Saving Grace

Revelations

A-hoy...🫣

I'm sorry this took so long....🙂

Cliffhanger warnings apply....😬

Please don't cancel me....🥹

[P.S. I just realized that changed up the tense again. I'm sorry shippers. I'll do some extensive editing soon.]

XOXO...😘

******

A split second.

That's how long it takes for Max's brain to process what is happening and make a decision.

He has two options. He can pull away and risk embarrassing her, making things between them unimaginably awkward.

Or he can kiss her back and risk giving her the wrong impression. He isn't in this for a romantic relationship. He just wants to help her because she's a kind woman who happens to be carrying his child.

You can even call him selfish to a certain extent. He wants to be apart of his child's life even if the child (nor the mother) never know who he truly is in context.

He doesn't expect anything from Helen because the look in her eyes the few times he has caught her daydreaming gives him déjà vu. It reminds him of his own lifeless eyes when he looks in the mirror each morning.

She's lost someone.

Someone dear to her. He knows what that feels like. He knows the depth of that loneliness. The degree of that pain. And that's exactly why the possibility of a relationship between them has never crossed his conscious mind.

Sure, they had a moment when they first met. One may say it was a spark. There was a certain level of tension in the air between them and Max has to admit that he was confused at first. He doesn't understand what he was feeling at that moment and he can't recall ever having felt something so instant and electrifying before.

Nor had he ever experienced the guilt that consumed him after.

Their interruption was as a saving grace and when the magic of what ever had possessed him in that moment faded, he was hit hard with his reality. He didn't deserve to feel alive. To have hope. To feel that level of joy. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair to Georgia and little Luna.

That's why he disregarded all thoughts of a relationship, finding logical explanations for her prominent role in his family-based dreams. He didn't see her as a woman, only as a colleague and the unknowing mother of his last hope at fatherhood.

And yet, in this moment, his arms move, almost as if out of their own accord, and wrap around her waist.

A perfect fit.

He pulls her closer and she willingly complies, slipping off of her perch on the chair and settling (more like stumbling) on to his lap as he goes from kneeling to awkwardly sitting. Both chuckle at the clumsiness of the situation, their lips still pressed together.

Then finally, slowly, he closes his eyes giving himself fully into the moment.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, Georgia is a minuscule, distant thought. Instead, his mind is consumed by imaginary memories. Dreams he's woken up from all week of a beautiful, happy family of three.

Him, Helen and their bundle of joy.

Them at the park watching the little one play.

Him making them dinner as Helen helped their daughter with her homework.

Both smiling brightly up at her as he held a camera and recorded her dance moves at the school recital.

Suddenly all the logic flies out the window.