Chapter Text
~3~
Charleston
Spring simmers into Summer's steam, and the blue skies of the historical city wrap themselves around Gwen, dot her skin in a healthy, shimmering shine.
The air is thick with the sweet, heavy fragrance of flowers, plentiful splashes of color fluttering in the drifting oceanic breeze. Tourists (so many tourists) laugh, ooh, aah, wander aimlessly through the downtown streets, point, exclaim over the horses clomping over the cobblestone, the carriages following them in a slow, inevitable chase of will and wheels.
Gwen lifts her hair from her perspiration-sticky neck, feels it slide through her fingers like silk, takes a deep breath, forces a smile when she spots Rosalie just inside the restaurant, looking fresh, fantastic, free. Her feet and her brain are still waging an internal battle when she feels the soft, hesitant touch at her elbow, and just for a minute, a sharp, breath-catching minute, she thinks it is him (Luis), but the eyes are all wrong, a kaleidoscope of morphing browns and greens, light, luminous, laughing. "I'm sorry. I…I'm sorry," she repeats herself, biting her lip when she realizes her shameful bout of indecision has been witnessed.
"I can't speak impartially about the company," the man with the laughing eyes offers up, his smile making it all the way to his lips, "but the air conditioning sure feels nice, and the food..." He breaks off, grins down at her, a teasing glint shining bright and bold. "Do you like seafood, Ms. Hotchkiss?"
Gwen's eyes widen, her hand lifts to her mouth, and she shakes her head in disbelief. "Oh…my…God," she breathes out (she's distantly aware they're making a scene, but…). "Jamie?"
"You and Rosalie are the only two people I've allowed to call me that, ever," Jamie's own smile widens impossibly further, all gleaming white teeth and charming dimples, and he straightens underneath Gwen's avid stare. "Most people call me James now. Much more distinguished, befitting of the strapping young man I turned into," he divulges as a boyish wave of dark hair falls across his forehead.
Gwen laughs, her mouth melting into a captivating smile with the glimpse into a happier past, and the open admiration staring back at her (there'd been a crush, but there'd also been Ethan and a couple of years and a friend/sister between them…insurmountable to a girl hovering on the cusp of adulthood and a destiny dreamed up for her by others). Guiltily, she admits to him, "You caught me. I was planning my escape."
Jamie's eyes twinkle back at her, and he holds out his arm. "I won't tell if you don't."
Gwen takes his arm, lets him lead her inside.
~*~
Irresistibly, Gwen is drawn into Jamie's world, a world of old money, genteel manners, history only hinted at in the various museums he drags her to on her days off (it's low stress, her new job, low responsibility…she buries her ambitions, buys into the foolish notion that it will be enough, it will…he won't come, she won't be drawn into his dangerous game again). She shops with Rosalie on King Street, lets Jamie steal kisses from her lips against the columns of the old antebellum homes on the tours she makes him take, falls in love with the low rise cityscape, the churches dotting its horizon in every direction she looks.
"Gwen," Rosalie giggles, all green eyes and girlish gossip over lunch. "I never took you for the tall, dark, and handsome type."
"I'm not," Gwen tells her, semi-truthfully, because the words feel wrong on her tongue, false, and she's sure Jamie had something to do with that. Not someone else. Not him (Luis). "I wasn't," she amends softly, a second later, when Rosalie looks affronted on her brother's behalf, and she doesn't want the other woman to get the wrong idea. Jamie's good for her. Jamie's light where she's darkness, and it's a change she desperately wants, needs. "I guess some things change."
"I guess they do," Rosalie agrees, her attention shifting to their waiter, and the rich, fruity wine promised in his hands. "Good," she says, one blissful sip later, and her eyes are dancing, her auburn hair gleaming in the bright summer sun. "Ethan was always such a stick in the mud anyway," she drawls, soft and wicked-sweet.
Gwen's lips twitch, and her smile spills, helplessly, free, "Rosalie."
Rosalie is unrepentant. "I've always wanted a sister."
Gwen falls in love with the city, wishes she could (allow herself to) fall in love (it would be so easy, so easy) with the man.
~*~
Lying beside Jamie at night, the sheets too heavy against her sticky, sensitive skin (and, thus, pushed to the foot of the bed), the fan slowly turning overhead as the humidity of the day culminates in lightning crackling across the midnight sky, Gwen dreams.
She dreams of babies, laughing babies, crying babies, babies she'll never have. She dreams of Sheridan, beautiful, tragic, disappearing into a foggy mist, her dress clinging to her with sea water, her face wet with tears. She dreams of him, the bitter slash of his mouth, the deep, pain-ridden eyes, the barely restrained violence of his tortured touch.
Gwen wakes, her arms empty, the ache between her legs unbearable, the breath quick and jerky in her lungs.
"Hey," Jamie slides a heavy palm between her breasts, bunching up the clingy silk of her camisole, slips a knee between her restless limbs. "Bad dream?" he murmurs against her throat, the slight prickle of his stubble making her shiver in the cloying air that feels like too much, is suddenly too much.
Gwen's hand, thankfully, is steadier than the thin wobble of her voice as she soothes him back to sleep with soft affection, and she presses her mouth to his furrowed forehead, whispers his worries away. "Shh. It was nothing. T'is okay," she lies, and it's easier under the cover of darkness, easier than it should be, easier than the good man lying beside her deserves.
Jamie's hand settles low on her waist, and his nose finds the curve of neck, makes itself at home there.
Sleep eventually claims Gwen, but not the peace of rest.
~*~
They marry, Theresa and Ethan. Gwen reads about in the newspaper.
"You were always too good for that dolt," Rosalie promises her, snatches the newspaper out of her hand, promptly wads it up and throws it away (it finds its way to Captain Jack's cage, and Gwen discovers a new affinity for her friend's obnoxiously bawdy parakeet as Theresa's beaming face gradually disappears under the animal's excrement).
Jamie makes partner in his uncle's firm, and one evening, strolling hand in hand along the promenade (echoes of the July fireworks still ringing in their ears) amidst a tight little circle of rediscovered friends and well-meaning family, he pulls her aside, grins at her, his greenish-brown eyes shining, hopeful. He leans into her before she can say anything, kisses the bridge of her nose, retreats. "This is good, you and me."
Gwen doesn't know what to say, can't bring herself to utter the lie on the tip of her tongue, so she smiles, tight-lipped, and nods, squeezing his fingers tight within her own.
"What would you say if I wanted to make it permanent?" he asks, boyishly endearing, kind and wonderful, so…young.
"Jamie," Gwen finds her voice, strains with the effort to keep it even.
"I know you've been hurt in the past," Jamie stubbornly butts in. "But I'm not him, Gwen. Your heart is safe with me," he insists, a promise she knows he cannot possibly keep falling from his joyful mouth. "Say you'll think about it. Give me the chance to convince you this can work, that we can really be something."
They're pretty pleas, heartfelt, and Gwen doesn't want to disappoint him, but it's easier this way, better for him, in the long run, and she steels herself to the hurt in his eyes, in every angle of his smooth, unlined, dear face. "I don't have a heart anymore to keep safe, Jamie. I think it's time…"
"No," Jamie cuts in, and Rosalie glances back at her brother, catches Gwen's eyes. "I refuse to believe that."
"It's true," Gwen persists flatly, pulling her hands from his grasp, smoothing them over the skirt of her whimsical, filmy dress (she feels like an imposter in her own clothes, ill-concealed beneath her own skin). "We are good, Jamie, but we're going nowhere. I can't put on your ring and pretend that I think we'll last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Especially not love." She stubbornly pulls her chin from his gentle hands when he cups it, turns it toward him, and her tears sparkle in the low lights of the city, easing into a well-earned slumber after a day of revelry.
"Gwen," Jamie's melodic voice is soft, and behind his stubborn assertions, strained with the beginnings of reluctant resignation (here comes goodbye). "I shouldn't…I pushed. Too hard, too soon."
"This is not your fault. The way that I am," Gwen trails off, captures his hand, presses a lingering kiss to his knuckles. Nodding ahead at his family, his cousins, Rosalie lagging back in concern, she directs him to rejoin them. "They're waiting. Say goodbye for me?" Lifting herself up on her toes, she brushes her lips against his smooth, damp cheek, stifles a building sob (if wishes were horses…).
Jamie goes; he doesn't look back.
The heart Gwen doesn't have breaks a little bit more inside its bony armor.
~*~
Gwen leaves Charleston during a thunderstorm, its beautiful violence tame compared to the war of her tangled emotions as she stows away her meager luggage (every time, she leaves a little bit more of herself behind) inside the Palmetto.
Times Square looms large outside her cab window, people milling about, everybody going somewhere.
Gwen pays her driver, clutches her suitcase, steps outside. Within minutes, she's swallowed by the crowd, engulfed in the chaos, carried in undulating wave to a future unwritten.
She's looking forward to the heady distractions New York offers in the Fall.