Flightless Bird, American Mouth - Iron & Wine

Bella's Lullaby - Carter Burwell

They were on her bed. His pale blue shirt, ruined with tear stains lay at the foot of the bed. Anna's head rested on Charlie's shoulder, her dark eyes finally dried of their tears and her fingers playing with the hem of the plain white t-shirt that he wore under his dress shirt. "You brought flowers." Her voice was detached, "Where are they?"

His mouth formed a flat line, "On the stoop."

Anna moved to get up, "I'll get them."

Charlie tugged her back down, wrapping his arms around her. "Stay here," he murmured into her hair. He stroked her back, trying to ease her now rigid form. He kissed her forehead, "Please."

Anna closed her eyes, breathing in. She had missed the way he smelled. It was something she'd attributed to being just Charlie. He always smelled of clean laundry and something slightly burned with male musk. Her body wanted to curl into that scent, feel it cover her the way it had before.

Before he had been so stupid.

"You cheated on me," she whispered.

"You broke up with me," he whispered in return.

Anna's body betrayed her. She breathed him in deeply, her fingers balling up his t-shirt in one fist. "You deserved it." Then, as if to contradict herself, Anna's body threw her left leg over his hip and pressed her forehead to his collar bone.

His hands stroked down her back to her hips then back up in a soothing motion. "I did deserve it."

Anna sniffed, but no tears found their way to her eyes. "What were the flowers?"

"Hmm?" He asked. Her voice had been so soft that he hadn't heard it.

"The flowers," Anna murmured as she pulled back just a little. Dark, turmoil burdened eyes met sorrowful and pained clear blue ones, "What kind of flowers?"

Charlie told her very carefully watching her expression.

Anna's brow creased, brown eyes focusing at the point where the v-necked t-shirt started to reveal his chest. Her lips moved, but she was silent. His gentle stroking of her back was steady. She would get this. She had said she loved flowers because they all had a meaning.

Every flower had a meaning and a purpose.

"I'm sorry, please forgive me," Anna said slowly after a few moments, "I truly believe I love you."

His hands on her back stopped.

Anna's grip on his shirt seemed to tighten. In his arms she was tense again but it wasn't the same rigidity as earlier. This was different. Her breathing changed.

"You…you…" she stuttered out. Her eyes took on that liquid chocolate tone, the one he loved even though it meant she was upset. Anna pressed her fists against his chest though she wasn't sure if she was going to drag him forward or push him away.

"You love me?" It sounded more like a demand than a question.

Charlie just settled for clearing dark blonde strands from her cheek, her eyes, her forehead, and pressed a kiss to her frowning mouth. "I think I do," he told her softly.

There, there it was. That gut wrenching and painful need for him that spiked through her chest and drove her to press her mouth to his. The gaping hole that she'd created by ripping him cleanly out of her life filled up with Charlie's kisses and his words.

He was smiling a little when she finally pulled back from her assault, "Was that an 'I love you too Charlie?'"

"Shut up," she murmured and dragged him back into kissing. "Just shut up Charlie. You're so stupid."

He could live with that.

The plane tickets cost a fortune, but he wouldn't let Anna pay for them. Charlie had informed Tidwell he needed the twenty third to the twenty sixth off. Family emergency was the reason he had given when Tidwell began to question.

Anna wasn't family, not exactly. Well…not yet anyway.

He had a feeling somewhere in his gut that she would be, and soon if he could talk her into it.

Elyria, as he found out, was a couple of inches taller than Anna, and built a little like a Victoria Secret model. She used to be a model, Anna told him, when she was a teenager. She was in back copies of Sears and teen fashion magazines. She also had a mouth on her that would make a sailor blush.

And she told him if he broke Anna's heart that she would rip out his lungs and beat him with them.

He could live with that.

He'd even help her if it really came to that point. Charlie doubted it ever would. Never again. He was dead set against it. He had seen her cry so many times that it would break him to be the source of her pain again. He would never let her cry from suffering again.

The first time Charlie Crews had met Anna Morgan she had cried tears of pain and sorrow.

The night Charlie Crews asked Anna Morgan to marry him she cried tears of joy.

The End