Never My Love

A Gaby fanfic

based on

the “Notes of a Journey” Trilogy

Chapter 3

by PB

Her eyes where still closed when she rolled over to the middle of the bed and instinctively reached out to cuddle with Maddy, only to find an empty space. Thinking she was in the bathroom, Gaby relaxed for several minutes before realising that she hadn't returned.

“Mad?” Gaby quietly called out and upon hearing no response, propped herself up on one elbow and called out again in a louder voice while staring in the direction of the bedroom door.

“Maddy?”

“I'm in here, sweetheart…” Maddy softly replied as Gaby's head turned at the sound of her wife's voice.

Throwing back the covers, Gaby worked her way to the edge of the large mattress and as soon as she was on her feet, she headed off to the small alcove that adjoined the bedroom while adjusting her twisted nightgown as she went. When she entered the small sitting area, she saw Maddy had opened the drapes and was quietly seated on the window bench with one leg tucked up under her and patting the cushion beside her.

“What're you doing here, darling? It's only a-quarter-to-three,” Gaby softly wondered as she sat down beside her bride. “You're gonna be in great shape when we meet Cheryl an' Diane at this ski resort...”

“That's today?” Maddy softly asked.

“Well ... we did tell ‘em, Thursday...” Gaby quietly replied with a shrug of her shoulder.

“Oh...” Maddy's voice trailed off as her eyes once again, drifted out to the mountains.

“Are you okay, Mad?” Gaby asked as she put her arm around her wife and pulled her close.

“I ... was looking at the mountains. They're really quite pretty in the full moon,” Maddy softly replied and then added in a voice not much more than a whisper, “… an' thinking…”

“…'bout us?” Gaby softly wondered.

“Not really … more like … about me.”

“I thought we'd settled all that long ago, luv…” Gaby whispered. She got up off the bench and then taking Maddy's hands in hers, gently pulled her to her feet.

“So did I ... until I read… “

“My diary…?” Gaby softly interrupted as she wrapped her arms around her bride in a loving embrace. “Mum told me you guys found it when cleaning out my old room last summer.”

“How'd you know I read it?” Maddy whispered, her moist eyes reflecting in the soft glow of the full moon.

“I know you ... that an' Mum tellin' me she saw you when she came back into the room.”

“She didn't say anything.”

“No, she didn't … but ... she did tell me that all she saw ... was you ... sitting at my desk, bent over my diary an' crying. We both knew you'd find out sometime ... but Mum hoped I'd be there when you did. I wasn't ... so she gave you some time to yourself, instead.”

“Sweetheart ... I'm sor...”

“Please don't apologize, darling. As far as I'm concerned ... you had every right,” Gaby soothed. As she pulled her close, Maddy laid her head upon her wife's bare shoulder. “Why's it bothering you now? You know how I feel about you…”

“I can't help it. It just seems to be ‘there' ... whenever I have too much time to myself (sniff) . Why didn't you tell me how much I really hurt you back when we first got back together?”

“… ‘cuz I love you … pure an' simple. Would it've served any purpose to make you feel bad for something you did when we were kids? Maybe even push you away again? We can't do anything about the past … but we do have each other, now ... an' that's all I care about,” Gaby softly explained.

(sniff) “Promise me you won't leave me because of what I did?”

“Mad ... I stood up in church an' took you for my wife ... in front of both our families an' all of our friends. Face it ... you're stuck with me for an eternity.”

“Eternity?” Maddy quietly wondered.

“That's wot it sez on our Marriage Licence. You did read the fine print, didn't you?” Gaby smugly whispered.

“No ... but ... I can live with that,” Maddy softly replied as she looked into Gaby's moonlit face. “I love you, sweetheart...”

“I love you, too...” Gaby whispered as they tightened their hold on each other and their lips met in a gentle kiss.

“Better?” Gaby later whispered.

“Mmmmm,” Maddy quietly purred while she snuggled closer to her love. “I know I'm being silly ... but...”

“Shhhh ,” Gaby whispered as the two girls continued to hold each other.

“I've got an idea ... let's get dressed,” Gaby abruptly suggested after a silence.

“What?”

“Since we're up … let's go for a walk by the lake. No use wasting all this romantic moonlight.”

“Now?” Maddy softly asked. “What about skiing?”

“We'll manage ... besides ... you know a better time for a pair of love struck insomniacs to take a moonlight stroll? We won't go far ... an' we'll keep the hotel's lights in sight as a beacon.”

“You know you're crazy … don't you?”

“So you've told me ... several times,” Gaby smugly mentioned as she led Maddy by the hand, back to the bedroom.

“This is gonna make for one l-o-n-g day … ya know that?” Maddy playfully reminded her wife as they both stripped down and started to get dressed.

“Romance an' hormones wait for no girl! We can always have a nap later ... then go meet them.”

“Will we need these?” Maddy asked, holding up the base clothing they bought at Monod's the other day.

“I doubt it…” Gaby offered.

“Bet it's cold out there,” Maddy countered as she pulled her sweater on.

“I promise … we won't feel it,” Gaby mischievously replied as she pulled her jeans up over her tights.

“Ooooo … I like the sound of that!” Maddy quietly squealed.

Moments later, the girls were dressed and grabbing their ski jackets before heading out the door. Out of habit, Maddy made a grab for her bag.

“Don't think you'll need that, luv … but we will need this,” Gaby remarked as she slid the room pass into her jacket pocket and zipped it closed.

Later, when she left the room, Gaby closed the door behind her as softly as she could before quietly racing down the hallway to join Maddy waiting at the bank of elevators. Upon reaching the ground floor, the girls found themselves walking through an eerily silent lobby. The only person they saw as they approached the hotel's main entrance was one individual working at the check-in desk. Once outside, it was a quick right turn and they were soon strolling hand-in-hand, down towards the lake.

“It's nice out here, innit?” Gaby softly asked as the girls slipped an arm around each other's waist. “Let's go this way an' get away from the hotel grounds.”

As they strolled along the hotel's waterfront, the semi-wooded developed shoreline and wide plowed-out walkways gave way to the natural beauty of a thick Pine forest and the undeveloped wilderness. True to Gaby's word, they only found themselves wandering a few hundred meters from the hotel grounds, but the difference was striking.

“Mmmm ... you can't beat that moon,” Maddy dreamily offered as she looked up at the stars in the clear night sky and nodded towards the full moon while they carefully shuffled on the snow-covered ice out on the lake, a couple of metres from the wooded shoreline.

“I wish we could package this and take it back with us,” Gaby agreed.

“Turn around and lookit the mountains across the lake, sweetheart!”

“I think Doug told us that one over there, is Mt. Fairview.”

“In a way, they kinda remind me of when you rode through the Pyrenees … don't they?”

“A bit … but when I rode through them, I was too busy peddlin' to enjoy the scenery. Now these ... I can enjoy!”

“Tends to remind you of where we fit in this world … doesn't it, sweetheart?

“Makes you think, anyway.”

“Don't see snow this deep back ‘ome too often, either…” Maddy remarked as she buried her boots with ease by cautiously shuffling her feet on the smooth lake ice.

“Careful, luv … maybe we should move back off the ice … the chances of one or both of us going down on our butts is considerably less if we hug a tree…” Gaby playfully suggested.

“Okay.” Holding each onto other for support, the pair slowly made their way off the ice and onto the relative comfort of feeling solid ground beneath the snow.

“I wonder if we'll bump into any animals, out here.”

“What? Wolves an' stuff? Somehow I kinda doubt it. They'll see us first … an' stay away.”

“It'd be nice if we saw something, though…” Maddy offered as she snuggled into her wife's side while they slowly walked amongst the Pines. As they started climbing the steep slope, Gaby steered her wife towards a small clearing.

“Over there, Mad … crikey! I'm glad I don't have to climb this on a bike!”

As they walked into the clearing, Maddy stopped after a few paces and almost at the same time, Gaby turned to face her.

“You were right,” Maddy softly purred. She removed her gloves and after placing them in her jacket pockets, she gently pulled Gaby's hair out from under her ski jacket and arranged it so that it framed her face and fell down the front in soft blonde waves.

“About?”

“I don't feel the cold…” Maddy whispered seductively before wrapping her arms around her bride and pulling her into an intense kiss. As their lips parted, she decided that while she had the courage, she had to ask the very question that troubled her earlier.

“Can I ask you something, sweetheart?”

“About?” Gaby softly wondered. The girls continued to embrace each other as they spoke in hushed tones, lest they awake any sleeping creature in the surrounding forest.

“Your diary?” Maddy replied while trying not to bit her lower lip.

“Mad...”

“I need to know … please, Gabs…”

“Well ... okay … but this is the last time I'll talk about this … alright, darling?”

“Promise you won't get mad at me?”

“Upset maybe … but … not at you. It's something I'd sooner forget.”

“I'm sorry. I just thought if you put it in your diary...”

“At the time it was important to me. It helped me to get past it … but now I want to forget it.”

“If you'd rather I didn't…”

“No, luv … I think you have every right to ask … an' I promise I'll do my best to answer. Okay?”

“Okay … if you're sure...”

“I'm not ... but ... we're gonna have to deal with this sometime, so it might as well be now.”

“Okay ... think back to the entry for your fourteenth birthday…”

“Wot ‘about it?” Gaby knew what was coming.

“Ummm ...as I read it ... I sensed there was much more to it than you actually wrote...”

“If I didn't write it ... maybe it wasn't important?”

“I think it was … an' … I found what I didn't read, very disturbing...”

“Oh,” Gaby replied in a soft, almost inaudible, whisper. “I don't want to hurt you, Mad...”

“Then don't answer...” Maddy whispered after sensing the anxiety in Gaby's voice.

(sigh) “I think we both know I have to, don't we?” As Gaby stood in the moonlit snow with her arms tightly wrapped around Maddy, she knew time had come to shed the more painful aspects of her past.

“I'm only askin' because I love you,” Maddy whispered as she tenderly stroked Gaby's cheek.

“Maybe that's why it's so hard for me to answer … but…” Gaby gently laid her head upon her wife's shoulder as Maddy softly questioned the diary entry.

“You wrote ‘it was like Prue's all over'. Those words have haunted me ever since I first laid eyes on them. I know whatever it was that did happen back there ... and what happened at your party, had your mum and Jules terrified ‘it' would happen again. You even mentioned that your mum had her follow you when you walked out … why? What … what happened at Prue's that scared them so much? Tell me … please?”

(sigh) “At Prue's ... everyone was doing all they could to stay away from me … I kept thinking about how the ‘gang' had changed towards me … an' how you … an' I … had changed towards each other.” Gaby paused to take a breath and noticed the reflecting moonlight in Maddy's eyes.

“You don't really want to hear this, do you?”

(sniff) “I have to know, sweetheart ... and I think you need to talk about it ... all of it.” Her whispered reply was weak as she wiped a tear away before it ran down her cheek.

“Yeah, maybe you're right. Well ... later when we went back to the Walters' … sis an' I were talking with Deb an' I ‘member Deb asked me what I liked about the trip ... other than the cyclin' bit. You know what? I really couldn't answer her … ‘cuz … everything else was like a really bad dream ... except it wasn't. I didn't want to answer her … so instead ... I ran off to the loo just to get out of the room.”

Gaby paused again and pulled Maddy closer, as much for inner strength as anything else, while she searched for her next words.

“When I didn't come right back … Jules came lookin' for me.”

Following a pause that felt much longer than it actually was, Gaby continued. “She found me in our room … shakin' out a handful of pills from a brand new bottle that was sitting on the shelf.”

“Pills? What … kind of ... pills?” Maddy's reluctant question was spoken barely above a whisper as she probed for an answer she knew she didn't want to hear.

“Some headache pills that contained codeine. I knew that if I took enough of them…”

“Ohhh, Gabeee …why?” Maddy quietly asked in a pleading whine. Gaby gave her wife another gentle squeeze and a kiss on the forehead, before continuing with her story.

“The next day before we got on the bus for Washington, Jules told Fran an' Jessica about the previous night ... an' for the rest of the trip home, Jules didn't want to leave me alone. That's why Fran had us share the room.”

Gaby ever so briefly, closed her eyes in thought before going on with her story.

“When we got back to Warsop … we told Mum an' Dad everything … the trip … us … an' … the pills. Jules an' I convinced ‘em that everything was okay an' that I wasn't going to try it again ... an' they believed us, too … right up until my birthday. When Mum an' Jules saw the emotional mess I was in right after wot you an' Em pulled, they were both sure that I'd try again … an' … they wouldn't be able to stop me. They were real scared, Mad.”

“That's why she had Jules follow you home?”

“Uh huh.”

“Why (sniff) …?” The tracks from Maddy's tears shimmered when the shadows from the trees allowed the soft moonlight to touch her face. “Why'd you even think about doing it? Nothin's that bad.” (sniff)

“Depends. Losing the ‘gang' in Grottoes wasn't exactly the end of my world … ‘specially as we were goin' to move, anyway … but … losing you … was. You hafta understand, Mad … you were … an' are … my … life.”

“Gaby (sniff )…” Maddy whispered through trembling lips, as she tightened her hold on Gaby. “If Jules wasn't there (sob) ... you would've killed yourself because of me ... I (sob) never imagined that yo ... I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm … so … very … sorry... (sob) ”

“Shhhhhh ... it's okay.”

“No, it's not!”

“If that's what it took for us to really find each other … I'm not sorry it happened ... not one little bit. Watching you walk up that aisle and stand beside me in that church, was worth every pain-filled day of those four years.” As she softly uttered those words, Gaby looked deep into her wife's eyes and gently wiped a few tears from her cheek.

“ There's no love - like your love … And no other - could give more love. Sound familiar? ”

“Everything I do ... (sniff) ” Maddy whispered.

“I do for you...” Gaby quietly completed the thought. As she did so, her voice trailed off while she gently pulled Maddy into a tender kiss.

“You know I'm not going to settle for anything less than being with you for that eternity,” Maddy playfully whispered once their lips parted.

“I can live with that,” Gaby softly replied through a weak smile.

“But … you have to promise me, here an' now … that you'll never do that again ... an' … that you'll talk to me and let me help you if ... you ever start to feel that way, again. Okay? Promise me! I love you too much, Gabs (sniff) … an' I don't want to have to live without you.”

“I promise. I love you, Mad! I really do…” The two remained locked in a silent embrace for some time before Gaby spoke again. “I'm sorry … it's not much of a romantic moonlight walk, was it?”

“I should be the one apologizing … after all, I was the one to ask the question.”

“Yeah ... but I was the one who took all night to answer it ... sorry. Once I started, something inside told me it was time to tell you.”

“I'm glad you did, sweetheart. Now (sniff) maybe we can both put ‘it' behind us.”

“Maybe you're right...” Gaby quietly agreed.

“You told Ally, though ... didn't you?”

“We talked a couple of days after the party … she said something?”

“Not in so many words … but … she once told me that you loved me more than life itself … an' now after tonight ... I know exactly what she meant,” Maddy softly replied through a weak grin.

“You wanna go back?”

“No … not unless you want to,” Maddy quietly offered. “Can we stay out here a bit longer? I find it rather peaceful … an' … very romantic.”

“Not just saying that to make me feel better?” Gaby softly asked.

“Uh uh. Look around you … this place … the moonlight … you in my arms. I don't need anything more to feel like I do,” Maddy seductively whispered as she lay her head on Gaby's shoulder while she continued to hold her.

“Besides, it's lovely here. Doesn't it remind you of one of those Christmas cards we saw the other day? The mountains … fresh untouched snow on the trees and ground … well ... ‘cept for our footy-prints… “

“They do kinda ruin things a bit …don't they?” Gaby playfully interjected as she looked back along the trail of two sets of footprints in the otherwise unblemished snowfall.

“It's quiet, too … ‘cept for that Owl,” Maddy quietly continued.

“I think the French call it, ‘ambiance'…”

“Sweetheart…”

“What?”

“Less talk…?” Maddy breathed, as she pulled Gaby into an intense ‘French Kiss'. When they eventually parted, Gaby took a deep sigh while unzipping her ski jacket to let the cooler night air, circulate.

“A little warm, are we?” Maddy knowingly joked as she playfully traced a finger over the front of her wife's sweater, ensuring she repeatedly brushed against a nipple.

“What do you think?” Gaby cooed as she tenderly caressed Maddy's cheek with her hand.

“I'll take that as a compliment,” Maddy mischievously whispered, before unzipping her own jacket and pulling her wife in to her for an encore performance.

“Ever see so many stars?” she quietly asked as they later stood holding each other and looking up at the night sky.

“No light pollution … just us … an' nature,” Gaby softly offered.

“Oh … quick, sweetheart!” Maddy enthused as she pointed out the falling star. “Did you make your wish?”

“Uh huh … but I can't tell you what it is … can I?”

“Not if you want it to come true...”

“Then … I won't,” Gaby whispered as she held Maddy close.

“C'mon, darling … let's take advantage of all this moonlight…” Maddy softly hinted after a brief silence. The two girls linked hands and slowly left the clearing, occasionally grabbing a tree to slow their decent down the slope as they headed back the short distance to the frozen shoreline.

“Which way?” Gaby wondered when they reached the lake. Maddy looked back to the hotel, then turned and looked into the moonlit landscape, further up along the shore before decisively pointing towards the wilderness.

“That way!”

As they cautiously made their way through the calf-deep snow following the shoreline, Gaby put her arms around Maddy's waist and pulled her close.

“Sweetheart? ... Mum said she an' Dad came here before I was born. Wonder if they felt like we do?”

“I'm sure they did … but somehow, I can't see them talking any midnight walks,” Gaby thoughtfully answered.

“How about your ‘rents? Can you see them here … walking like us?”

“There was a time when I really didn't think so…”

“An' now?”

“I can easily see them out here.”

“With all they've been through … it'd make a nice anniversary present, wouldn't it?”

“Their thirtieth is in June … well into racing season.”

“So … we got married in May, but we're honeymooning now…”

“An' they like the winter. Hmmm … something to think about,” Gaby pondered, then abruptly asked, “How ‘bout yours?”

“Mine?”

“Well … if … we manage to do this for Mum an' Dad … surely your parents deserve something. If nothing else … they gave me you…”

“This could get expensive, couldn't it?”

“Uh huh. When we get home, we'll hafta do some serious number crunching an' see if this is even feasible. Okay?”

“I think Mum and Dad would understand if we only did this for your ‘rents. They know what they've been through … an' I think they could use it. Besides, they've never really had time alone since your mum's cancer … have they?”

“Like I said … we'll do some number crunching when we get ‘ome … between our combined salaries and my sponsorships…”

“Let's try ... okay?”

“Okay...”

“I left my watch back in the room … what time is it, sweetheart?”

“It's a bit past five … if that means anything,” Gaby replied after twisting her wrist in the moonlight to see her watch face.

“Maybe we should start thinking about heading back,” Maddy hinted.

“Now? We'll be too early for breakfast an' it won't take us that long to get ready for skiing. The first shuttle doesn't leave ‘til seven.”

“Who said anything about getting ready for skiing? We can have … ‘breakfast' … back in the room,” Maddy softly cooed with an impish smile as she took Gaby's hand and turned to head back.

(to be continued)