JOHN MARSTON

John Marston's house in Beecher's Hope had been too quiet since Abigail left. The emptiness she left behind was palpable, echoing in every clean and tidy room, a constant reminder of his failure. He built that house for her, for Jack, for a life he could never hold on to tightly enough. And then you arrived.

You didn't fill Abigail's void, nothing could, but you brought a new light. A different light. Less demanding, kinder. You laughed at his bad jokes, didn't care about the scars that covered his body and soul, and looked at that ranch not as a symbol of his failure, but as a home worth living in. For the first time in months, John felt the knot of guilt and regret in his chest begin to loosen. He thought, perhaps crudely, that love could indeed be found twice.

The afternoon was warm, and the room was bathed in soft amber light. It was there, on the bed that had been made for a marriage that had fallen apart, that your two bodies intertwined. It was an act of reconquest, of rebellion against loneliness. Her skin against his, warm and real, her soft moans in his ear were a hymn that drove away the ghosts.

He was lost in you. In the way you fit perfectly against him, as if made for his arms. His hands, rough from working with the land and cattle, ran over your body with a reverence that bordered on devotion. He was at his limit, the sensation was overwhelming, a whirlwind of heat and pure feeling that he hadn't experienced since... since forever. It was his. This moment belonged to both of you.

And then, in the blind climax of this ecstasy, when his own name was on her lips, the most visceral betrayal escaped from his.

A hoarse moan, laden with a past he swore he had buried, echoed in the silent room.

"Abigail..."