"I came to tell you…"
"I know, I need to go. A posting...far away...to save us both."
"Far away." Rose repeated his words in an effort to convince herself, but as she spoke her body evidenced the feeling in her heart, her head shaking no. They stood in the dark road, chests rising and falling rapidly. Rose's eyes darted back and forth as she searched Ron's face, thoughts racing through her mind, the pain she felt believing their relationship to be over all too fresh in her memory. "No," she finally spoke, the realisation dawning that she didn't want to live her life without him in it.
"Rose…" Ron started. The sensible and pragmatic man he was, the man who had so deftly used those skills to rise in the ranks to Air Force Captain, knew how wrong this was and could see every pitfall; however, he couldn't help but let his head be ruled by his heart and found himself unable to stop her from uttering the words he hoped she'd say next.
"No, never leave me."
The words were barely out before she was pulling his lips to her own. The kiss was warm and passionate, everything they'd experienced that day at the house, but with more unrestrained desire pulsing through it.
Only when oxygen became an issue did they break apart.
"What do we do now?" he asked looking into her eyes, his hand cradling her head as his fingers gently brushed along the back of her neck.
"I don't know," she whispered truthfully, a tear escaping her eye. Ron gently brushed it away from her cheek with his thumb. "All I know is that I can't stand the idea of my life without you in it." Ron swallowed in response to her confession, knowing exactly how she felt, his eyes unable to hide the truth. He slipped his arm further down her shoulders and pulled her towards him, inhaling the scent of her hair as she buried herself against him.
As content as Rose was, it didn't take long for her ever present logical mind to kick in. "Gosh," she said as she pulled away, making some minor attempts to tidy herself up, smoothing out her hair and straightening her coat. "I need to get back. I just walked out of the house." Ron's brow furrowed. "Michael, he might lose the pub, and I just…" she said unable to finish, unsure what to call the feeling that led her to run away into the night and find Ron. "He'll be wondering where I got to."
Ron nodded in understanding, at the last part anyway. "Can you come and see me tomorrow at the base?"
Rose scanned her mind feverishly for anything that might prevent it. "Yes," she answered with certainty and a small smile.
"Good." He leant in and pressed his lips to hers in a brief kiss. When they broke apart he held her face in his hands, tracing her jaw tenderly with his thumb. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," she affirmed. After one quick press of his lips to her forehead, they finally parted. Rose watched as Ron returned to the Jeep and drove away into the night, headlights fading in the distance before the car disappeared from her sight.
Turning, Rose began to retrace her steps. Remarkably, it was only now that the fact she had left the house without shoes on her feet came to her attention. Stopping and glancing down, she sighed to herself and took a moment before she continued to walk over the damp ground with extra caution.
As she walked, her thoughts raced so fast that she felt barely able to process what she had just done. There was no denying it now. She, Rose Coyne, was in love with a man who wasn't her husband. She had kissed a man who wasn't her husband; and what was worse was that she longed to do so much more than just kiss him.
The first day she met Captain Ronald Dreyfuss, she had dreamed of him. That first dream was barely worth remembering, they had done little more than talk literature in it, but as the weeks went by, Rose's dreams grew more and more explicit in nature. She has dreamed of little more than kissing him, that was until the night of the day they actually kissed.
She had imagined them together, somewhere she wasn't sure she recognised, just talking at first, but the talking had lead to kissing and that had lead to making love. She had woken up in the middle of the night with a start, Michael snoring gently besides her with his arm laying across her, the perfect reminder of just what an awful person she was to be dreaming of another man. Slipping out from his embrace, Rose had tiptoed into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face in an effort to gain some composure.
It was in that dimly lit bathroom that she had decided she couldn't let herself love Captain Dreyfuss, no matter how dashingly perfect for her he seemed. She had even planned to tell him so next time she saw him; only she didn't see him, not for nearly three weeks. Lieutenant Zeigler gave her no indication as to where he had gone, so Rose naturally assumed he'd seen their growing attraction and kiss as a mistake; but no matter how much she tried to tell herself it was for the best and that she was going to tell him that she felt the same, the feeling of longing gnawed at her soul. Her soul felt like it'd lost its missing piece all over again.
Walking back to the house, Rose reflected that the feelings weren't just longing, the idle fantasies of a bored wife, they were love. Those words she'd said to Ron earlier at the party about her heart screaming out love were true. This was the kind of love she had thought she'd felt for Michael, but she now realised with a kind of sadness, could never compare.
Before she turned the corner she knew would bring her home into view, Rose braced herself with a shaky deep breath, affecting her best look of nonchalance as she turned the corner. The house was in darkness except for the living room, no doubt because Michael was waiting up for her.
It took mere seconds from her opening the door for Michael to come bursting into the hall.
"Rose! Where were you?!" he demanded. She busied herself by removing her coat before turning to answer his question.
"I had to go and check with Lieutenant Zeigler that there weren't any leftover gifts from the party, we agreed I'd give anything left to Father Nolan to distribute as he saw fit," she said in rushed and overly positive tone.
"You're not even wearing any shoes," Michael said as he gestured to her feet.
"Would you believe, I was in such a rush that I didn't even notice until I was halfway there!" Rose told him hurriedly in an attempt to brush off the evidence of her frantic mental state.
Looking into Michael's eyes Rose could see he wasn't entirely convinced by her story, but it also didn't seem he was going to push for any further explanation, so she continued: "Anyway, as you can see I'm empty handed, so it was quite the wasted trip I'm afraid, it seems they had just the right amount of presents for all the children."
Michael looked at her, his mouth forming a straight line that seemed to constitute some sort of acknowledgement.
"Gosh, anyway I'm exhausted!" Rose continued before walking up the first step of the staircase, then turning back to Michael. "I think I'll head to bed. Are you coming?"
He continued studying her silently for a moment before he responded. "Soon, I have some documents to look over that Harrington left me."
"Right, OK," she nodded before retreating upstairs and into the safety of the bedroom.
Standing back against the door, she placed her hand over her mouth in some effort to silence her mind. Her eyes darted frantically as she blinked back tears.
After changing for bed, Rose slipped between the covers and lay staring at the ceiling. Her mind was still whirling with thoughts, the biggest being that question Ron had asked her earlier: 'What do we do now?' Just what would they do?
Rose could leave Michael, but what about the children? Where could she and Ron go anyway? The war was still very much on, so it wasn't like they could run off into the proverbial sunset that was America together.
Upon hearing Michael's footsteps, Rose turned onto her side and closed her eyes feigning sleep. She was relieved when within a few minutes of slipping in bed besides her, Michael's breathing feel into a low rhythm indicating he was asleep.
Unsurprisingly, sleep eluded Rose for much of the night, the upcoming morning and the prospect of being back in Ron's arms feeling all too far away.
