Hello Stranger

Love for the woman just gone.

The incredible woman just gone.

Love for the man in my arms.

Love for this beautiful world of theirs I’d been lucky enough to be a small part of.

Logan calmed after a few frantic minutes, struggling to compose himself. He forced down his chokes and stilled his breaths, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Thank you.”

I managed a smile.

“I will never need thanks. Ever.”

He took a while before he called the end of life team, still holding her hand when I let the doctor in downstairs and led her up. I watched as she checked Jackie’s pulse, and did the final examination, and it felt so surreal, even though I’d been working with people at the end of their life for weeks now.

It was nothing like watching them sign away Jackie Hall.

The funeral director appeared when the doctor had left, and we moved along into Logan’s bedroom as they took her away. The house felt so different without her there. Silent and empty.

I held him close, pulling him to me on the bed, both of us lost in our heads but connected in body.

Jackie was gone.

She was really gone.

It was long past lunchtime by the time I ventured downstairs to get some food for us. Logan drank a glass of water, but barely touched his plate, managing only a couple of bites at the sandwich before he retched and gave up. I barely managed any myself either, hardly a surprise.

I abandoned the practical crap then, giving myself up to the loss as the outside world carried on turning. There was birdsong outside the window, and rumbles of cars along the street, but we didn’t move, just stayed holding each other in silence. Minutes ticking and ticking, and turning into hours,

We were there for hours.

He stirred at my side when the afternoon was long fading. I ran my fingers across his cheek, tracks deeply reddened by tears. I looked him in the eyes, desperate to feel him, and I could feel it there in him, too. That desperation to be felt. To be touched. To feel heart-beating flesh on flesh.

It felt so natural when his lips pressed to mine. It felt so natural when I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed him back. Slowly at first. Softly.

But it changed.

Over long, slow minutes, it changed.

The primal call inside was life staking its claim. That urge for shared breaths, and touch, and warmth. That urge for closeness that swallows you whole.

I’d never felt anything like it. I’d never felt the passion in the pain, or the call of the heart through the grief.

Logan’s hands were fierce but loving. His rawness was fire.

I wrapped my legs around his waist, body calling. His body answered, pulling me from my clothes as I pulled him out of his. But this wasn’t about sex. This wasn’t about pleasure, or lust. This was about two bodies connecting and wanting to feel alive. This was about bonding beyond reason. Beyond logic. Beyond anything I’d ever imagined.

He was strong and sure as he pushed inside me, and I wanted that. I wanted the force. I wanted the life.

His hands held mine up high, and his eyes were pleading with me and eating me up at the same time. All I had to do was dive in.

“Take me,’ I said and I surrendered to those eyes, took Logan Hall into me as I fell into him. And I was there in the depths. This time I understood them, plunging deep, losing my breath.

I felt it all.

Saw it all.

And in that moment, I knew every part of him as though it was me.

I knew his love, and his pain, and his fear.

I knew the tiny child in him alongside the beautiful man, with his strength, his steel, his fight.

I didn’t come close to an orgasm. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anything other than his flesh on mine, rhythm pounding, breaths meeting breaths as he consumed me and I consumed him right back.

He collapsed onto me when his body gave up, his face pressed to my neck as his mind came tumbling back to him. I felt that too.

Oh fuck, how I felt that too as his arm reached around me.

The exposed soul that had just devoured mine was breathing hard and thinking hard.

I felt the tension in him. Knew it wasn’t just the cogs of his mind that I could hear.

It was the shutters coming down.44LoganLying there with the divine creature that had stolen my heart, I wished I could be the man that gave hers what it deserved.

I couldn’t.

I could never be that man.

The pain of losing Mum was razor sharp, slicing me in two, and it was there in Chloe, too. It was there in her eyes, shining raw along with love. Love for me.

The sacrifice of loving a man like me was more than she should ever know.