Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

Then there was a footstep in the doorway, and she was looking up as all the albums spilled out of her lap like cards in a fallen deck.

“I’m so sorry, Mary Catherine,” Mike said. “I wanted to be there for—”

But she was in his arms by then, the stress of the last weeks breaking like a dam, and she was bawling, unable to talk, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but hold him.

This man who she’d never stop loving, impossibly there for her now at the precise moment she needed him. Like a miracle come across the ocean for her at her time of greatest need.

He sang along with Buck Owens as he took her hand and they began to sway.

“Nothing else matters,” Mike whispered in her ear.

“We’re together again.”