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Chapter 10

Tay’s kissing me and I’m just loving it. The smell of him, his taste, that little tickle scratch of his beard as we kiss and he nuzzles me. If you’ve never nuzzled or just gently rubbed faces with your SO I highly recommend it. You mix that along with some slow sweet kisses and it’s simply amazing. Makes you feel all mushy in just the right ways.

Oh…oh…he’s kissing my eyelids. I love the tenderness of that. If you haven’t another must.

It’s just getting good when the nurses come in with a gentleman in a white lab coat who looks like he was rather rudely woken up. Nonetheless he gives me a nice friendly smile when he see’s me. “Good evening Ms. Powers, you look a lot more alert than this afternoon.”
“Uhm, thank you?”
“Mr. Winters if you could kindly step outside or take a seat we can take a look at Ms. Powers here.”
Taylor nods and picks up the guitar and sets it in the corner then takes the chair by my bed. I’m a little confused. I peek under my sheets to everyone’s amusement; yep It’s still there, only there’s a tube and stuff in there…lovely. The Doctor comes over with his bunch of toys and stuff on a rolling tray. “Then, now Ms. Powers if you’re ready we can get some of the immediate tests out of the way.”
“Okay…But I’m not Ms. Powers, my name’s…” Taylor puts his hand on my arm.
“Your Dad’s here, John.”
“John…John Powers?”
“How! Why!...”
The Doctor sighed. “Jenna, we need to get these tests out of the way to make sure you’re alright. You’ve been in a coma for eight days now. So I need to get an idea if things are wrong and I need you to be calm. I’ll let you no if you can get excitable when I’m done okay?”
“Uhm…Okay?” I’m agreeing because he interrupted my train of thought on my Dad being here and the transmission running my brain just slipped into neutral.

The Doc gave me a lot of very familiar tests to start off with. Well familiar for me back when I was James. There’s stuff they got to check out on you when you get hit really hard and it’s really old hat to me at this point. Reflexes, hand eye tests, visual acuity, flashcard memory check, concussion check or in my case a check on how my concussion is coming along. If you have ever plated football, or hockey or rugby then odds are you know the drill. He’s thrown in a few extras but it’s pretty much the same drill though. Then comes the lab tech with his vampire gear and takes about ten vials of blood from me.

I do notice how really uncomfortable this is making Taylor. I look over at him. He looks at me and then down at the ground. “Jenna…I’m sorry, it’s just…I was scared and freaked out at having to come here and go through all this kind of stuff all over again. I...I took it out on you.”
I reach over and take his hand and squeeze it. “It’s okay Tay, I get it. I think I kind of even got it then but I was just, I am just…I though that it was too good to be true. Me and you. I mean to me it’s just not the way my life’s ever went. To me it was one bad thing after another, one loss after another and that this was the other shoe dropping and you had come to your senses and figured you were done with me. I was more trouble to you than I was worth.”
He leans down and kisses me. “I never really thought that.”
“I know, I’m just saying I’ve been knocked around so much it wasn’t a great leap for me to freak out. I know I’m messed up, it’s why I’ve scheduled myself some therapy; I know I’ve got PTSD from being a kid and everything that’s happened.”
“I thought you weren’t that crazy if you knew you were crazy?”
“I’m really aware how messed up I am, remember how we met?”
“Yeah, and I should’ve known better.”
I kiss him back. “Yeah, well we both should have.”

The nurse comes back in and starts unhooking things especially the catheter and other things so I’m told just temporarily. It’s nice to be unplugged, I’m getting why Tay hates this. And lovely woman that she is she takes me very carefully to the bathroom so I can do my business and take a bath. They’re a little iffy about me standing to take a shower. I don’t care after a week of just sponge baths I feel gritty and kinda gross. If my hair wasn’t buzz cut length I’m sure my hair would be itching like crazy. I’m a mess, tons of bruised a regular smurfy tan. We’re careful of the bandages and dressing on my right shoulder. I’m a little too wonky from the drugs I’m on to be freaked about her knowing I’m a trans-girl. It’s really frigging awesome of her that she treats me not just like a human being but a girl just like her. I’m allowed into my own sleep ware just nothing tight and still no bra. She helps me back to my bed and hooks me back up to the monitors and stuff with clean sticky things.

I see Taylor talking to that guy. That coma dream version of me if James had grown up and become this big strapping guy in front of me. The only exception is the hair; I’m blonde like my mom…sorry my mother and he’s this really dark brunette with some grays in it. He’s actually quite handsome and very decently dressed. Dress pants in a nice charcoal gray, a suit jacket over a nice new white double cotton t-shirt and comfortable looking shoes.

His face breaks into this really freakily familiar and yet really warm smile. God he looks so much like I used to, or might have? I’m not sure what to say. I try and smile back. I can’t help but duck my head. Oh god it’s him, it’s really him, my birth father and I’m…I’m not his…He comes over and sits on the edge of my bed and smiles at me again…How can he?, I…I’m not his..
“Hello baby girl.”
Huh? Did he call me…? I look up at Taylor who smiles and nods to me. “Honey, this is your dad, John Powers. John it looks like you finally get to meet your daughter.”
He holds his arms out to me. “Hi Jenna.”
He knows, he knows and he called me by my name! My real name! He…he called me his baby girl…My eyes are flooding with tears, I feel…
“Daddy?”
“Yeah honey, it’s me…your dad…if you want me to be...tha”
I don’t let him finish the sentence before I throw myself into his arms and start bawling. I’m a complete mess and literally losing it as I’m sobbing and crying and laughing a little as he wraps his big strong arms around me to hold me, protect me…
“I love you Jenna.”
“Yyyulubbmey?”
“Yeah. I lub you.”
“But...but…but…”
Taylor throws in. “Yeah you got a nice butt.”
“Tay!!!” I squeak it out in ultra high girly range and go to atomic blush levels.
“Sorry Daddy…”
“Jenna honey, I know about you and Taylor, we’ve actually known each other for about a week.”
“A week?”
“Yeah, your surrogate sister Holly made the choice to call me when there was no other next of kin. She told me everything… (He hugs me tighter.) I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you honey.”
“Dad?”
“Yes Jenna?”
“You’re not disappointed in me?”
“Never baby girl…never ever.”
“But why? I mean I look at you and I see James…or who I might have been. Don’t you feel cheated? I took your son away from you.”
“Honey, I’d be lying if I didn’t feel cheated. (I tense up and tremble a bit, there’s tears too.) But it’s from what you...went through, from what Natalie did. I was taking my law degree at McGill University when we met you know and we hooked up really fast. She thought I came from money and where I was planning on being a lawyer, she had all these plans and ideas I think. When she found out I’m just a middle classed guy from Prince Edward Island she was determined for me to break from my past and my roots. She refused to ever go back home to see my parents ever after the first time. When I said I was going to work legal aid and maybe even work for a non-profit she dumped me right after you were born and accused me of cheating with a bunch of her girlfriends testifying against me and she even had all these bruises…I never touched her…it went before a French judge and he threw the book at me and she took you away from me…She made damned sure to get the judge to hit me with the maximum amount of alimony and child support while having a restraining order against me and my entire family. I feel cheated because we never had a chance together, I feel blessed actually honey from everything everyone’s told me to have such a beautiful and amazing daughter.”
“I…I...never knew that dad.”
“I know, some of it has recently come to light about the judge and everything.”
“Mom…Mother made you sound like a monster.”
“Hmnn, Natalie should try looking in the mirror.”
I look at him. He’s looking at me with love and pride and everything anyone…no everyone should get when they look into a parents eyes. Mother and my Step-dad had moments where things were actually really good but they never really looked at me the way that my dad’s is looking at me as he’s holding me right now.

I snuggle into his arms a bit and yawn. I never knew waking up from a coma was that exhausting. He goes to move and get me into bed properly. “Mmnn, no I just…I just want to enjoy this dad. I don’t want it to end yet. I might be just dreaming.” He kisses me on my forehead and says. “Anything honey, anything…”

I’m not sure how long I slept but my dad was still there and there was the immediate relief of not having dreamed the whole thing. Or still being in a dream. Not with him on one side of me and Tay on the other both in chairs and both of them are snoring. I still can’t wipe the happy smile off of my face.

Still getting up to pee woke them both up and rather sweetly but very embarrassingly they both offered to help me into the bathroom. I gingerly test my legs which hurt and are awfully bruised. I get Tay to help me because…well my dad is still my dad.

My dad, god I love saying that; my dad, Daddy, wow…I start to tear up in the bathroom just thinking about him, him being here. He must have really dropped everything to fly up here.

God I’m so pissed at Natalie…oh yeah, I just went there. She’s so lost her matriarchal privileges.

It’s morning now and dad gives me a kiss as I get back into bed. Wow I haven’t hurt like this since I was playing football. I could give you a play by play of the morning with the nurse coming in to check me over, do my vitals. The visit from the lab tech doing the morning blood drawing and I notice she does Taylor too. Three vials from me, nine from him. He looks white green from just that. He really hates this. I reach over and hold his hand as she takes her blood. I ask him about the diner to distract him. He looks relieved when she’s gone. Dad was on the phone talking to people and I think I hear him talking to Holly and then I hear him say…”That sounds good Mom, We’ll see you and Dad when you both get here.”

When they both get here?, Mom? Dad? I’ve got grand parents?! I do I’m pretty sure that slow head turning stare at him thing. “Mom?, Dad?…I’ve got real grandparents…” oh yeah my voice is doing that whiny cracky aching with emotion thing.
Dad looks at me. “Yes honey my parents are here too and they’ve been here waiting for you to wake up and come back to us.”
“They know?”
“Yeah they know and your grandparents are over the moon that you’re awake and get to meet you.”
“They are…and they know?”
“Jenna…you said that you seen James or what he’d look like in me right?”
I nod but this is one of those things I’m not sure I want to talk about or a place I want to go to. There’s this whole other shoe dropping feeling. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out his wallet and this kind of beat up string of pictures from one of those mall photo machines. He passed it to me. They’re old just by the feel of the photo-paper and Dad really looks like me in them a teenager in a muscle shirt and a backwards ball cap goofing with this very pretty girl…
“Holy crap…she…she looks like me…?”
My dad’s voice has some emotion in it and it’s quite thick with it and near tears. I even see him rub at his eyes a bit.
“That’s my baby sister, you Aunt Katie. It’s the last picture we have of her…I was eighteen and leaving for university that fall. Katie was sixteen and she was killed by a drunk driver that summer…Jenna you might not be Jaime or look like me… but I see my baby sister when I look at you honey…(He’s crying, I’m crying.)..It’s like there she is, still alive in how you look so much like her. It’s like you brought her back in a way and you never even knew about her…God baby girl if there was ever proof that this is right…”
He reaches out and strokes the picture.
I hug him filled with emotion too but there’s this whole seeing and feeling how sad and still how much it still hurts my dad to go back to this.
I want to make this better.
I want to make this hurt a little less for him.
“Daddy, tell me about her?”

My Aunt Katie, was a bit of a tomboy according to dad. Growing up in PEI he tells me about a girl who was good at school and took a lot of math and sciences because she wanted to become a marine biologist. The kind of girl who worked her butt off in things and how she mowed lawns and worked hard as any of the guys in the summer and did it in cut off jeans and a bikini top. She loved the water and the beach, she was a lifeguard once and was great at driving go carts and had a great pitching arm in baseball. Katie was the beautiful girls the guys wanted to have on their team because she could play and look hot and drink beer and just be one of the guys no matter how much a girl she was.
She used to help their dad on the boats when he went out fishing lobsters with the crew he was a part of. Dad couldn’t because the rotting fish grossed him out and he gets sea sick.

She saved three lives while she was alive. Once a drowning teen as a life guard, another time doing cpr to an old man who had a heart attack in a mall and saving a five year old girl from freezing to death and drowning when she fell through a pond in winter.

Aunt Katie he says had a habit of saving strays animals and played the electric guitar and sang. Dad says she was amazing, that she was kind and sweet and brave and it shone through her voice.

We talk for quite a bit with him very fondly talking about her in that distant trance yet kind of happy way. During it he’s smiling a little and Taylor got up and slipped in behind me and holds me as we listen. “Yeah Johnny you should hear Jenna sing, it’s amazing, like Alana Miles singing Sarah McLaughlin.” Tay brags a bit much. I lean back and kiss the point of his chin. “Don’t listen to him dad he’s biased.”
“No I’m not, you have an awesome voice.”
“No, I don’t your tumor’s pressing on your auditory nerves.”
“Hey!” He protests and starts to tickle me, I’m twitching and laughing even though I’m really, really sore ow fuck my arm.

We laugh for awhile and cuddle with me trying to relax enough to have the soreness fade a little but I can’t seem to get rid of the smile that’s in my face it keeps peeking out every few seconds.
“There she is…!”
I look up and see an older woman with deep grey hair but well styled just below her ears and with those tips that kind of curl away from her face and nice glasses and a stylish sweater with that kind of ballet leotard top shape and it even droops off her shoulder just right and a peasant skirt. She looks amazing and so well put together and carrying a basket of food with her that she passes to dad as she sits on my bed and hugs me, sweeping me up in these wings of peace and love. It’s pure grandmotherly love. It’s like being held by an angel. She looks at me as she pulls back smiling and plays with the fringes of my hair and I can see her seeing her daughter in me and it doesn’t feel like a feeling of her using me to fill some whole in her life but like there’s this acknowledgement like dad had said…this, me being me looking a lot like a blonde version of my Aunt Katie is almost like fate or a sign, proof that this is me. That I’ve always been Jenna…her grand daughter. I see in her eyes both love and unconditional acceptance. Yeah, more tears…I’m so emotional and feeling so me, so right I think I’m actually leaking estrogen at this point.

My grandfather is coming in and he’s not what I expected either, tall like dad but thinner from age and really tanned from a life of hard work but he’s bald, or balding but just shaves the rest and he’s got this Vandyke beard? Uhm…Like Jonathan Frakes? But it’s white and he’s wearing a baggy lycra t-shirt kind of like a cyclist might wear and jeans with an old battle dress jacket you know the bigger waist length army coat. He’s got two big trays of Tim Horton’s coffees. He smiles at me, he might have been a fisherman but he’s got this look like a lot of the old cowboy guys around here. I didn’t know or expect either of them to look so hip.

He passes the coffees to dad who having just took the basket from grandma so he has a rueful smile and shakes his head at the gesture. Grand-dad comes over and pulls me into a big hug too and grins at me afterwards and rubs the stubble of my shaved head like he was tousling my hair. “See, I came in here when we first got here and I knew she’d be okay. I told you all that she’d be all right.” He pulls me right in with a big smooth to my forehead. “Okay Johnny bring that rollin table thing over and lets eat.” Johnny, he calls dad Johnny, its stuff I never got to know…the idea of knowing more just stuff, stuff like this raises Goosebumps of excitement and delight from me. I kind of feel like a kid at Christmas.

That’s grandpa in a nutshell, no bullshit, no fuss, no muss very warm and straight forward. I really enjoy myself as we start having my first…Jenna‘s first family breakfast. Gramps (God it’s cool to be able to even think that.) is awesome and funny as he’s saying that it’s Tim’s or homemade coffee because he’d be dead before Starbucks yuppie coffee would pass his lips. There’s homemade bread rolls and real hand picked jam that grand-mum made from blueberries and another from these tiny wild strawberries. There’s these little omelets in tin tart shells with peppers and mushrooms and shallots? Red and yellow peppers and there’s black forest ham shave on it and melted goat cheese bits in it. Really…really...good, oh some have like capers and smoked salmon too. The company is awesome and we eat and talk and laugh. I feed Taylor and he feeds me and we talk about the stuff that happened with all of them while I was “napping” (Finger quotes.) and how they all met and have been there for each other. How Taylor has honored the appointment’s I had set up for him. He still quiets up over the subject a bit and I notice, It’s in the way I feel his body move, tense he’s not being shy, or quiet. He hates it. The others don’t notice and he hides it well but I know and catch his eyes. I squeeze his hand and fit my fingers in between his. I give him this smile that I try to make say to him. I love you, I love you so much and thank you for doing this. I get further blessed by my friends as Holly, Tim, the kids come in with Nin and Davey with flowers and with everyone in my room as packed in as we are it’s amazing; it’s like a holiday breakfast. Grand-dad even says he bribed the nurses off our backs with a couple of boxes of doughnuts. It’s chaotic and the warmest and happiest I’ve ever felt. Not romantic happy but family happy…I have family, real family who loves me. And you know what?

Sometimes…when it’s loving and supportive like it’s meant to be.

Family is everything.

It’s…This is a really powerful thing for me. I guess this, being accepted by my family and having found Taylor. The strong family resemblance between myself and my dad’s baby sister. It’s like I’m getting to claim a birthright..no that’s not right. I guess it’s like I’ve someway been given permission to claim my place in the world. I kinda feel better; I kinda of feel…

Okay I know I’ve been trying to explain being transgendered here in this telling it as it is at least from stuff I’ve read from my sisters online and from my own experiences. But this feeling is like…
I was here, Jenna this part of me I hid from the world was always in the shadow of James. Even when I was transitioning..(Well I’m still transitioning.) there’s this feeling of always being in this shadow, and who I was as a trans-girl or before that even. Just wasn’t able to be seen by myself or by anyone else.

Does that make any sense? Being the real identity the T-girl us; Lost at first in the darkness of our male selves, that facade and even in our present identities lost in the shadow-memory, the size of our old self still?

I feel that the facts now being out there and everything has happened plus being surrounded by friends and family, love… has kind of like this whole sun dial thing where everything that’s changed in my life was like the sun moving for me and I’m not in the shadow of my old self, my old life. I’m not lost in my darkness anymore. I really like this feeling, I like feeling there, here, real.
I’m happy enough and thankful enough there’s tears at the edges of my eyes and grand-mum reaches out to me smiling as she wipes away with her fingertips.

I’m sorry but as happy as I am and as I realize the stuff I’ve been talking about there’s a wish that comes to my heart even as I’m happy in my life right now.

I wish this love and completeness for my sisters out there. Those who are trapped in that limbo, that personal hell of just not being able to be themselves. Trapped like I was by the way the world saw me, sees us and keeps us from being our true selves. There’s so many different reasons for that hell we seem to go through, from not being blessed to pass, to family, to marriages to anything…and it feels like there’s this part of yourself. That woman in there, that girl in us that spark of us that…you know that side. It feels like part of us is being drowned, it’s like drowning but never being allowed to get a breath or real air and yet we’re still alive to suffer through it. God and so, so often, too often even it’s ourselves holding us down. I hope for everyone having to go through this…I hope you can find this place I‘m in now, this amazing place…can step out of that shadow or keep from drowning. I know how hard it is just to keep going when giving up could be so…easy. I want all of you to know happiness, family and love. I want you to know it like I am like the women we are…

I’m kind of like that for awhile. In that reflective mood. Wanting to share the good with everyone. I think the girls and Grand-mum get a bit of this? That they can read it on my face or in my heart. Holly and Njinda smile and nod a bit, like sisters would and I swear there’s a proud womanly smile on my grand-mums face. Happy, proud serene. I’m in awe of the vibe she gives off.

It gets to later in the day quite quickly and our conversations turn to the past and the present as we end up talking about the stuff I’ve sort of gone through with Natalie and Stephan. Both are in prison and both are trying to appeal the charges/verdicts and both of them are trying to throw each other under the bus. I see a side of my dad that’s still angry and very fierce and protective of me as well as being vengeful. I mean it’s a little strange really seeing him like that. When I found him he was/is listed as an artist being both a painter and a pottery sculptor. He kind of looked like a hippy on his shops website, to see him doing and talking about all the legal stuff isn’t fitting the picture I’d built of him.

I’m getting reimbursement cheques for some of the monies that he’d paid out in child support over the years plus pain and suffering from Natalie’s finances and the Quebec family court system.
“My accountants said you should be clearing around $122,000.00 baby girl, what’ve you got planned for that?”
“I’m not sure, it depends on what my therapists and doctors say and how much my SRS is going to cost because it’s Alberta and…”
“It’s not going to cost you anything Jenna?”
“Huh? Why?”
“If you get it done in Quebec they’ll pay for it through the provincial Medicare system.”
“But I don’t live in Quebec.”
“No but they’d rather pay for that than pay out what they might have if I went ahead with the lawsuit I was threatening them with over that dirty judge.”
“Really?...but Dad…I know that they messed up my life and us being together but what about you? You could’ve gotten a really big settlement out of it.”
“I know especially when I wasn’t the only person or family messed up from the guy but they were more than willing to deal after I brought up what they did to you and put you through and how bad that would look for the Quebec provincial government if it got out to the press that that judge allowed to happen and I mean just imagine if some reporters got the ideas to start looking for abuse and problems with all those other cases? They took the deal and kissed my ass and said merci pour la pleasure.”
“But what about those other kids and families dad?”
“There’s people already looking into it baby girl and building their own cases. It’s actually where I got my information on all of the stuff that happened. A friend of mine is going to use this settlement as a president case.”
“Huh?”
“Well if you take the money and add up the money for your medical expenses and for your recovery time they’ll have a figure that the Quebec government has already agreed on to provide for the pain and suffering of just one person who got hurt by this.”
“So that means?”
“If they paid that much on you because of what happened then they have a real strong case to get at least that much for the others.”
“Oh…” I think I get it. It’s a whole world I’m not used to for sure.
“So?”
“Uhm, sorry what dad?”
“So what are you going to spend or do with the actual tangible cash?”
“I think most will probably go into my savings account once I get one and the rest maybe for school it depends.”
“It depends on?”
I look at Taylor who’s actually asleep; he looks a bit wrung out. He drifted off while all of us were talking. I just stare at him for a few seconds my feelings and my fears for what’s ahead of us and how soon it might end…he could’ve gone while I was in my coma…gooseflesh and a shiver runs through me just at the thought. My voice is a little hoarse from the emotions. “It depends dad because right now I’ve got other priorities.”

My grand-mum hugs me and so does Holly and Nin. Grand-dad says. “Hey people, lets give them their privacy and we can go and do some of the stuff that needs doing.” He kisses my cheek and rubs my fuzzy head again. Later punkin.” He leaves with the rest and me getting hugs an quiet kisses so no one wakes Tay up.

I watch Taylor sleep. Normally right now I’d be cuddled into him but right now I’m still just got the shivers thinking just how close I was to losing him. He’s in my bed and the back is propped up and he’s sleeping; his hair’s a little mussed up and in his face and he needs to shave a little. I move care fully and lay on my left side beside him and watch him sleeping. Tay’s really beautiful too, I mean some people can’t see a man like that without going all TG or stuff but this is…

Taylor is six foot two inches tall and a muscular but lean one hundred and ninety or so pounds, he’s very nicely muscled without being too overdone. There’s scars and tattoos there from his past but are just the perfect imperfections about him. Nicely tanned, decent cheekbones, strong chin and jaw but he’s not…kind of think of a guy who kind of looks like Paul Walker but with straighter and longer sandy blonde hair and looks a little rougher. The windows are off to the other side of him so from where I’m laying I can see the light on flesh effect kind of diffusing through his hair and the fine blonde stubble he has right now. With the way that looks, and the way he’s sleeping so peacefully. He’s angelic, breathtaking, beautiful…

I really easily and gently move enough to lay my head on his chest and listen to him breathe, my fingers just touch just barely over his tee-shirt and his heart and I just kind of whisper sing to him like a lullaby.

“Watching every motion in my foolish lover’s game.”
“On this endless ocean finally lovers know no shame.”
“Turning and returning to some secret place inside.”
“I’m watching in slow motion as you turn around and say.”

“Take my breath away.”
“Take my breath away”

“Watching I keep waiting still anticipating love.”
“Never hesitating to become the fated ones.”
“Turning and returning to some secret place inside.”
“I’m watching in slow motion as you turn to me and say…”

Taylor’s face turns as I’m looking at him and those sleepy kitten oh so blue-gray eyes open and he looks at me, then sings. “You take my breath away.”
And then…”Through the hourglass I saw you, in time you slipped away.”
“When that mirror crashed and I called you, and turned to hear you say.”
“If only for today…I an unafraid…”

I lean in and kiss him gently and pull less than an inch away, then sing.
“You take my breath away….”
He kisses me then breaks it too but stares into me and sings just inches away.
“You take my breath away…”

I bite my lower lip and look down at where my fingers are still massaging over his heart. I’m caught in the song, I’m caught up with us and how much I love him, I really, love him and that as OTT this seems the song really fits us and what we feel, so…Yeah I keep singing…”Watching every motion in this foolish lovers game.”
“Haunted by the notion somewhere there’s a love in flames.”
“Turning and returning to that secret place inside.”
“Watching in slow motion as you turn to me and say…”
I pause looking at him now and he moves a little shifting in the bed and takes my hand off his chest and holds it. Tay gets right up even closer, his nose just past mine and his lips so close that as he whispers sings to me they’re brushing mine in a caress softer than and velvet… “And every day I’ll look at you and say…You take my breath away…”

There’s tears of love running from my eyes as he gently, very gently kisses me and stares at my eyes pouring his love right into my soul. His hands on mine yet busy and fondling mine. It doesn’t hit me or compute in me past those kisses and that look that I feel the cool sensation of metal slide onto my ring finger…I look down and there’s a well worn little hinged box covered in deep navy blue velvet in one of his hands open and empty and on my hand, on my ring finger there’s this yellow gold ring set with this small but really perfect diamond…I look up at him and he takes both of my hands really gently, timid even and kisses them and asks…oh heaven, there’s tears in his eyes and the need, the aching look there mixed with all that love… “Jenna Powers…will you marry me?”