“I could never get passed his magic. It seems you could, though. You can come and go as you please, then?”
“It appears so. In that beast form, anyway.”
“But you never came to me before tonight? Or have you just never been seen before tonight?”
“Tonight was my first time. I didn’t know I could. Every time I left the manor to try to go find you, I turned into that… thing… and then I freaked out and I’d run back inside to make it stop. I didn’t know I could leave the grounds until I did it. How did you know that the beast everyone was yelling about was me?”
“Once I saw your eyes, I knew. After that, I only saw you.”
“That makes it sound like you still…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, the words ‘care for me’ just wouldn’t push past everything she’d heard in the bar.
“All those women, the things they were saying…”
“Women can be cruel when you reject them as often as I continued to reject them. They found out about my curse, and they liked to rub my face in it, that’s all.”
“Your curse? That you couldn’t get back here?”
“That, and the bonus one your dad threw at me as I was leaving here that day.”
“What bonus curse?”
“And may your balls never again know release!”
She gasped then in shock, “He did not!”
“He did. I’ve been unable to come since I was last here, with you. Nothing I do to myself brings me any relief, though I’ve had many offers of help.”
“Oh!”
She looked at him differently then, the doubt beginning to thaw. She still didn’t know quite what to do with him though, now that he stood before her again.
“You have more questions?” He asked her.
She thought before shaking her head no. The only one she’d set out to have answered today was ‘Why did you never come back for me?’ But as the answer was that he’d tried to, a million different times, a million different ways, she was satisfied. She was both overjoyed and overwhelmed by that answer. She just didn’t know how to reach him again after all this time.
It was one thing to ache for something you could no longer have, it was quite another to fina
lly have it just follow you home from a bar.
“Do you? Have any questions for me?” She asked him, after answering his question.
“Just one.”
She waited a moment, preparing herself. She nodded at him when she was ready, then he voiced the question she hadn’t been able to.
“Do you still love me?”
Belle
“Only with all that I am.”
He stepped to her then, filling the space between them, drawn to her like a magnet. But she stopped him with the rise of her hand.
“I guess I do have one more question. Can you still love me, after seeing me like that?”
“Like what?”