Mike & Karen Ch. 05

She hustled down the hallway, acutely aware of how warm her cheeks felt, and hoping she could make it to a washroom before anyone saw her.

***

"So you drew that picture of mom that's hanging on the wall in your room?" Alex asked, sitting on the couch next to his wife, his arm around her shoulder while she cuddled into him.

"Yup," Mike replied, caressing Karen's legs as she lay across him on the chesterfield across from Alex and Alexa. "Most inspired thing I ever worked on in my life."

"And Kar never got the chance to return the favour?" Alexa teased, winking at her sister.

"No," Mike said, shaking his head. "It wouldn't have been a portraiture in any event; she would have drawn ... other aspects of me."

"Draw or paint what you're truly passionate about," Karen added, shrugging, making Alexa giggle. "But yes, seeing that picture your father drew would complicate my life for some time to come, I must admit."

"Why?"

"Because it made me confront an obvious deep reverence he felt, and, even worse, made me look inward about my own feelings."

"Did you know at that point you'd fallen for him?" Alexa asked.

Karen shook her head. "Even subconsciously, I was nowhere near ready to admit that to myself, even if it was true, or just a losing battle. No, Michael and I dated other people for some time after that still, although we mysteriously found ourselves in one another's company quite often."

"I still think it's romantic." Alexa sighed.

"I think you're all nuts ..." Alex muttered, making them laugh.

***

They sat on the sward of grass that the campus centered around, watching as Alex charged up and down the field, playing (mostly) touch football with other students, while Alexa had thrown the ball with surprising strength and accuracy.

"Quite a pair, aren't they?" Karen mused as she watched the action. It looked like she was drinking coffee out of a plastic thermos cup, but it was really wine. One never knew when some student with too much time on their hands might get triggered.

"It'll be a great day when they don't have to hide it anymore," Mike agreed, sitting next to her and nodding. "Then their lives really begin."

"I'll miss them if they move out," Karen sighed wistfully, a touch of the forlorn in her tone. "I'll miss Alex so much, and I only just got Alli back."

"I don't think Alex is going anywhere," stated her husband, smiling as Alex leapt in the air and made a magnificent catch, reeling the ball in with his right hand. "He's very much a DeBourne, and we tend to stick close by to one another. I was the exception to the rule, because I was so different. And Alli'll happily go or stay with him, no doubt."

"I'm glad to hear that," Karen said, smiling warmly. "Although I still want another kid, just in case. I'm not ready for empty-nest syndrome, I will have you know."

"I'm not ready for you to have it either," Mike chuckled. "All the sex would probably kill me."

She giggled and batted his arm before turning to face him, her tawny-amber eyes warm with love. She saw no point in hiding her feelings for him from anyone, because as far as she was concerned, the world needed an example of what True Love was all about.

"My one true regret in life, DeBourne, is that I made you wait so long before I finally consented to marrying you. I should have let you bop me on the head with a club and carry me off to your cave in Kapuskasing the moment I laid eyes on you in that dumb pub."

He nodded and caressed her cheek with unreal gentleness, something hands so large would seem incapable of. Yet he had infinite capacity for tenderness with this woman, this goddess who made his life worth living. He couldn't imagine life without her, and heaven help reality if it ever tried to take her away from him.

"And my true regret in life, Gordon, is that I didn't express my feelings for you earlier," he said quietly, so that only she could hear him, while the noise and chaotic campus fell away around them. They might as well have been in the middle of a field a thousand leagues wide, for all the difference it made. Nothing existed for them, except one another. "It was fun, sort of not courting you, but falling for you all the same, but everything up to admitting how in love I was just seems like a waste of time."

"No moment I ever spent with you was wasted," she whispered, her heart beating in her chest and her throat feeling tight. "My only wasted moments were when I wasn't with you, or even thinking about you, because I cherish those moments too, Michael."

Blue eyes and amber eyes were lost in one another, an eternity of devotion and love displayed. Moments like this were perfection, never to be forgotten.

The great dragon and the girl-goddess would never part.

***

Author's Notes: Mike and Karen in the past may keep desperately dancing around their decidedly inconvenient feelings for one another, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to everyone else that they're a destined pair. Of course, we already knew this, but I'm hoping that their uncertainties still come across through the narrative.

I've been holding on to the "dragon and goddess" analogy for a while now, and figured this was as good a place as any to use it. The storytelling about their past is getting more organic, meaning that it's not always set up by Karen announcing 'Story time!' and Alex and Alex pulling up chairs to find out how Mike and Karen got together. By now, it should be obvious that's what's happening, right?

Not a lot to explain about this chapter, so I guess I'll just announce that Twin Cities Tryst chapter 6 is up next, followed by Sapphic Serenity. Once TCT is completed, I'm submitting another story that I hope people will find exciting.

That's all for now. Hope summer's approach is treating you all well.

Keep your stick on the ice!

Management