Wow. 100 chapters. It amazes me.
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Knives shifted in his seat a bit, the hard chair uncomfortable after so long. It was nearly painful to sit here, but not because of the furniture. Having to sit and watch Anne, having her be so close and yet still not know that he was here was more torture than any mere physical pain. He wanted to rush up there and pull her off into somewhere private, somewhere safe, and tell her what he had learned, make her realize that he wanted her.
Her songs she sang were pretty, in their own way. Full of pain and heartache, saying that life is unfair but still goes on, he wondered if the fact that their message pained him was an accident. It was hubris to think so, to think that she would devote her life, her hobby to singing about him, but he wondered.
Sure, they sounded as if they had practiced these songs. Indeed, they must have begun singing them long before he ever had the chance to leave the ship and chase after Anne. But had she foreseen that a day like this one would come? A day where she could sing these practiced songs like barbs to pierce his soul?
Perhaps she had planned for him to stop loving her. Perhaps this was all her fault, that she was so ready to accept that his affection might have waned that anything he could have done while she was gone would be enough for her to leave him. Ace might have been just a pretense, a handy excuse to leave.
He leaned back in his chair and pondered the possibility while he watched her. There was no denying that she looked lovely up there. Truth be told, he had been a bit dismayed to see that she had put on a bit of weight in the past few years. The high cheekbones that his fingers had ached to trace were covered under a thin layer of fat. The shoulders that had been sleekly muscled were now slightly rounded, and he had wondered why she had let herself go so far. But seeing her now, what had bothered him before was shadowed by how well she filled out that dress.
She would not have looked good in it a few years ago. Instead of filling out the bodice, it would have lain much more limply against her chest. Instead of the soft draping around her hips it would have hung straight to the floor. Instead of looking like a woman she would have seemed a girl playing in her mother's clothes.
No, she looked like a woman now, and seeing her like this he wondered how he could have ever preferred her skinnier. His hands ached to trace the new curves of her body, to see how what he had adored before had blossomed into the vision before him.
A quick glance about the room and he saw other men noticing her beauty. A stab of jealousy tore through his heart, and his hands clenched into fists. Forcibly he relaxed them, pushed away the desire to throttle anyone who looked at his woman like that. Drooling fools, the lot of them. Eyes narrowed, he searched them for any clue that they might be harboring some ambition to get to know her better, then shrugged and purposefully eased the tension from his back. Anne would not have any of them. Boys, mere children, the lot of them, wishing after something that they could never have.
His gaze was then drawn to Mark. Reluctantly, he concluded that if any man here was his rival, it was this human. The desire to throttle this enemy lingered in his fingertips, but he forced it away. Her friend. The one she ran to when she ran away from home. The man who had been here, with her, for all the years that he couldn't be. He knew that the man liked Anne. And that she liked him in return.
But did she like him enough to fall into his arms? His bed? To turn away from him and to this crawling worm of a human? He stared at the back of Mark's head and imagined it exploding with the heat of his ire. Who had ever told this man that he could be permitted such liberties with someone so far above his station? Mark kept darting glances Anne's way, and it sickened him.
He turned his attention away from the worm and back to Anne. She had paused in her singing to take a few swallows of water, and then she spoke.
"Thank you for being such a wonderful audience," she began. "As always, we're going to finish up with the song we started with, the song that made us as a band. It's an old tune, but so are all the ones we play. Age doesn't diminish the sentiment or the melody, and time just shows us that both love and loss are eternal. To all of us who wait for someone who isn't here, for a loved one who has turned to the arms of another, this song is for you." She smiled wryly, and more softly added, "And me." Then she began to sing.
The other night dear, as I lay sleeping,
I dreamed I held you in my arms,
But when I woke, dear, I was mistaken,
And I hung my head and I cried.
I'll always love you and make you happy
If you will only say the same,
But if you leave me and love another,
You'll regret it all someday.
You told me once dear, you really loved me,
And no one could come between,
But now you've left me to love another,
You have shattered all of my dreams.
In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me,
When I awake my poor heart aches
So won't you come back and make me happy
I'll forgive, dear, I'll take all the blame.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,
You make me happy when skies are gray,
You'll never know, dear, how much I love you,
Please don't take my sunshine away.
Then they band stood, bowed to a scattering of applause and some whistling from Alex, and left the stage. Knives was left to wonder if that last song was meant for him, and if it was, just what he was supposed to do now.