Lying In Loving Arms
Jack sat on the floor of the club office, his knees bent and his arms lain across them. His back was stiff against the now cold radiator, the grooves of the metal digging into his skin. He could've moved, couldn't sat so much more comfortably on the huge leather chair behind his desk. But he didn't. He stayed on the floor, uncomfortable and in pain. He welcomed it.
Jack lifted his head, no longer staring into the floor, but finally resting on the person he wished he could take into his arms and just . . . hold. His heart constricted in agony, flailing in pain and wishing to be ripped from his chest. "What have I done to her?" He mumbled to himself. He wanted to drag his eyes away, to not have to see her anymore, to not have to face up to the guilt that was almost suffocating him, but he couldn't. He couldn't stop looking at her. Instead, he just stared; drinking in every contour of her face, every rise and fall of her chest.
His entire body ached to be closer to her, even just a few metres. Jack could feel himself moving, but he curled his hands around the feet of the radiator. He wouldn't go any nearer. "I can't, I'll just keep hurting her."
His mind battled with his yearning heart. Closing his eyes, Jack conjured up the image of the heartbreak in Ronnie's eyes when she had caught Tanya in his flat earlier that day. Her expression was one of shock, her voice had become cold but only her eyes gave away her true emotions. Jack sucked in a shallow breath, the turmoil of that one look winding its way around his chest until he had difficulty breathing.
With his eyes tightly closed, another image washed across the dark canvass. A memory of another time he had hurt her. Later never. Those were the two words she had spoken. A question that had fallen from her lips so easily, but he knew what strength it had taken for her to say them. And whilst Ronnie had been strong, he had been pathetic and weak – he couldn't even answer her. So he said nothing and walked away. Leaving Ronnie to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
"I've never deserved you, Ron," Jack whispered into the stifling silence. "Not even in the beginning, before either of us knew each other." He let out a soft sigh, unclenching his hands and bringing them up to his face.
"You took my breath away – and that weren't just the water splashing in me face." Jack's lips curved into a half smile at the memory. "There was something about you that I couldn't quite figure out, something beneath the surface and that day with Damien; I saw a little of it. But as soon as I'd glimpsed it, it was gone – the walls back up again."
Without realising, until it was too late, what he was doing Jack had gotten up from the floor and knelt by Ronnie's side. He heard his knee click as he crouched down. "That's me, gettin' old," he joked, the fingers of his right hand pushing Ronnie's fringe from her damp forehead.
Ronnie's body responded to his touch and her eyelids fluttered open for a second, like butterflies spreading their wings in a shaft of warm sunlight. Jack instantly froze. "You're here," Ronnie murmured, her voice thick with fatigue. She slowly blinked, her eyelids heavy, before shutting them once again. "I miss you." Her hand came up and gently caressed Jack's smooth cheek with the back of her fingers. "Why did you stop loving me?"