God’s Men: JAKE LAY AWAKE IN the predawn hours, thinking about Maggie, and what she needed; both now, and when her memory returned. He thought about their years of friendship, how comfortable he’d been with it, her response as he kissed her, the recording he’d listened to, and the evil rising around them. He didn’t want her to have to go through any of it alone.
For the thousandth time since they’d cleaned her house, he wondered what happened. Why she’d thrown his picture, and all the other things.
He’d seen Maggie mad before, and really mad a few times, but never that mad; and he still couldn’t figure out why she had been. As far he knew, nothing had changed.
He was ready to move to a new level of relationship with her, kicking himself for not doing it years ago, but he remembered Matt’s words. He was moving forward, while she was on hold, and they should be doing it together.
He had a brief flash of his thoughts yesterday, and then the dream he’d had of her kissing another man; and he now knew why it had hurt so much.
Maggie was his. It wasn’t some macho property thing; it was the years of relationship, sewing their lives together, and the fact that in most ways they’d been a couple for a long time. She was his, because she wanted to be; because she was his best friend and constant companion. They’d chosen each other to spend their time, hearts, and minds, with.
Out of all the people they each knew, they knew one another in ways no one else had ever known them; and were true to each other, available to one another, and fit like a statue that had been carved from one piece, then intricately separated, without clean lines. They were only a masterpiece together, and he knew it, and had known it for a while.