So over the weeks of slowly slicing away the layers, seeing what was underneath, feeling myself slip into the spaces to ease the sting, I started to see it was different. She was different. I was different. We were different.
It wasn't that Prue was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. It wasn't that she was the smartest or the funniest or the most open sexually. It was the unique combination of shy and extroverted. It was her sharp tongue and her soft, uncertain words. It was her confidence marred with her insecurity. It was her unique set of skills. It was the way she said my name. It was the way she baked with Prince blaring and the way she championed for her ridiculous as fuck TV show. It was the way she snuggled in close when I hauled her against me. It was the way she always took a deep breath as she did so, like she was trying to breathe me in. It was the way she lifted her chin when she didn't like an instruction. It was in her practicality mixed with her impressive amount of silly. It was in the fierceness in which she loved her father, in her loyalty to him despite what he had put her through.
I wasn't delusional. I wasn't an easy man at times to get along with. I looked for faithfulness, devotion in the people around me. And I had yet to find a woman who possessed it quite the way Prue did.
Maybe that spoke to me in some way.
Maybe it gave me hope that I had never known I had even craved before.
My mom and dad had a shit relationship. They fought. They hauled insults like normal people tossed casual conversation. They raged and loathed and stuck with each other out of sheer need of survival. It didn't instill in me any urge to settle down, to look for that, to even believe in love.
But the way my uncle and Mandy were, yeah, that was the shit of those Disney movies Prue liked so much.
Maybe, without my realizing it, a part of me had taken that in and buried it deep.
And something about Prue surfaced it, dusted it off, tried to make it shine.
At first, I fought it. I resented it. I took that out on her in ways that had to have confused her, thrown her off, fucked with her understanding of what was developing between us.
Fact of the matter was, I was an observant man. It was hard to run a casino without being.
As such, I knew immediately when her feelings went from resentment, fear, and a base animal attraction to more. Much more. It was in the way she watched me. It was the way she read into everything I said and did. It was the way she melted into me when she was given the opportunity. It was in the softer way she spoke to me. It was in the disappointment every time I tried to drive a wedge. It was in the way she fucking forgave it every time.
Taking her away was my attempt to see how she was, how we were, outside the confines of my house, outside of the functional, though not fully healthy, routine we had fallen into.
So the morning we woke up and packed to head back home, I knew what was going to happen.
But then there was her sad hanging between us, making her cuddle in during the flight, but pull away as soon as we landed. The entire ride back to the house was silent. And as soon as we got back, Aaron showed up, fucking bad timing as always. I had to deal with him and Prue disappeared. By the time I got back upstairs, she was in her own bed, passed the fuck out.
The tear-stained cheeks didn't exactly escape me either.
Unsure why she chose her bed over mine, and figuring for some reason I wasn't privy to, she needed space from me, I went to bed in my room, tossing and fucking turning without her there.--The next morning, after Matt and Prue went off to the store after Prue expressly asked to go with him, her eyes still sad, her shoulders slumped, I got a knock on my office door.
"Mack Marlow," one of my men told me, making me sit up stiffly in my seat.
Mack.
I looked down at the calendar on my desk, shocked to notice it had been a month since he went in. It had felt just like days.
"Boss?"
"Yeah, send him in," I said, waving a hand despite the vice grip that wrapped itself around my intestines.
Mack walked in a minute later, in a suit as usual, looking a sight more serious than I had ever seen him before.
"Mack," I said, nodding at him as he closed in on my desk.