taken him from you.
You had pushed him away that one last time.
Still kneeling there on the sand, your own words raging through your mind, you tried to tell yourself it was the right thing to do. But your body still ached. It had ached from that kiss. It ached from the tears you had caused...and while to him you had broken your promise, inside you knew better.
But, it was better this way. Neither of you could keep on the way things were going...you had told him that neither of you could keep on living on a hope that things would return to the way they once were. You had to let go, you told him. And so had he.
The thunder rumbling overhead, you squeezed your eyes shut. And then, on a shuddered whisper, you breathed, "I'm sorry, Vinnie...it was the only way...it was the only way..."
You still loved him. And the truth was, you could never stop.