Her pain is his pain, too.
It takes up residence in the valleys between his ribs.
It tightens a vise around the aching column of his throat.
How completely he has loved her. How selfishly, recklessly, foolishly. So, when her expression collapses around the sharp edges of all that pain, he does not hesitate before he wedges himself into her space. He touches her gently – just as gently as he always has – and breathes warm across along the curve of her delicate shoulder. He kisses her there. He kisses her there and he remembers.
“Charity,” he murmurs. He murmurs it so sweetly and he revels in the way his mouth and tongue curl around the shape it takes. “My darling Charity,” he whispers, feverish as he lifts his head to study her face. With such great care, he tips up his chin to collect those tears on his lips.
“I will spend the rest of this lifetime and all of the next showing you how beautiful you are, if that’s what it takes.” He pulls back that greedy mouth to look her in the eye and there is a glint there, a glimmer of something in his gaze as he searches hers.
Cursed, she says, and it puts such a vicious ache in his chest that it hitches his breath. He swallows thickly and he shakes his head and his expression softens. “She looked like me,” he murmurs. Not exactly, of course, but she knows that this is the only distinction she is looking for. She had not been made of glass and paper, their daughter, she’d been made of flesh and bone.
