Fic: Fractured Hearts
Title/Chapter: Fractured Hearts (07/07)
Author: Amanda / writefiction
Pairing: Taylor Hanson / OFC (Libby Hanson)
Rating: G
Notes: written for the Don’t Judge a Book… challenge
Other Notes: AU, no Natalie or kids had with her
Warning: none
Word Count: 1,429
Master Post
Summary: Libby and Taylor Hanson have only a year left with their two year old daughter, Lily, who was diagnosed with a fatal cancer. When she finally succumbs to her illness the couple is heartbroken and their marriage begins to fall apart at the seams. Will they be able to fix their fractured hearts, or will they be destined for divorce?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Taylor continued with grief counseling, this time to figure out his feelings about his former fiancée’s death. Libby never asked him what he talked about with Heidi but he always told her that therapy was going well; even if he came home looking like he’d been crying. But Libby knew from experience that crying was sometimes part of therapy and if you cried, it didn’t necessarily mean it was a bad session. So she always smiled at him and said she was glad it was going well. Then one day Taylor came back from therapy with red eyes and he immediately went to Libby and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m ready,” he whispered. Libby didn’t need to be told twice to understand what her husband was talking about.
“Are you sure?” she asked. Taylor nodded and took her by the hand then led her to his office at the back of the house.
Taylor went to his file cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer, a drawer that Libby had never been able to get into and had never bothered to ask why. As Taylor pulled a shoe box from the drawer, a light bulb went off over Libby’s head; the drawer was where Taylor kept his memories of his fiancée.
Taylor moved over to the couch and set the box on the coffee table. Libby gingerly took a seat beside him. “Are you sure?” she asked again. Taylor nodded, and with a deep breath, opened the shoe box. Inside were photos, ticket stubs and other miscellaneous things that Libby could only guess reminded Taylor of Kat. She didn’t speak or touch anything; she waited for Taylor to make the first move.
Taylor cleared his throat and pulled out a few pictures and handed them to his wife. “This is Katrina May Langley,” he said. “My fiancée.” Libby looked at the pictures one by one. Each one showed a beautiful girl in her late teens- early twenties with long dark red hair that fell over her shoulders. She was petite and pretty and the way that Taylor looked at her in one of the pictures showed just how madly in love with her he’d been making Libby’s eyes tear up.
“She was gorgeous, Tay,” she murmured, looking up at her husband with a smile.
Taylor frowned and wiped at a lone tear that trekked down Libby’s face. “Why are you crying?” he asked.
Libby shrugged. “It’s just that… you look so happy with her and I can’t even…” She shook her head. “I can’t even imagine what it must have been like for you to watch her suffer and ultimately die. I’m so sorry, Tay.”
“Thank you,” Taylor whispered. Then he pulled a ticket stub from the box and handed it to his wife. She was surprised to see that it was a ticket to one of Hanson’s concerts. She looked at Taylor with a raised brow. He smirked and said, “We met at one of my concerts. It was kind of funny actually.”
“How so?”
“She didn’t like us,” Taylor answered.
Libby giggled and asked, “Then why was she there?”
Taylor grinned. “Her friend forced her to go. But she kept the ticket stub saying that it was the best concert of her life because it was where she met her future husband.” His smile suddenly turned sad. “It was the best concert of my life, too.”
Libby reached out and rubbed Taylor’s back a little. “I bet it was,” she murmured, her heart aching for her lover.
“It was only a few months before our wedding that she was diagnosed with the cancer,” Taylor said. “We even postponed the wedding so she could get the treatment.” He looked over at Libby and noticed the tears welling in her eyes. “She was the love of my life. I’d never felt that way about anyone before… and then I met you.” He shrugged one shoulder, a tear dripping from his own baby blues. “You really did help me, you got me living again. But I did run away from my feelings and it’s so hard to deal with them now because I feel like I shouldn’t be grieving a past love when I’m married here and now.”
“Oh, Taylor, but you have to. You have to grieve her. There’s no good in just running away,” Libby told him.
Taylor nodded, squeezed Libby’s knee. “I know that now,” he replied. “And today all I did was bawl my eyes out in therapy. But afterwards I felt lighter, like all the misery I had been carrying since her death had suddenly vanished. I feel like, maybe, I can be truly happy for the first time in years.”
Libby smiled. “That’s great, Tay, really great. I’m happy for you.”
Taylor wrapped his arms around Libby as he pulled her against his side and she rested her head on his shoulder. “I think I’m finally moving on from both of them,” he said quietly. “And I hope that they’re together in Heaven. I hope that Kat is looking out for our little girl.”
“I hope so too,” Libby murmured. “I mean, I didn’t know her, but you loved her. She had to be someone special.”
“She was,” Taylor agreed. “She would’ve been a great mom, too.” He paused then said, “And you’ll be a great mom again someday.”
Libby sniffed quietly at Taylor’s words. “I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about that yet.”
“I’m not saying that I want to talk about having another baby,” Taylor explained. “I’m just saying that when the time’s right, you’ll be that outstanding mom I know you are. And just so you know, I’m far from ready to even talk about trying for another kid.”
“Same here,” Libby replied. “It’s too fresh to even think about. Right now I feel like I’ll never want another kid, but I know deep down in my heart that someday I’ll miss being a mommy and I’ll want another baby to love. Just right now, that feeling seems impossible.”
“I understand exactly what you mean because I feel like that too.”
Libby looked up at her husband. “You do?”
Taylor nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
The couple sat for a few minutes in silence. Then Libby spoke up. “Tell me about her,” she said. “Tell me about Kat. What was she like? Did she ever end up liking your music? Tell me your favorite memories.” Taylor smiled to himself and began to tell his wife everything about his late fiancée; all the good and even the bad.
When Taylor had run out of stories to tell his wife, he sighed heavily. “I miss her, Lib. I miss her a lot.”
Libby squeezed Taylor around the middle and kissed his cheek. “I know you do, sweetie. But I’m fairly certain that she’s happy for you, that you found me.”
“You think so?”
Libby nodded. “I know that if the roles were reversed, I’d be happy that you had found her.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said and pressed a kiss to Libby’s hair as they lapsed into silence.
After a moment Libby said, “Hey, Tay?”
“Hmm?”
“You wanna go on a date tonight?” Libby asked.
Taylor smiled to himself and hugged his wife a little tighter. “Sure,” he answered. “But first, what brought this on?”
“Well, I was just thinking that, maybe, we could use this date as a jumping off point.”
“For what?”
“For our second chance at life,” Libby murmured. “Our second chance at being happy. I know that we’re still going to have some hard days, but I’d like to think we’re slowly beginning to move forward with our lives and I’d like to go on a date to kind of, I don’t know, mark the occasion.”
“I like that,” Taylor told her. “I like that a lot.”
So that night when they were out at dinner, Taylor made a toast to happiness, to moving on and to new beginnings. After all these months, the couple finally felt like their fractured hearts had healed, that life could begin anew. They were finally happy even though some sadness still lingered. And they knew they could begin to feel that happiness more often and that the bad days would become fewer and further between. They knew that in the end, they had each other and that’s what mattered the most at this point and that they’d get through the rest of the grief by holding on to each other instead of pushing each other away. For now they were living happily ever after.
[the end]