Sinnerman

Chapter 47 Finality & Sensibility

Weeks went by. She hasn't kept an exact count. But the very mere fact that it was Xmas next week, made her know in the back of her heart that it had been coming onto three and a bit weeks that Kylo had been gone.

Nearly a month.

She'd stopped trying to hope he was coming back. Maybe there's a glimmer of glittering hope- but it grows fainter and quieter with each passing day.

That he'd walk in the shop. Just like that. Turn up on her doorstep late one night. Stood there like the dark vision he was. She finds herself watching over her shoulders.

Walking down the street heart pumping pulsing pain when she thinks she catches sight of him out the corner of her eye. She goes to grab his hand. Shes caught stuck on the long swirls of black hair on strangers that look like his. Doleful black eyes that turned into pools of honey-lemon blaze in the sunshine. That big big body she won't ever find elsewhere on another man. The calculative striding gait. None of its him. It's no use. It's never him.

She even catches so much as a glimpse of all black sleeve tattoos or rakish black hair, and she just launches into gut wrenching despair.

She laments the sad fact that she didn't even get to say goodbye to him. What they had just died a swift silent death with one blow. No fight for it. He left her vulnerable without so much as being able to get a word in sideways on the matter. That stung it's venomous barb deep.

Clearly she's morose tonight. Recounting everything. Mind set to wander over well trod ground.

Maybe it was the xmas tree that's doing it. The one in front of her in the shop she's decorating. She keeps on harping back to the thought of what she and him should've been doing that night. Xmas tree shopping for his house. And instead? - they split up. Well. He split. She was just left there. Unconscious. In agony and uncertainty.

The sentence that always got her right in the gut like a poison tipped arrow;

"I left so she'd be protected."

It's cruel how that mocks her now. Makes a fool out of her and her heart. She's wasted away a little every day of not seeing him. She doesn't feel protected or comforted by that.

Maybe it had gotten too much? Maybe he saw this as his way out and he took it. She thought they'd been strolling well into happiness together. Maybe the sociopathic mask he wore had her tricked. Bewitched. It wouldn't be the first time-

She liked to think she knew the real him better than that. The stoic enigma that made him up. Maybe she didn't know a thing about him at all.

She returns to her task. Offsetting the pain. She's kneeling on the thick carpet in the recess of her shop front window. In front of a real Christmas tree that's brimming with decorations. Handmade. Ones from home. One's kids who came into the shop made her.

Smell of mossy fir tree cloys the air. Along with the pinching snap of cinnamon and sweet crushing crunch of apple from the scented candles she burns on the desk in a fluted hurricane vase. Holly leaf wreath ringing outside the bottom of the glass. Warm light from the fire and the golden-glow of antique lights softly glimmer off the pointed tiles. Every polished table blazes a little orange amber because of the log fire that keeps the chilly place toasty and inviting.

She's toed off her boots. The gown wooly lined laced things are just on the tiled floor besides her. She's dressed for the spike of cold that stabs in the air now. Black wooly tights fuzzy thick on her legs. With a beige black-red-check herringbone pleated skirt and a big cable knit red jumper chunky on her arms. Sleeves pushed to her elbows as she awkwardly crammed herself between the display tree and the silver-smeared foggy window.