Thorned Beauty

22. A Surprise For You

“Okay, keep your eyes shut until I tell you to,” Adam told Belle, and she nodded.

 

Pushing open the great double doors, he took her hands and led her inside the great room. Pulling her to the center of the room, he moved to the side in wait of the reaction soon to be clear on her face, “Okay, go.”

 

Adam watched as her eyes slowly opened, then widened, taking in the room around her. The spiral staircase, the roaring fireplace, the plush rugs and comfortable chairs and the books. All the books.

Shelves upon shelves of books, floor to ceiling with ladders reaching to the highest points with the ability to slide across the room, attached to the wall. Books on tables, books every where on any topic one could think of.

 

“For you,” Adam smiled shyly as her attention moved to him.

 

“What?” She questioned, unsure of what he meant.

 

“For you, this can be your’s, I’m not much of a reader and you said you loved them. So, for you,” Adam stated, shrugging his shoulder, “Go ahead, look around.”

 

She turned away from him, possibly in shock, he didn’t know and he was afraid she didn’t like it, until she moved towards a bookcase, running her fingers down the smooth spines in such a loving manner that Adam wondered if he would ever be able to part her from this room.

 

Moving to one of the chairs by the fire that he had told Mrs. P to start up when the pair had reentered the house, he tossed another piece of wood in and sunk down in the chair, watching as Belle wandered along in her own little Wonderland.

 

After Belle had found Adam during his minor panic attack the two had picked their way back through the garden back to the house where they had shed their coats and removed their boots, accepting mugs of hot chocolate from Mrs. P in the kitchen and sat warming up for a while, sitting in silence until the mugs were empty. The whole while Adam had watched her every move, old habits dying hard, it had been a bit unnerving to Belle but she figured he either did not know what was wrong with staring unwaveringly at a person or he did not realize he was doing.

 

Belle had found him unreasonably clingy since she found him in the garden, he had looked truly terrified to think that she had left him, but as the young woman wandered among the rows and rows of books she wondered if that related back to what Mrs. P had said “ I’m Adam has left in the world. With you here he has someone else, someone to love.”

 

His behavior would be explained by that, she thought, if he was so afraid to lose her, even for the fifteen minute she was out of his sight, she knew he must have some psychological problems that explained his extreme obsession and protection. She still did not condone or even think in her mind that what he had done to her was okay, but now she at least understood. He had lost everything he could when he was young and had been mentally scarred, not understanding that it was no acceptable on any level to kidnap a person, not understanding that slow and steady would have gotten her. That if he had simply asked her on a date he might have eventually gotten to where he wanted to be with her.

 

But none of this had ever computed in his mind, Belle doubted it ever will. Looking back at him from deep in the library, she found his eyes locked on her from a chair at the fire place and she wondered, if it had not been her he had seen, would he still have done what he did? Would he still have kidnapped a woman out of sheer need to be around humanity but in a small setting.

 

Belle was convinced that he was frightened of the world, at how horrid it could be, and as he slowly raised a hand and waved at her, she could see a shadow of a little boy who had lost too much and know too much pain.

 

Hesitantly, she waved back, unsure if his recent kindness towards her was a ploy, or if he was truly being a compassionate person.

Deep down inside her she wondered if he really loved her as much as he believed so. She wondered if he would ever get his wish too.