HELLO THERE!! Welcome to another chapter. My, but isn't it great to have Shawn back. Poor Church has been beside himself. It seems Shawn didn't have much to contend with except boredom. Good for him. Let's check in with the guys and see how the rest of their reunion goes.
NOTE: I've actually had second thoughts on the rewrite. What I might do is just tell more stories from different periods in the Church and Shawn saga. Would you be interested in a story from Bem's perspective? Maybe Comet or Andy? Is there a story that you'd like me to tell? Write me and let me know. I make no promises, but I love new ideas.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: Stolen Love The third and final installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
45 Enlightening the Victim
"MY FATHER?" Shawn shouted at me over his eggs. We'd slept late, woke up slowly, and had vigorous wake-up sex to get the blood moving. We remained naked as we ate our breakfasts. It was a habit we'd had the last time we occupied that suite and one I was happy to renew.
After the meal and the barest minimum of explanation, I planned to ravage Shawn with a savageness that I was certain he would not be expecting. I hoped he would savagely ravage me back. I further hoped that he and I could earn our original nicknames afresh for whatever staff had turned over at the seashell hotel since we'd been there sixteen years before.
"Your father, Verpa." I confirmed and did everything I could not to gag when I uttered the name. "We have to meet with your uncle to decide his fate. There's no rush apparently. He expects us to need some time to...do...things." I waved my hand in the air in Shawn's direction to indicate the type of things I assumed Ars expected we'd be doing.
Shawn didn't allow himself to be led away with promises of pleasure, no matter how vague. "My father and this Domus criminal had me kidnapped for money." He stated as a question, apparently amazed by the implications.
"Yes." I confirmed again, and since I knew there was no choice, I launched into the whole story. It took a while to put Shawn in possession of all the facts, but when I had, he agreed that it was quite a tale.
"I can't believe that part about my brother." Shawn said into his empty coffee cup. "That's a big deal. For him to go against father like that...amazing. I didn't think he cared about me at all."
I told Shawn about the invitation I'd given Primis to come stay with us for a while and how I wanted to help him stand on his own. Primis had been there when it really counted and brought us information that we wouldn't have otherwise had. I felt like we owed him, bigtime. I also still felt guilty for slapping the shit out of him. I was honest with Shawn about that as well. I didn't want to try to hide it and have it come out later.
I was also honest about the letters I'd received from Verpa and that I'd ignored them. Shawn wasn't pleased with the choices I'd made there, but he understood why I did what I did. He didn't blame me for what happened to him. Shawn said what I'd expected him to say. He said that the fact that my decision to ignore the letters led to him being kidnapped, wasn't the same as that decision causing him to be kidnapped. It wasn't right to ignore the letters, but that was a small thing compared to the massive fuck-up that Shawn laid at his father's feet.
"I would be lying if I said that I was surprised by any of it." Shawn cupped his right cheek in his right palm. "Mother was always the one who made sure father succeeded. It's amazing he's been able to keep going this long without her."
"What do you mean?" I asked with my curiosity piqued.
"My father is not a good businessman. He's an opportunist but that's all he is. He married mother for her name and used her for her business sense. She made sure his wealth management company succeeded. He didn't make a move without her advice, though he'd die before he admitted that."
"Sounds like your father." I grumbled into my coffee cup.
"I guess my brother has been advising him since mother left. Primis is timid, but he's smart. He's actually a lot like my mother. I look like her, but he thinks like her." Shawn paused and seemed to retreat into his thoughts for a while. He tried for a sip of coffee and found his cup empty. He frowned at it and got up to get more. "I wonder if he's not really timid."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well," Shawn made me wait while he programmed the coffee he wanted, "I always thought my mother was timid, but she's not. She let my father treat us the way he did because she knew he'd never be able to deal with her if she had a stronger personality than him. You could say she played the timid role because she loved my father.
"I wonder if my brother is the same. It sounds like he was scared when he was at the estate, but when I think of the guts it took for him to run away from my father's house and travel thousands of miles. He even rented a car and drove hundreds of miles across the plains with no more than a vague hope of finding the house. There's no way I EVER would have expected that from Primis. In his shoes, I don't know if I would have done what he did."
"That actually makes sense." I admitted. "I've been trying to figure your mother out and why she put up with your father. I've been thinking about it since we found out he was behind this. If you assume she did everything she did out of a single-minded love for your father, it all starts to make sense. I think your brother is at least a little timid by nature, but you're right, it took brass balls to do what he did."
"Brass balls," Shawn parroted and chuckled at me, "eloquent, my love...very eloquent."
I chuckled back. "I may not be eloquent, but you always know what I mean."
"True." Shawn agreed and changed the subject. "What do you think we should do with him? My father, not my brother."
I sighed involuntarily and rubbed the back of my neck. "I don't know. This time yesterday, I would have said a slow death and an unmarked grave, but I realize that's probably a little extreme. I'll think about it."
Shawn took his drink from the culinarian and came back to sit at the counter. I watched his body move with the natural athletic grace that I loved. I let my thoughts drift from the serious discussion we were having to the carnal relations that I wanted. Shawn hit me with that up from under look and one word. "Soon."
I shut my eyes and beat my lust down with a mental mallet. "OK." I agreed reluctantly and focused my mind. I gave Shawn my intellectual attention.
"It sounds like our friends really came through for us. Dropping everything and coming running like that. We owe them...have to figure out what we can do to say thank you. And Paul...if not for him..." Shawn trailed off and let the statement remain unfinished.
I finished it for him. "I'd be in a straitjacket. He was with me constantly, helping me stay grounded. I mean, Bem was amazing and so was Neb, and Vulp and Cy, your brother, Andy and the girls," I paused to remind myself to call to check on Leah, to make sure she was OK, "Altus, Cellarius, Comet, even Cass...they were all great.
"Mary wasn't much direct help, but I know she looked after Bem and was a sympathetic ear when I needed one. Your uncle and your mother...your uncle was the way he always is, but your mom was incredible. She kept it together like a pro and dealt with the ransom and all that. Even Joe, in his own weird way, managed to be more of a help than a hindrance, especially at the end. They all love you...a lot. As much as this whole thing was brutally hard, it really showed me who our friends are."
As an afterthought I added, "you should call your mom...and Cellarius. I'm sure they both would want to hear your voice. Poor Cellarius...when he realized your plane was down, he was beside himself. That old man...he loves you like you were his own kid. It was touching to see. When we were out on the plains, when we first realized what happened, he cried like a baby, poor guy."
Shawn agreed to call them both later on that morning. I finished relaying all the facts of the case and filled in much of the gossip, including Shawn's mother's fascination with Paul and his interest in her. I also told Shawn almost everything Paul had told me about his past. I worried at first about violating his confidence, but I didn't think he'd mind if I told my husband what he told me. I assumed Paul would have assumed that when he was speaking to me, he was basically speaking to me and Shawn.
Shawn was astonished by the revelations about Paul. "It explains so much." He observed.
"I thought you'd say something like that. There's a lot to him. I'm excited about his decision, or what I think is his decision to stay. I think he'll like it here and he'll be a nice addition to this weird extended family we've been collecting."
Shawn reached for and took my hand across the counter. He pulled it to him and kissed the back of it. "You've said quite a bit about what our friends did and how they felt when they found out that I was missing. You haven't said one word about how much they all love you. You shouldn't shortchange them like that. Originally, I found you, but you did much more to gather this `weird extended family,' as you call it, than I did. They came together because of you."
I shook my head and opened my mouth to disagree with Shawn's assertion, but one look at his serious face told me he'd hear no argument. I shut my mouth and thought about what he'd said. `Maybe he's right...a little.' I left his statement stand the way it was.
The last part of the story that I told was the funniest part, all about running into Cherry Cera and the silliness surrounding him. Shawn was tickled to death when I mimicked Cherry's coarse, clipped speech patterns and over the top reactions. "We HAVE TO go see him." Shawn insisted, and I agreed.
When we got to the end of the story, I straightened up from my position behind the counter and reached for Shawn's hand again. "Are you ready?" I asked.
"Ready?" Shawn asked back. "For what?"
I wagged my eyebrows at him and licked my lips and jerked my head toward the bathroom.
"What? AGAIN?" He asked incredulously.
"Again, and again, and again, and again." I teased. "Besides, we both need a shower. Getting one together is more efficient. Don't you care about efficiency?"
"Oh," he laughed the ringing reckless laugh that I lived for, "if it's for efficiency, then by all means."
Shawn came around the counter to lead the way to the bathroom. As soon as my eyes feasted on his perfect body, I knew I had to have him again. I didn't want to wait for the shower. In fact, I didn't want him clean. I wanted him the way he was, salty and musky with the sweat and exertion of several rounds of reunion sex.
I wrapped Shawn in my magic and pulled him to me. He tensed when he first felt my telekinesis envelop him, but he immediately surrendered himself to it. I brought him to my body and let his legs wrap around my middle to hold himself to me. I filled my palms with the taught muscles of his porcelain thighs and stroked them for the tactile pleasure of his smooth skin.
"I thought we were going to shower." Shawn breathed over my face.
I nodded to him. "We were. I decided I wanted you the way you are."
"Do you?" Shawn grinned a bedroom smile at me and slitted his eyes seductively.
"I do." I admitted.
"But, love," Shawn objected gently, "I'm covered with sex."
"I know." I agreed. "And I want to lick it off you."
Shawn laughed the ringing, reckless laugh that I loved and offered himself to me.
After hours of sex and a playful shower, Shawn and I settled on the huge living room sofa to look out the open walls into the hot afternoon. Outside, the mirror flat ocean shimmered in the direct sunshine and seabirds rode the gentle breeze. In spite of the heat, and all the physical love we'd shared that morning, Shawn and I still wanted to be together. He sat between my legs with his body against mine. I draped my arms around him to hold him to me.
Sweat bloomed between us and over all of our skin. It shimmered on Shawn's alabaster flesh like the sunlight did on the ocean. Shawn traced his fingers along my forearms, his delicate fingertips smoothing the beads of sweat across my darker skin. "You're very hot, love." Shawn said to me. "I love your heat, the heat of your body. I love the strength of your arms and the heat of your body. I'm so hot. It's so hot here, and you're so hot."
Shawn pulled a deep breath into his body. He breathed it in through his nose. His chest lifted and expanded as he did it. His stomach stretched and flattened. He breathed it out from between his parted pink lips and his chest contracted and his stomach returned to normal.
"I smell you, love. I can smell the heat of your body. I breathe it in, and it makes me feel safe. When I'm in your arms like this, I feel like, I feel like nothing could touch me. When I rest with you like this, I feel like the whole world could come crashing down upon us, but I would still be safe and warm here in your arms."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I didn't say anything. Shawn's words were flattering. They were filled with love and desire and contentment. I was content to have him in my arms. I was content to be his protector, his refuge, his love. As much as he felt physically safe with me, was as much as I felt emotionally safe with him. That was the refuge that I craved, the intimacy that I loved, perhaps even more than the physical.
Shawn laid his head back against the front of my shoulder. He turned his head just enough to meet my eye with his. "I missed your presence, my love. When I was alone, I missed feeling what you feel and the embrace of your magic. You haven't shared that with me, not in a while. We used to do that all the time. Why did we stop?"
I knew why we stopped. I wanted to remind Shawn that it had been his practice and all the demands on his time that made us stop. We'd barely had time for physical intimacy, let alone magic intimacy. I wanted to remind him of all of those things, but they seemed too petty. I reminded myself that Shawn had already committed to giving up the practice, so none of that petty bullshit mattered. It was that notion that I shared with Shawn to answer his question. "It doesn't matter."
Shawn relaxed against me by another, almost imperceptible degree. "No, I suppose it doesn't." He agreed. "Would you like to share with me now?"
To answer him, I activated my magic and let it gather on all the surfaces of my body. I felt it trickle into my husband, filling his expanded capacity until it was full. The magic equalized and drifted between us. I felt it, felt the connection so much more deeply. I felt my husband, inside and out. I felt his love and his contentment. I also felt his curiosity. There was more he wanted to know.
"Tell me," he said in a voice that seemed to be half out loud and half inside my mind, "tell me what you felt when I was gone."
Shawn's question dampened my mood, our shared mood. The pain of that time was still so raw and fresh in my mind, I didn't want to relive it. I could tell that Shawn wanted to understand what I'd gone through. I knew he was curious about how I'd handled his absence. I knew he didn't ask the question to hurt me, but the question hurt me all the same. It hurt us both.
I thought of all the ways I could explain what I'd experienced when I thought I might not see him ever again. I thought of the desperate emptiness I'd felt. I thought of the howling loneliness I'd endured. I even thought of the acknowledgement that, if the worst had come to pass, I'd asked my friends to kill me before I rampaged in my grief. The recollection of all that washed over me, over us both, like a putrid wave of anxiety.
Shawn felt it and apologized for the question. "I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean to make you experience it again. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I can already tell, from how you feel now, how you felt then."
I wanted to answer Shawn's question. Inside that answer was the explanation of what he meant to me. I wanted to explain even though I already had. He'd asked and I wanted him to know. My mind discovered one experience, one moment out of all the desperate moments that I'd endured when Shawn was gone, one moment that explained all the others. I decided to relate that moment to him.
"I prayed for you." I admitted to my husband.
"You prayed for me?" Shawn asked incredulously.
I tightened my arms around Shawn to press him more firmly into my body and repeated myself. "I prayed for you. Joe was being Joe and I was angry and sad and lonely and desperate. Paul knelt down with me, and we prayed for you."
"Who," Shawn asked, "who did you pray to?"
"To God."
"You prayed to God?" Shawn asked.
I noticed my husband's emotions shift as he asked his question. He was hopeful. I wasn't completely certain what that meant, but I knew it meant something. I answered the question he'd left standing. "I got down on my knees and I cried out to the Lord. I knelt down with a priest and crossed myself and I prayed for your safety. I prayed to God for him to watch over you until I could hold you again."
"Did that help you?" Shawn asked.
I admitted that it had. "It got me on my feet. If not for that prayer, I don't know if I could have gotten off the floor. That prayer got me off the floor so I could find you."
"I prayed for you." Shawn announced to my surprise. "When one day stretched to the next and the next, I worried. I worried about what you might do. I thought about how hard it is for you to be alone and how hard you love me when we're together. I was so scared about what you might do. I prayed to God to protect you from yourself. I prayed to ask him to stop you from doing anything drastic."
Since we were on the subject, I expressed all my thoughts on the matter. "Before I did it, before I said my prayer, I felt like a hypocrite, but I was also scared. I was worried that, since I hadn't prayed in so long, since I'd hated God for so long, I worried that he'd smite me. I worried he'd take his anger out on you. Paul told me that God isn't like that. He told me that God always welcomes his children back."
"Like a good father should." Shawn added.
"Like a good father should." I agreed.
"What do you think about God, now?" Shawn asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know. I'm tempted to believe he helped me find you, but I'm tempted to ask why he would let you get kidnapped in the first place."
Shawn moved against my body and twisted himself until he could look me in the eye. As he made firm eye contact with me, I felt our connection deepen even further. I felt Shawn's presence inside me, and mine inside him. "I want to believe." Shawn said in my mind.
"Believing makes me happy. I think if you set aside the bad stuff, if you can separate God and his message from all the bad stuff from your childhood, I think it will make you happy too. I'm not asking you to forget it. I know you can't forget, but don't blame God for the choices your parents made. Love him for what he's done to bring us together."
I hesitated. "I don't know, Shawn. I don't know if I can."
I felt Shawn's emotions shift again. They had been hopeful, then they grew worried, then determined. I felt that he'd figured something out. "Do you remember that debate we went to, that first one where the debaters argued about the existence of a higher power?"
"Yeah."
"When I started to believe, when one of the debaters made an argument that I wanted to believe, you challenged that. You said something like, `if God cares so much, then what am I doing here.' You meant that if God was so worried about the world, then why did you have to come save it. I've thought about that. I've thought about that a lot over the years. I've thought about it even more since we went to Earth and came back with your family. Even more again since Bem started conducting the weekly services."
"And what did you come up with?" I interrupted him to ask.
"I think that God is real and that he does care and that you're here because I needed you and you needed me. I think God knew that you would never find happiness on Earth, and I think he knew I was lonely and sad after my break-up with Roeb. I think he led me to you and you to me. I think the very argument you used to show me that God wasn't real, is the very argument that proves he is. I think you were wrong, but wrong in the best way. I think we should thank God for what he's done for us. I think we both owe him a debt for helping us find happiness in each other."
What Shawn said inside my head sounded reasonable to me, but I wasn't sold. I still had all the baggage from my youth that told me there was a flaw in my husband's logic. I was trying to find the words to voice my objection when Shawn preempted me.
"How about this, my love?" Shawn said aloud in his sweetest, most persuasive voice. "Open yourself to the possibility and see what happens. Go to Bem's services with me like you have been, but really engage with them. When you're worried about something, pray over it. When you're happy about something, thank God for his role in bringing it to you. Try it with me. If it hurts you, you can stop, but if it helps you, if it feels good to you, like it's felt good to me, then keep doing it. Will you do that for me?"
To answer Shawn, I craned my head up and kissed his mouth. "Of course, I will." I agreed.
Shawn settled against me and laid his head on my chest. "I'm so glad. You won't regret it." Shawn closed his eyes and relaxed against me. "I'm going to take a nap now. Will you protect me while I sleep? Will you hold me in your body and fill me with your magic and keep me safe?"
"Of course, I will." I said again.
Shawn's breathing steadied and became deeper, slower. I felt his consciousness drift into sleep. He slept safe in my arms. I held him and thought about the things that he'd said, the faith that he'd asked me for. I thought about the life I'd had with him and the intense love that we shared. I thought about the life I'd had before, and the life I had now, and the life and the children we wanted to have in the future.
Shawn slept safe in my arms and in my magic and in my love. He slept as I brooded over what he'd said to me. At length, I realized that the only explanation I could offer for the place that I was in, verses the place that I started, was divine intervention. No amount of coincidence or happenstance could ever explain the miserable place I'd left and the wonderous place I found. When I realized that, I knew that Shawn was right, like he always was.
As the first act of my new mindset, as the first acknowledgement of Shawn's rightness, I held my husband, my reason for being, and I closed my eyes. "Lord." I whispered aloud and paused because I didn't know what I wanted to say. I thought hard and decided to take Shawn's advice. I decided to thank God for something good that had happened to me. "Thank you, Lord." I said. "Thank you for him, and for the gift of my life, and for helping me to find love. Thank you for welcoming me back." I said and realized there was nothing else to say.
I left my eyes closed and allowed my mind to still and my consciousness to drift. I relaxed, and I slept with Shawn in my arms. As far as I was concerned, as long as he was there, that meant I was where I was supposed to be, and that I was doing what I was supposed to do. I had meaning in my life and joy in my heart and peace in my mind. I reasoned that meant God was in his heaven and everything was right with the world.