Love Always Wins| ✓

33|° peace

SHE LEANS back, feeling the warmth of his chest radiating right through the thin fabric that is his sky blue shirt.

Why the hell can't he just get rid of the nuisance clothe? She finds herself thinking and she immediately steels herself by subtly leaning forward.

If Law notices, he doesn't say anything. He instead keeps up with the motion of rubbing her left arm up and down. She relaxes into him again, the earlier thoughts driven away from her mind by that gesture.

The said thoughts having been driven away leaves the more pragmatic thoughts to reign. She tries, unsuccessfully, to distract herself by watching the skies, the few birds that fly overhead and the grass that sprouts from the ground beneath them. Nothing holds her interest long enough to push her thoughts away and she can't help but sigh.

Right then, Law speaks, "What is it, Gemheart?"

She finds herself smiling despite herself, relaxing further into his hold and relishing in the feeling of his strength and firmness.  After a moment's thought, she starts to speak.

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"My dad died," she says. His breathing pauses as if captured in a firm grip and strangled into death, as he waits for her to continue. He continues to rub his hands down her arms though. "I was in class eight when it happened."

It sounds more like she's admitting this to herself than she is telling it to him. Nonetheless, he doesn't miss the way she breathes out, relaxing into his chest more and more as she continues and he concludes that she's taking off a boulder from her chest as she confides in him about this.

There isn't anything else that sets his heart alight with warmth as the fact that she trusts him enough to set her burdens aside so he can help with the weight. Therefore, heart and ears open, he speaks, "I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago and I thought that I'd have healed by now." She sighs, her right hand rising to rub her chest in the place where her heart beats. "But it's still a fresh wound. Very painful. I used to hide the things that hurt me the most, covering them up with mud and ashes until I could no longer see them. Whenever the pain reared its face, I'd mount up the ashes higher and on it went.

"When I got born again, I thought that life would become that much easier. That everything would just disappear into mist, forgotten. I thought I'd be living a new life. I was wrong in many ways but right in some."

Lawrence nods, even though it's her back turned to him. He understands what she's explaining. When he got born again, he continued to live a complacent life, afraid of the change. Afraid to step out. It wasn't until Ndavi came along and even then, his life hadn't gotten easier. It had gotten significantly harder, what with all the convictions, the digging up of past trauma and the healing.

Despite everything, if he had to go through it all over again, the only thing he'd want to change was the period of complacency that he'd lived because everything else, even the pain of healing, was all worth it.

"Life didn't get harder. It got more painful. I told God to come in and leave no stone unturned. He dealt with everything from the rape, to Nate, to my relationship with my sister and now my dad. It hasn't been easy, but this one thing..."

She trails off and Lawrence halts in his motions. She turns around, moving from her former position in order to face him. Her eyes — oh her eyes — carry an insurmountable amount of intensity, sincerity and... rawness.