Chapter 8 "I shouldn't be here."
Meg lay for a while, listening to the long slow breaths from Cas sleeping next to her.
Sitting up carefully she watched him for a while.
In sleep he was truly at peace.
All the tension had fallen from his face but the tiny faint line between his eyes was still there though, testimony to how much time he spent with his brow knit.
His lips were slightly parted and she had the overwhelming urge to run her fingers over them.
Instead, she swung her legs off the bed slowly, carefully, so as not to wake him, snatched up a t-shirt from the floor, not hers but she pulled it on anyway, and padded out of the bedroom.
She stood for a while, soaking in the atmosphere.
The room was small, a half kitchen in one corner, the walls covered in book shelves, a tiny TV.
Passing the sofa, she found her underwear and stepped into them before going to examine some of the books.
It seemed to be that he preferred no particular genre.
Kids books sat with horror next to self help and animal care. Medical text books, celebrity biographies, crime and thriller, even romance. These were the books of a man making up for lost time, from A.A Milne to Stephen King and everything in between.
For some reason this made her unbearably sad.
The thought of someone trying to stuff nearly 30 years of experience into a few hundred books, trying to live vicariously through these words and seemingly happy to do so. Eager, almost, to shun anything but work, unable to relate to most people.
People who had grown up in loving families, with friends, a sense of worth.
This neat little apartment was his place of safety.
And she'd invaded it.
Finding her jacket, Meg fished around in the pockets for her cigarettes, then grabbed a blanket off the sofa and went over to the window.
Outside was the fire escape, and as he was on the top floor of the building, he'd put a few pot plants out there.
Furtively, she opened the window and stepped outside into the frigid, early winter air.
She didn't care.
Let the cold consume her.
Numb her bones.
Cold concentrated the heat to the core of her and nothing else mattered.
She lit her cigarette with shaking hands and blew smoke away with a trembling mouth.
Wrapping the blanket tight around her, she sank to the floor and quietly began to sob.
Something about this place, about Cas, it made her feel tainted.
Marked by the past.
The mistakes, the wrong roads she'd taken, the wrong people trusted.
Here was this man who'd been through so much, who'd quietly fought for this simple life, and here she was…..
The girl from a nice family who went off the rails a little, and then a lot, and then dropped out of life all together.
How could she stay?
Cas obviously needed someone like his wife.
Needed the simple clean love she'd provided him with, and Meg couldn't do that.
I should go….
She turned the thought over in her head.
Why pretend this was anything more than any other one night stand?
Was this anything she hadn't done countless times before?
Go inside, grab your clothes, leave.
Sniffing, she wiped her nose on the inside of her wrist then smashed the hardly smoked cigarette into nothing against the metal rail.
She hadn't done this before though.
No matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise.
When he'd kissed her that first time, it was like her heart stopped, everything in her body had contracted and then swelled at that most simple of touches.
When it came down to it, she didn't want to leave.
She wanted to stay, with him. Wanted to crawl back into bed and forget anything that had happened before that kiss.
Wanted to curl herself around him, protect him from the world, even while he was protecting her.
"Meg?"
He was stood at the open window, arms wrapped around his bare chest, watching her warily.
She turned back towards the street and lit another cigarette.
"Meg, come inside. It's freezing."
"I'm smoking."
"You can smoke inside. I don't mind."
She shook her head violently and stifled a sob.
"No. No I can't. I'll stink the place up."
There was silence, then the sound of Cas stepping out onto the fire escape.
She glanced at him quickly, her lips pursed together to stop them trembling.
He wore only shorts, goose bumps covering the rest of his body, his feet bone white with cold.
"Come inside." He said gently, taking the cigarette from her shaking hands.
"No." She whispered, but let him take it from her, let him hold her hand.
"Please."
He stepped back through the window, helped her climb back inside, closed it and then, taking the blanket, wrapped it around the both of them, pulling her close to him, trying to warm her body with his.
Together they sat on the sofa, Cas rubbing her arms vigorously through the fabric.
"I shouldn't be here." She said quietly.
"Don't you want to be?"
Meg looked up and him and laughed, a hollow sound as far removed from mirth as possible.
"Shouldn't and want aren't the same thing."
He smiled a little and kissed the top of her head. "I think you make life too complicated."
"I think you don't realise how complicated it is." She retorted.
He recoiled a little, his smile slipping, and in that instant she would have given anything to take that back.
"Are you saying you don't want to be with me? Am I just another guy?"
"No….. Jesus…. I don't know!"
Cas gripped her by the shoulders and made her face him.
"Meg… Look at me Meg…. Just take a second, breath and think. It doesn't matter what I want, or what you think I want, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or say's, it doesn't matter about anything that's happened before right now…. Tell me what you want."
She shook violently, wasn't sure it was just from the cold that had crept in without her realising it.
Something about his gaze made her honest, defied her to tell him anything that wasn't true to her heart.
"Cas….. I want you. I want you. I want to stay here with you and I'm so afraid that I'll fuck it up… I…"
But he was kissing her, smothering her words with his mouth.
"Then stay. Nothing else matters." He whispered between kisses. "Stay with me."
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