Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews and messages. To the guests, I cannot respond to you separately but thank you for reading, it means so much.

I am ill at the moment so laid up writing my little heart out and have another two stories in the works. One involving Jack as a first class passenger aboard Titanic as well as Rose and also another shorter one which I am indecisive of yet.

I know this is post number two in a few days but I am genuinely happy to be getting so much love for it and just in need of raising spirits!

Glad the last chapter was so well received; I am always super nervous with the sexy stuff!

Chapter eight:

Rose had never been one for motorcars. To a man now though, they seemed to be the newest play thing for them. The way Jack tore down the country lanes should have frightened her, but there was something about clinging to her seat and been almost afraid for her life and then fully trusting him with her own that was refreshing. Her eyes travelled over him now and again, for that was all she was able to do whilst trembling in the passenger side. Her once exhausted state of mind was now plunged into some sort of exhilaration. Since agreeing to leave London with Jack on a whim, to head to the nearest seaside town, which quite possibly she had no notion of, Rose had spent five minutes packing small items into a worn leather bag which had remained empty since her arrival at her boarding house and climbed into a car with Jack at the wheel. At the wheel...not in the backseat, with her. The sight of him was breath-taking; how he was now a man in utter control of everything, including her destiny. The destiny which at this very second seemed to have no clarity.

The rain beat down on the canvas roof, pounding so loudly that it drowned out the crash of thunder he felt deep within his chest. Jack leant forward to peer between the wiper blades. He didn't know the road but his three litre Bentley handled the curving country road like an old pro. Sometimes, he swore the motorcar had a mind of its own. God knew, his own hands weren't steady enough to man the wheel effectively half the time. Especially after the war. When the tremors had started...

There were times when he had pushed the car faster, grinding the gears, and took each turn on a screeching wheel, simply praying to have no met a soul on the road – or he would have been responsible for a murder.

That was when he was hooked on morphine injections...

For an entire six months after discovering that Rose was alive following the war, Jack had depended on the damned thing to take him away from the gruelling life, of the harsh reality of his own existence. There were times when he should never have drove at all, for he had lacked in control of all areas but back then, all he had to think about was himself and the need to die, somehow, just to be released from the entrapment of Hell on Earth.

The Bentley crested a hill at maximum speed and for an instant, Jack felt the chassis lift before slamming back down to earth. Sparks flew as metal met the road. If he wasn't so nervous, spiralling and completely unravelled, then it would be thrilling. Rose clung to her seat, her nails digging into her palm and she was struck between utter panic and the need to scream aloud to slow down, to opening the windows and allowing the wind to take them where ever they wound up. To feel the lashing of rain upon her face. To allow herself to bid goodnight to the woman who she had become; uptight, nervous and shrewd.

''I've always wanted to fly an aeroplane,'' Jack shouted above the din of the rain clattering against the Bentley.

''I learnt to fly, once in an aeroplane.'' Rose responded, waiting for his reaction. He turned to her, incredulously.

''That's a girl!'' he shouted, pounding on the instrument metal.

A laugh crawled up, and suddenly Rose was hysterically giggling at him. The corners of his eyes creased with his own laughter, and it was rare that one saw that genuine happiness these days.

''How did that go, my little Josephine?''

At the endearing name which they had both sang together once, whilst soaring in a very different way, Rose exhaled shakily. It was yet another reminder of the stark contrast between then and now. ''It was wonderful. Perhaps one of the better experiences of my life before the war.'' She wished to add how she felt him there with her. Those hands about her shoulders, whispering in her ear just how well she was doing, yet now she knew that his spirit never did live on within her just as she had imagined. For he was as alive at that point as she was.

The Bentley hugged a tight corner and Jack felt a hedgerow scrape against the passenger side. It caused Rose to jump, but realising it was only a passing tree, she calmed before turning her concentration back to the wheel. To Jack. How her entire instincts were heightened greatly. As though she was watching herself from a great height. As though she was not a real person any longer but a version of herself who was long forgotten. A person who had been scattered to the winds long ago but was now, all these years later, finally able to collect various parts of herself back together.

Lightening lit overhead the otherwise darkened countryside. Other than his headlamps cutting though the rain, there wasn't a light for miles. No houses, no farms. Certainly, no cosy village...

''I thought the ocean was no more than an hour or so's drive from here.''

''Almost there. I headed in the direction the map said to. I remember the route. I have a photographic memory.''

Jack stomped the accelerator. Faster, faster until the floorboards burnt hot beneath his feet. He pushed the motorcar as hard as it would go. He gripped the wooden wheel with his leather driving gloves until his knuckles ached. The big Bentley engine hummed. The exhaust sang. This wasn't just some rich bastard's plaything. It was a driving machine tuned to perfection.

''I never cared for motorcars.'' Jack told her, breaking her reverie. ''Some snob came to me, wanted pictures of his wife taken in a way which I never had before.''

Rose's stomach sank, her lips parting dryly. ''You mean naked?''

''What? No! He wanted a tasteful portrait for the house. He had about a hundred pictures of her already. Proud son of a bitch, he was. About sixty-five and his wife about eighteen.''

''That's quite an age.''

''She was a lovely thing, but put it about like nobody's business. I didn't want his money after I met her, she was flirtin' about like she wasn't attached. So, he said well, tell me what you want. I saw this out on the drive. He had about eight cars lined up and drove none of them. All just laid up there for show, just to flash his wealth to all who dared to watch. All for damned show it was and so I pointed to this,'' he slapped the wheel, ''said I will have her.'' He shook his head. ''Stupid man agreed and here she is, been mine a couple of years.''

''She's a great colour. Not grey or black.'' Rose felt the backs of her knees against the plush leather seats. How it contoured to her body. The floor soft beneath her tired feet. The inside was well looked after by Jack, she would assume. One could see the appeal, in one way.

For a brief second, her eyes flashed to his, and held onto his gaze for a few seconds before he turned back to the road. It was moments like this, that terrified her still. How the power of one single stare was enough to cause her entire body to tremble in a way no man ever could. Biting her lip, or slowly inhaling and exhaling did nothing to simmer down her blood pumping or heart racing.

Rain hit the windscreen so hard that each drop reminded Jack of bullets embedding themselves in corrugated metal. At times, he was back in the war. His mind wouldn't see the English Pastures but No Man's land stretched out before him. Razor wire fencing. German soldiers ready to strike. Thunder became shelling. That was when morphine had become his addiction...

Times like tonight, he recalled just how far he had come since those darker days. He had felt the war. He'd learned very quickly that feeling and remembering was dangerous. The morphine injections began innocent enough—an effective way to treat his shell shock—but they soon became an almost hourly addiction. Without them, his began to itch in his vein, to ache in his soul. She would return to torture him...the war would come back, not just in several broken pieces, but a whole haul at him to the point where he would crawl, scream and beg to die just to stop the horror of it.

As the Bentley raced down the winding lane, Jack pulled his brake lever tighter, knowing to tune out of his erratic state of mind. His heart was racing, and the rain had made the road slick. As much as he loved testing the limits of the car, travelling with Rose was too precious of a cargo to lose.

As lightening flashed across the black sky, he saw how she winced, her face drawing back from the window and she retreated into herself as though she was a victim of the lights.

''You hate the lights of the cameras?''

''Yes.''

''Why?''

Rose was stunned at the sudden change of demeanour, how the car had slowed to a hum. His hands gripped the wheel less.

''I-It reminds me of that night.''

''The fireworks?''

''No,'' Rose pressed her lips together. ''When I arrived in New York, the press was there. I was pushed into the crowds, unable to even move and the flashes were there; I couldn't stop them. It was for an hour, longer. Just constant. I shielded my face. But that was all I saw for months, years, even.''

''I had something similar. After the war, after I knew you lived...''

''Oh?''

''I had a bleak life – living from one dose to the next—but then it took over my entire existence. Before you, before the damned war, I was travelling. I had more ambition than I could have ever filled in my lifetimes. I had friends. I had a life.''

In a pause, Rose bowed her head. ''I had none of that. I never had anything really besides a grand education and several gentleman wishing to take my hand in marriage. It just turns out that I had no interest in either.''

''But you had ambitions. I recall how you wished to dance, to become an actress.''

''Yes, I did.'' Rose inhaled the close proximity of his scent. ''And, then what happened, with you I mean?''

''Then I met you, and none of what I had before was worth a damn. I had everything the second I laid eyes on you. I sensed your melancholia; I knew how you felt. We were kindred spirits. Two halves of a whole just plunged together.''

Beneath his watery gaze, Rose sensed his vulnerability now more than ever recalled. ''I never knew that.''

''No, you wouldn't. We never had chance to tell each other, did we?''

''It was cruel.''

''Then the war came, and I joined up like so many guys my age. Heading off to France was another page in my story. I was expecting an escape, not for the war to be so cruel. I saw men cut down in their prime. I killed hundreds. And I needed something to cope after...''

''I saw countless men that way. Shell shock hit them harshly. They were expected to leave such a battlefield with no troubles and return to daily life.''

''I never saw a soul. It was unspoken of. The tremors started and without morphine to drag me into a dreamless sleep it all came rushing back. I lived in a nightmare where the war never ended. Friends haunted me. I saw their deaths all over again, until I couldn't take anymore. I went looking for a cure and found it in neat, glass vials.''

Rose listened, holding her stomach. The need to retch right there in her own lap had taken a hold of her. His voice was unwavering, steady and yet, here was a man who had truly lived through hell, back and then again. Repeatedly. Unfairly.

''It isn't weakness to need that help, Jack.''

''I needed to feel the bite of that needle as it kissed my vein. I needed the escape. It took a hold of me, until one night. I wound up driving, searching in a storm very much like this one. I had no morphine. I was hallucinating. I saw you...you were all over. I held your body, and then you disappeared into No Man's land and were blown into a million pieces.''

''Jack-'' Rose swallowed a lump in her throat, failing to be able to speak after that.

''I was driving so erratically that I crashed into a field. I didn't navigate a corner in time and the car went over, two or three times. Thing was, I never remembered where I got the car. It wasn't mine. I didn't have a damned licence then.''

The rain hadn't let up. The wind twisted a few sparse trees overhead. A flash of lightening lit up the bleak sky and Jack came to a stop, pulling the lever of the brakes and the shudder of the Bentley ceased. Now, it was sudden darkness in the middle of a storm.

In the dim light, Rose was suddenly terrified to be pinned beneath a watery gaze. ''You could have died.'' It was a simple statement but another agonising reminder of a reason why he may not have been here. Why was he here? Fate...

Jack nodded, removing his leather gloves and discarding them in his lap. His warm hands were on her cold ones within seconds and she cherished their touch. It was the first act of intimacy which had transpired between them since leaving Rose's boarding house.

''I walked for miles. I was vomiting, bleeding...and luck was on my side, I saw a gate and went through. In my stupid mind, it was a doctor's house, stockpiled to the rafters with morphine. I tried breaking in, and he found me on the gravel out back after watching me try to navigate through the second gate. He was a doctor. But he never gave me morphine, he sat with me for three months while I got clean.''

''That must have been hard.'' How Rose wished to clutch onto his hand, to pull his body to hers and create some comfort for him but matters were far too late.

''There were days I screamed. I think I wet myself at times. Trauma made me kick him, and bite my tongue and I lashed. I kicked. He never strapped me to the bed though. He never thought of me of a desperate addict but just an intelligent, capable man, one who lost his way somehow in this dark world.''

Rose clasped onto his hand tighter. To imagine the man, she loved in such a way due to witnessing the core parts of the war made her want to cling to him and never let him go. What comfort could she bring now though?

''I stayed with him an extra month and then I left.'' Jack watched how a stray tear had come loose during his time talking. ''I write him a card every year for Christmas. He would never take money; he could never see how he saved me from myself.''

Rose hesitated. ''Do you feel the need to dose yourself up now?''

He nodded, just as slow. ''At least once a day the thought comes to my head. But I keep busy. I have to.''

''I guess, in a way, that's why I never stepped away from the play. I could never be alone too long in my own life. I had to be a character, I had to portray my own misery through them. It was better to live a life through another person than my own.''

''You're a beautiful actress.''

''So, they tell me. Perhaps, because I am so touched.'' Rose dipped her head. ''I was once so melancholy that I almost ended my own life. I know that misery and that hand when it claws at you, almost to death.''

There, was the infinity which they had found. Perhaps even bound them to the other for years. It simply wasn't the sinking of the Titanic, but the war, too. Neither were exorcised of their demons and within the eyes of the other, would only ever find the cause of the plaguing and not the sweet release which both would ever need in order to fully rest.

''At times, I thought it had taken me. I teetered on the edge of life and death so many times. Like I told you at the theatre, once I thought I had died until I heard your voice, in the hospital, it pulled me back from the beyond and I truly believe that's the reason why I had to live.''

''I wonder,'' she drawled ever so slowly, her voice laced with heavy contemplation, ''why we crossed paths out there? Just to not be able to see each other again until now? That's the cruelty of fate and I don't even know if I believe any of this has a purpose.''

''Isn't it luck?''

''Isn't your life a game of luck?'' Rose smiled slightly. ''I do believe I heard that once.''

Another flash came across the sky and it was then, both saw just that laid out before them was a gravelly beach, leading down to the rolling waves of the sea. Rose shuddered inside, how could she even begin this dangerous game? How could she stand by the ocean, with the man who she believed to have been claimed by it?

Raising her chin to meet the eyes of the ocean; she held her breathe as though waiting for some calling from beyond to cease her actions but instead of retreating inwards, she longed to reach out for the waves to caress her aching soul. Perhaps even soothe away the demons for good. Wasn't this where the pain had started all those year ago, in the arms of the ocean?

Deep inside her soul, Rose felt a fire begin there in the pits of her stomach and flare outwards like an electric buzz, coursing through her veins and accelerating her heart, her breathing and her entire being. Adrenaline...

She longed to go to the waves. With him.