— i give up —
April 11th, 1939
GISELLE'S MOTHER WAS in a car crash when she was seventeen.
She and her boyfriend at the time were coming back from a football game when a truck in front of them slammed on their brakes. Her boyfriend couldn't react fast enough and crashed into it.
Giselle's mother had told her that she was incredibly sore the day after, and had felt like she had been hit by a car and not the other way around.
That was the first thing to pop into Giselle's mind when she woke up the following day, because every cell in her body felt sore.
She didn't even have to try and recall why she felt this way. She remembered everything like it had played on repeat in her head the entire time she was asleep.
She tried to sit up, her head pounding and bones protesting as she did so. She didn't realize she was in a room until she rubbed her eyes and opened them, her gaze landing on a large mirror hanging on the wall opposite her, showing her in a large bed with a bandage wrapped around her neck, a beam of sunlight from the split in the curtains to her left illuminating the nasty bruise on her cheek.
Part of her recognized that she was in Will's bedroom, but she was so intrigued by her haggard appearance that she gave that fact little attention. She slowly slipped out of bed and painfully padded along the floorboards to the mirror, taking in her state.
She looked terrifying, with the left side of her face swollen and discolored and her hair in complete disarray. She looked over the rest of her body, noticing another bandage secured around her thigh. She was in the process of trying to remember whether the robber had cut her there or if she had injured herself in the woods when a soft, relieved voice floated across the room to her.
"Giselle." She looked in the reflection of the mirror, catching sight of Will standing in the doorway behind her in his white, sleeveless undershirt and pinstripe pajama pants.
She whirled around, so happy to see him that tears began to distort her view of him. He rushed to her before she could take a step forward, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to bed.
"I should've known you'd choose to wake up the minute I leave the room," he said lightheartedly, gently depositing her onto the bed.
She laughed, her tears rolling down her face. She reached up and slung her arms around him, pulling him down to her.
Will awkwardly fell over her, wrapping one arm around her waist as he kept his weight off of her with the other by her head.
"I didn't think I would see you again," she told him honestly. She felt him tense and pull back to look at her.
He looked stricken, his eyes intensely fixed upon hers as he brushed a tear from her cheek. "What happened to you, love? Who hurt you?" His words were soft, but she could hear the worried twinge to them.
"Can you hold me?" Giselle asked him. "I know it isn't proper, but—"
Will didn't wait for her to finish, kicking off his shoes and slipping into bed next to her. He pulled her to him like he'd done it a thousand times before, cradling her head against his chest as his arms wound completely around her torso.
Her sore body melted against him, any leftover fear and adrenaline vanishing from her completely. She felt safe, and she reveled in it.
"Take all the time you need, love," he ducked his head to say in her ear. "I'm here for you. You're safe with me." He spoke like it was a vow.
She looked up at him, meeting his warm gaze. "Someone broke into Hester's house," she started off, feeling him tense underneath her touch. "I came downstairs and a man attacked me. Pressed a knife to my throat. Told me he wouldn't hurt me if I told him where the valuables were," her words came out rushed and strained, but she didn't care. She wanted to get the story over with and continued on. He listened to her every word, his lips pressed into a thin line, his hand caressing her face.
He pressed her closer against him when she finished. "I hate this," he said after a long while. "I hate that I wasn't there to protect you."
She tilted her head up to get a better view of him. "You didn't need to be. I survived. I'm fine."
"No, you're not," he growled. "You're injured. You had to run for your life, Giselle. Nothing about this is fine. You can't . . ." He shook his head, looking off. "There's no way I'm going to be able to let you go back. Not in a world where I can't protect you. You have to stay here. I worry enough about you being away, but now my fears have been exacerbated." His eyes dropped back down to hers.
"It was a fluke thing," she told him, trying to soothe his worries. "I'll be okay. If you're that worried, I'll get Hester and Selene to install a security system."
He held her tighter. "Not good enough."
Giselle sighed, resting her cheek against his chest once more. "How long have I been here for?" she asked. "It was nighttime when I left. What time is it now?"
"Nearly 06:30, I assume. I found you right at sunrise."
"What were you doing out in the woods at sunrise?"
He remained silent for three beats of his heart against her cheek before finally speaking. "I go out and check the tree every morning while I wait for the kettle to heat. Thank God I do, or else you would've been left out there." He sighed, dropping a kiss to the crown of her head once. "It was terrifying to see you like that." Twice. "You looked so lifeless and hurt, and you didn't stir when I picked you up. I thought . . . " he let his breath die out, kissing her head a third time just for good measure. "I woke Marguerite and had her attend to your wounds. She theorized that you were unconscious from exhaustion and the travel back."
Giselle nodded. "That makes sense." Just the mention of exhaustion had her yawning, like her couple hours of sleep weren't good enough.
"You can go back to sleep if you'd like," Will told her.
She shook her head. "No, I should get up," she said, "and you should start getting ready for work."
Will scoffed, the arm curled around her waist shifting her nearer to him. "No. I'm staying with you until you have recovered."
Giselle heart almost felt put back together when he nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck after swiping away the hair that laid there. We should have been doing this for ages, Giselle thought to herself.
"Will, I'm fine, really. It's just a bruise and a couple of scratches. Not life-threatening at all."
"I don't care," she felt him say against her neck, her body tensing as his lips grazed her skin. "I'm staying with you. Now, go to sleep."
Giselle didn't know if it was the exhaustion that knocked her out or if it was the fact that she was so comfortable wrapped up in Will's arms, but she fell asleep in minutes.
When she woke up what felt like hours later, Will was still wrapped around her, his chest rising and falling slowly in slumber.
She watched him like a total creep, wishing she could wake up with him next to her everyday for the rest of her life.
But that would never be able to happen, a sobering thought hit her. Hard. Her smile shriveled up, withering away into a sad frown.
They shouldn't even be in this position. They had both agreed to move on. To try and stop loving each other.
Letting this happen was a mile-sized step back from their goal.
Giselle carefully unwound his arms from her body and rolled out of bed, somehow not waking him in the process. She padded across the floorboards to the door, her feet hurting more than anything. She ignored the pain, and paused to look over at Will one more time before she slipped on his large, navy-colored robe and exited the room.
She was on her way to the kitchen when she heard a feminine giggle cut through the air, followed by a throaty male chuckle.
She paused, inching closer to the voices, coming to a stop at the foyer where Marguerite and Lawrence stood, a medical bag in the doctor's hand.
Giselle took a minute to watch the two, the old black-and-white picture Ajay had found of them flashing across her mind.
Marguerite noticed her first, her smile dropping into a frown of concern as she rushed to Giselle.
"Heavens, Ellie! You look a fright! Are you feeling well?" she exclaimed, smoothing down Giselle's hair with her hands, as if to make her more presentable for company.
"I'm okay," Giselle answered, her eyes flickering to Lawrence. "Hi, Lawrence."
Lawrence nodded his head, a small smile on his lips. "Hello, Giselle."
"Oh," Marguerite said, "I called Lawrence to come check you over." She leaned closer, voice dropping. "Will's still asleep, right?"
Giselle nodded.
"Good!" Marguerite breathed out in relief, placing a hand to Giselle's back and pushing her to the opposite end of the house as Will's room. "You two can go to my room. I'll keep a look out for Will."
Giselle said nothing as Marguerite showed them to her room, setting Giselle down on the side of the bed. She left them shortly after, Lawrence awkwardly shifting on his feet next to the closed door as Giselle looked down at her hands in her lap.
"Um, I guess I'll get started, then," Lawrence said, setting his bag down on the bed next to Giselle before grabbing the chair at the vanity and dragging it to a stop in front of her.
He looked at the bruise first, poking and prodding at it before asking her questions about the pain, headaches, her breathing, and then moved on to her neck.
Giselle winced as he peeled back the bandage, his eyes examining her cut suspiciously. He looked back up to her. "This . . . this is a clean cut. Almost like someone took a knife to your flesh."
"I was attacked," Giselle revealed. "Someone broke in to my house back in—in London. They attacked me."
"Oh," Lawrence said in surprise. "Goodness, Giselle, are you alright? Why didn't you see a doctor back there, then? You could've had a concussion. You should not have traveled all this way."
"I know," Giselle murmured, "I just wanted to get away from everything and come here."
Lawrence sighed, getting to work on cleaning and redressing the cut. "Are there any other injuries?"
Giselle nodded. "My leg and my feet." She parted Will's robe to stick out her leg. The bandage at her thigh was spotted with blood.
"Was this a knife, too?" Lawrence asked as he began removing the dressing. Giselle's eyes went wide when she caught sight of the wound. It wasn't large or deep, but seeing her exposed tissue puckered and seeping blood made her feel nauseous.
Lawrence noticed, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Why don't you lie back?" He gently pushed her back on the bed. "I'm going to have to close this." She heard him shuffle around in the bag lying open next to her as dread pooled in her stomach. "Here," he held out a small pill for her to take. "This should relieve the pain. We can wait for it to start working before I begin sutures."
She took the pill, struggling to dry-swallow it, but she eventually got it down. "It won't hurt, will it?"
"I hate to inform you, but it will."
Giselle sighed, wishing Will was there to hold her hand while she went through it, but she knew he couldn't be. He wouldn't take kindly to Lawrence being in his house without his permission.
And he especially wouldn't take kindly to Giselle being alone with Lawrence again. He most certainly didn't like it last time.
Minutes of silence passed as Giselle stared up at the ceiling, the white plaster turning into a night sky as she was thrust back to the night of the party.
The garden. The kiss. The shove. Lawrence leaving. Her promising him she would meet up with him and never doing so.
"Lawrence, I'm sorry," Giselle ending up saying, "about how we left things that night. I didn't plan on leaving so abruptly, but I promise you there was a good reason behind it."
"Marguerite already told me," Lawrence said, wiping away some of the blood around her wound.
Giselle sat up, staring at him. "She did?"
He nodded. "Yes, she told me about your sudden illness that night, and about how you had to leave the next day to see your grandmother. How is she? Did she recover well from the fall?"
She stared at him for a bit in disbelief before nodding. "Yes, she's all better now."
"Good." He looked down suddenly. "And how long will you be staying?"
"Oh, I'm not sure."
"Well, I was hoping we could pick up where we left off," Lawrence mentioned, catching her eyes. "I enjoyed that night very much, Giselle, and I want to have many more nights just like it."
Giselle cringed at his words, trying not to let a frown form on her lips. "Actually," she started, "I don't think that would be a good idea."
"No?" he questioned.
"No. Its just that I'm not looking for a relationship right now."
"Because of Will?" Lawrence asked knowingly. He didn't seem angered or dejected, just curious.
"Um, kind of. How did you know?"
Lawrence laughed under his breath. "The way he acted towards me that night told me everything I needed to know."
Giselle laughed with him before a thought popped into her head. "You know, you could try to ask Marguerite out to dinner," she suggested.
Lawrence's cheeks tinted pink. "Marguerite? No, I couldn't." He shook his head, looking down to her leg. "Everyone knows that she is completely enamored with Jim Ludlow."
"She's not as 'enamored' as you might think," Giselle told him. "Just ask her out. She thinks you're a sweet guy, you know. She told me that herself, and something tells me that you two could be very a happy together."
A small smile graced Lawrence's face at the prospect. "I'll have to think about it," he ended up saying.
"Good," Giselle said. She laid back on the bed, her eyes beginning to feel droopy, the pain in her limbs beginning to ease away into a dull ache.
"I think the pill is working," she said. "I feel . . . light."
Lawrence chuckled. "Yes, it is definitely working, then." She felt his hand on her hand, his fingers brushing across her skin in a comforting gesture. "I'm going to begin sutures now. Stop me at any time if it hurts. I can give you another pill if you need it."
Giselle mumbled a simple 'okay ' as he began readying his needle to begin stitching her up. She could feel the pinch of the needle and the drag of the thread through her skin, but it was bearable.
She kept her eyes shut as she tried not to think of it, her mind coming to rest on the one thing she could never get out of her head: Will.
She thought back to only an hour earlier, when she had been wrapped up in his arms. It almost felt cruel for her to feel so content and safe in his arms when she knew that she couldn't be with him.
Maybe I could move on. Maybe I could find someone from my time like Will suggested . . .
Just thinking the words make her crinkle her nose in disgust. She knew deep down that that would never be the case. Will couldn't be erased from her heart. His name was like a tattoo across her cardiac muscle.
"Oh, I think Will is up," Lawrence said, and edge to his voice.
Giselle strained her ears, picking up on a muffled male voice. He sounded angry, and his voice began to drift close enough to the room for Lawrence to tense and Giselle's heart to speed up.
"—told you to get any other doctor except him!" his gruff voice sounded down the hallway.
"He's the only doctor available for house calls!" Marguerite's voice followed after him.
"I would've taken her all the way to the hospital in Frobisher myself if you would've told me that."
Lawrence was nearly finished with Giselle's sutures when Will threw open the door, nearly sending the thing flying off its hinges.
His glare settled on Lawrence almost immediately before his eyes softened and came to rest on Giselle.
Giselle tried to sit up, but decided against it when her head felt funny. She smiled at Will, unable to help herself. "Don't be angry," she pleaded.
His anger seemed to melt away at that, his shoulders sinking slightly. He took a look at her wound and then quickly went back to her face. "Are you in any pain?"
"No, not really. Lawrence have me a pill. I actually feel pretty happy." She gave him a broad smile.
Will scowled down at Lawrence's hands on her leg and then back up at Lawrence. "'Happy?'" he repeated, his dark voice contrasting the word.
"It's the medication I gave her," Lawrence said as he continued his work, seemingly unbothered by the death glare aimed at his head.
"Don't be angry," Giselle repeated again, patting the empty space by her head. "Come, sit."
Will immediately obliged, crossing the room to sit down where she had told him to. He leaned against the post of the bed, his arms crossed as he watched Lawrence continue to sew up her wound, occasionally glancing back her way.
"You're sure you're not in any pain?" Will asked.
"I feel it a little, but I'm okay," Giselle told him, a yawn slipping from her mouth. "I'm tired."
"That's a side effect of the medication," Lawrence said, finishing up the wound. "You can rest if you'd like."
Giselle nodded, her eyes slipping over to Will before she closed them, drifting off. She was pulled back when she heard Lawrence shoot his chair back and pick up her right foot to set on his knee.
He took in a sharp breath.
"What?" Will asked, shifting on the bed. "What is it?"
"There's a large splinter in her foot. It's a wonder she was able to walk around at all. It must've been very painful."
Will let out a displeased noise in the back of throat, his hand reaching over to grab hers. "Of course you'd go walking around on it," he mumbled to her.
Giselle felt the touch of cold metal touch her foot, the splitter being tugged out of her skin.
She yelped out in surprise, jerking her foot away from the man reflexively.
"Hey!" Will yelled towards Lawrence. "Be careful with her!" He looked down to Giselle, brushing a hand over her cheek. "Are you alright, love?" he asked, his voice so soft and gentle and so full of concern that it could've lulled her back to sleep.
Giselle opened her eyes, nodding up at him.
"Giselle, forgive me—"
"No, you're fine, Lawrence," Giselle assured him. "You were just doing your job."
"Not well, if you ask me," Will muttered.
Giselle have him a glare before turning back to Lawrence. "It didn't even hurt all that bad, just surprised me."
"Still," Will said, "he should be more careful."
Giselle didn't miss the warning glare he sent towards the doctor. She squeezed his hand, bringing his eyes back to her. "Be nice," she told him.
He sighed, some of his anger lessening as he looked down at her. He stayed quiet the rest of Lawrence's visit. Albeit, it was a brooding silence where he sent glare after glare in Lawrence's direction, but he never said a word.
Lawrence eventually got ready to leave, smiling at Giselle as he hovered at the door.
"I hope you feel better, and I think I just might follow through with your suggestion," he told her.
She smiled. "You better, I know it'll make you happy, and maybe even end with a wedding," she said, winking at him.
Lawrence laughed as he left the room, leaving Giselle alone with Will.
Will still sat on the bed, leaning against the bed post as he glared daggers at the doorway Lawrence had just exited through.
"He's too old for you," Will broke the silence by saying. "And he probably won't take your time-traveling well."
Giselle frowned, gingerly sitting up and turning toward him. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about you and Lawrence. What 'suggestion' was he talking about? And why will it end in marriage?" he practically growled.
Giselle didn't correct him, feeling her anger rising. "What? That's what you said, right? That I should move on? Why not move on with someone that wants me? He still wants me after not seeing or hearing from me for six months, which is more than I can say for you"
She heard the raw anger in her voice, but she didn't care. She was still aching from her heartbreak.
Will scowled at her. "It's not a matter of wanting you, Giselle. Believe me, I want you more than I've ever wanted anything! You know this is more than that. You need to be with someone from your own time. Not with me or Lawrence or anyone who is dead in the year 2019!"
"No, I need to be with the person I love!" Giselle shouted. "And that's you!" Her chest was heaving as she spoke, her heart so mad and angry that she couldn't stand to be in the same room with him anymore.
She stood up, feeling dizzy as she headed towards the door. Will was there to intercept her. "You don't need to be up," he told her. "I'll take you." He scooped her up in his arms, mindful of her injuries, and took her out of the room.
He brought her to their shared hallway, but surprised her by heading into his room rather than hers.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "Take me to my room."
Will set her down on the bed. "No," he said.
"Why?"
"Because."
"Because what?"
"Because, Giselle, I like the image of you in my bed," he said in exasperation.
Giselle could've growled she was so angry at him. "Why are you doing this, Will? Why are you pushing me away and then pulling me back by saying things like that?! What is it that you want? Do you want me or do you not want me?"
"Of course I want you! I just told you how much I want you! I just—ugh!" He turned away, punching a dent into his bedroom door in frustration. "Giselle, I don't know what the hell I should do," he said, still facing the door. "I feel selfish wanting to keep you here when I know you would thrive better in your time." He turned back to her. "I can't take all of that away from you."
"You wouldn't be," Giselle said, her voice softening as she pushed off the bed. "I'll still be able to go back."
"But what if you get stuck here like Selene? What if you aren't able to see your family ever again?"
"We don't even know if her being with your uncle was the reason she got stuck, Will," Giselle told him. She wedged herself between him and the door. "It might not happen to me."
"But what if you do end up stuck here, all because of me? I can't live peacefully knowing that I caused that."
"Selene can bring my parents like how I brought Ajay, and she can bring messages back and forth if they can't come through." She placed a hand on his heaving chest. "Do you love me, Will?"
Will sighed, the rest of his resolve crumbling. "Love, you make me want to write poetry about how much I adore you. Me. Write poetry." Giselle giggled. He set his hand over hers at his chest. "I can't ever get the thought of your face out of my head," he told her.
"Sometimes, when you've been gone too long, I go in your room and smell that bottle of perfume you always wear because you've reduced me to a besotted, lovesick fool that can't bare to be apart from you. And each time you leave, my chest hurts." He moved her hand over his heart. "It's been hurting for nearly three years, now, and it's all because you take my heart with you when you leave. Because it's all yours."
He slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer to him. "So, yes, I do love you. I love you a damn lot."
"I love you too, Will. I love you a damn lot as well," Giselle said, pressing her forehead to his. "And I want to be with you. I'll be happiest if I'm with you. Not Lawrence or anyone from my time, you. I. Want. You. We can make this work, I know we can."
Will looked at her, his eyes full of passion and love and longing. "You know what?" he said, all the fight fleeing from him. "I'm done. I give up," was all he said before he crashed his lips to hers.
• • • • • • • • • • •
Words: 4,323.
Question: Are you happy now?
Yep, they're together, y'all. Giselle finally broke our stubborn Will. Now begins all the mushy-gushy chapters!
PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT TO MAKE ME SMILE!!!