Knight Nostalgia: A Knights of the Board Room Anthology(59)

She shook her head and looked down at her hands. In absent habit, she turned the wedding ring set Bernard had mentioned. The emerald cut diamond reflected the numbers-oriented Master who’d given it to her; brilliantly geometric. Bernard had set it in a nest of diamond-studded tendrils that curled tight around it in asymmetrical array. The wedding ring was a twisted ribbon style that hugged up to the base of the other perfectly. She looked at Ben again, a poignant smile on her face.

“The last really teenage thought I remember having was when I was fourteen. I asked a boy to the Sadie Hawkins dance. His name was Mitch, and he had red hair and a nice smile. He’d smiled at me in Spanish class. I remember being so excited about that dance. Thinking about his arms around me, and hoping we’d have a slow dance. Maybe he’d kiss me.”

Shadows clouded her blue eyes. “My father left the weekend before the dance. He’d taken off before, for a few weeks at a time, but somehow my mother knew it was going to be far longer this time. She took to her bed and wouldn’t leave it. Jeremy went off that weekend with friends and got high. He already smoked pot, but was starting to transition to the hardcore stuff. I stood Mitch up, because I was taking care of my siblings.”

Ben returned to sit beside her. He took her hand, clasped it on her knee. “That sucks,” he said sincerely. Though a missed Sadie Hawkins dance was hell and gone from his reality, he knew about lost childhoods. He’d always expected that was part of why, out of all the women, Cass was closest to Savannah. Savannah had no clue what a normal childhood felt like, either, but she was fiercely determined that Angelica would have one.

“It was a long time ago. But it’s necessary to set up my point. Which is this; Jon’s right.” Cass tossed him an amused look. “You really are like a thirteen-year-old boy.”

“Thanks. I’ll just go back to my comic books and constant masturbation now.”

She made a face at him. “I don’t mean it that way. A thirteen-year-old is so certain he can be a superhero when he needs to be. None of us can a hundred percent guarantee that we’ll make someone happy, Ben. What did you tell Dana about having a baby? Why she should risk it, when it could crash and burn.”

He grimaced. “I told her she had to take it on faith.”

“Faith and a lot of work.” Cass nodded. “A willingness to constantly open yourself to failure, make yourself vulnerable. That’s not easy for you. You think you’ll hurt her.”

“I already proved that, didn’t I?”

Her lips tightened. “Yes, you did. But you also learned something about yourself. There’s only one thing you want more than never hurting her like that again.”

“No,” he said decisively. “There’s nothing I want more than that.”

“Not true,” she countered. “You want her to love you. You need her to love you. Because you’re a better person with that. You can continue to be even better, every day, with it. And you know without it, you can’t. You think that makes you selfish, and it would. If she didn’t love you so much sometimes I worry she couldn’t breathe without you.”

At his startled expression, she nodded, her own somber. “You’re right. She feels things so strongly. But love isn’t an addiction. It’s one of the most powerful forces in the universe, and that’s never more evident than when watching the two of you together. She’s your match. I saw it yesterday, whenever you two were particularly wrapped up in one another. Which was most of the time.”

Cass nudged him, gentle playfulness. “None of our pairings are hard on the eyes, but it’s more than that. The two of you, you’re like Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Solomon and Sheba. These pairings that are somehow larger than life. You capture attention with what’s between you, it’s so strong.”

She moved her hand from his knee to his arm, threading her hand through the crook of his elbow and curling her fingers around his biceps. “I’m not single-minded, though,” she added. “I love her enough to eviscerate you with a butter knife if you treat her badly.”

“And I’d deserve it,” he said tightly.

She lifted a shoulder. “But you deserve good things, too, Ben. You may even deserve the gift of her heart. But deserving and earning are two different things. Like Dana. She deserves to have a baby, but she will spend her life earning the love of that child, with her devotion to his or her wellbeing, teaching him or her how to grow up and be an adult who can stand on his or her own and create their own wonderful achievements.

“When you decide to stand at the altar with her, you’ll deserve Marcie. But after that, you’ll spend every day earning the gift of one another and that love. It’s hard work, but it’s also brilliant, amazing…a spiritual experience, because everything involving love is. It’s something I never forget with Lucas, and I hope your demons won’t make you ever forget it, either.”

Ben couldn’t deny it sounded like truth. Probably because it was delivered with a calm reassurance that only an experienced mother could offer, underscoring what she’d said about herself. It was a big part of who she was. But not the only part.

She was a remarkable woman. As remarkable as her stubborn, irresistible younger sister.

They both looked at the painting for another few moments. Cass was stroking his arm as she did, and then she laid her head on his shoulder. He could feel her lips quirk and tilted his head, brushing it against her crown. “What?”