The Love of His Life
"Pure love is all-inclusive. If you have learned to truly love one, you have known the secret of loving all."- Unknown
He loved her.
He always had- almost from the moment they had met.
She wasn't like the other women he had known, and maybe that was part pf the problem.
She hadn't been a woman, but a girl on the cusp of womanhood. She was smart and didn't hide it. Had a spirit that enchanted him and said she loved him and would until the day she died.
He loved her.
He always had- and had given her his name with a promise to love, honor, and protect. Only war came and then they were parted. He served crown and country, as did she, and though that they would return to the life they had talked of in academia. A flat, a child, her at home and on committees and him at Uni.
But then she disappeared.
He lived with the despair.
The rumors.
The suspicion.
And he searched.
He bloody well searched for her for 3 bloody. And then she was back- and he loved her- even as he hated her.
He loved her.
He cursed them… her and this fantasy life she created with a man dead and moldering in the ground some two hundred plus years. He saw how she clung to it and how desperately she believed a part of him wanted to believe that it was possible because if the man she left him for was dead then she didn't have to complete for her heart. There was no one to compete with…
Only there was…
Christ, but he loved her too…
The child- Bree—was supposed to be another chance for them.
Like the honeymoon had been.
And like the honeymoon, it was a chance that had been doomed from the start.
She reminded Claire too much of the other man, and in his anger he had seeked him out and knew that they would return to him…
He loved her and hated her and needed to find a purchase of some control. The accident when Bree was eight was serendipity for him. Her classes and work at the hospital afforded him a way to make inroads with Bree and forge a wedge between mother and daughter. It was done carefully and slowly, so that it just seemed like the natural shifting of dynamic between mother and daughter as the girl grows into her own. He would even offer to intercede for Claire from time to time- but she never accepted, so instead, he twisted the knife more.
He loved her and she could have cared less.
She pushed him away as well as he daughter, encasing herself in her grief over a man she cheated on him with and he wanted to hate her for that but he couldn't because he had Bree because of that.
He hated what she made him become.
The women he had on the side.
The deceptions he had to employed.
But it didn't matter now, he supposed as his car skidded on the ice.
He had loved her, and once she had loved him and because of that a little girl loved him and called him "Daddy," and in truth, she was the true love of his life.