Rita's Point Of View
I stayed completely quiet, my lips tingling, my chest heaving as I tried to find my voice. The words were there, sitting right at the back of my throat, heavy and sweet, but the old fear… the twenty-five years of silence, the ghost of the past, the protectiveness over my daughter's boundaries, kept them locked behind my teeth. I couldn't say it back. Not yet. The weight was too immense, the implications too vast.
What if saying it out loud made it too real? What if I lost him the way I'd lost everything else I'd ever loved? The fear was irrational, I knew, but it held me captive nonetheless.
Charles watched my silence, his eyes scanning my quiet face, searching for something, but instead of anger or disappointment, a slow, incredibly tender smile broke through the tension on his lips. The understanding in that smile nearly undid me, threatening to crack the careful control I'd maintained.
