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“I like the sound of that,” Eleanor agreed.

Gabriel surprised himself by continuing to talk. He had never been one to share his feelings openly, but he felt a safe vulnerability with Eleanor.

“You are the first person I think about every morning and the last person I think about every night,” he continued. “I so wanted to take you into my bed last night after our wedding, but this is the way it was supposed to happen. It would have been too soon and too much pressure. It would not have felt as good as it just did.”

“I want to say that we took the longer path, but we really didn’t.” Eleanor twisted her finger around and around in one of his chest tufts. “We did all of this so quickly, so perhaps we took the longer path.”

Gabriel enjoyed the way he felt with Eleanor resting on his chest and playing with his hair.

“I want to rush, but I don’t,” Gabriel admitted. “We don’t need to talk about starting a family just yet. I want to know you more fully before we do that, but I have been thinking a lot about my own father of late.”

Eleanor stopped twisting her finger through his chest hair and went back to stroking his chest.

“Oh?” she asked. “What have you been thinking about? That is if you want to share it with me.”

“I want to share everything with you,” he admitted.

“You’ve been with me through everything, and I will be with you through anything,” Eleanor said.

“My father didn’t speak a lot during the final years of his life. I was a man by then, eighteen, nineteen, but I didn’t feel like one, not for a long time.”

“You were still so young,” Eleanor soothed.

“We have very different experiences of marriage, and our marriage so far is nothing like anything either of us could have imagined.”

Eleanor nodded against his chest.

“Your mother did not have her love returned by your father. My father did have his love returned by my mother, but that is what broke him when she passed. If my mother had not loved my father as fully as she loved him, perhaps he would have been able to move on.”

Eleanor moved her hand and stroked Gabriel’s arms. “That must have been hard for you to see your father like that.”

“It was,” Gabriel admitted.

The dread filled him briefly but did not encompass him. When he was younger, he felt that dread when his father was around.

“After my mother’s death, my father became cold, bitter, and emotionally distant. I admit that I barely recognized him at times. He was happiest when he was in the local tavern, drinking his sorrows away, and giving money away to the drunkards who surrounded him, looking for a morsel here and there.”

Eleanor sighed.

“My father never gave me advice,” Gabriel told her. “He tried to once, and I have carried his words around with me for years, but I’m glad they were never so fully ingrained that I succumbed to them.”

“What were his words?” Eleanor asked softly.

Gabriel felt his breath quicken as he spoke about his father, and he knew Eleanor would feel that change, perhaps even in the beating of his heart.

“He warned me never to fall in love,” Gabriel said. “He didn’t tell me or discuss it with me; he warned me. And this was during a rare moment of sobriety, so I knew that he meant it. He straight out warned me that if I ever fell in love, I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

“One day without regret,” Eleanor pointed out.

“And one day of knowing him a little better after being married to you, Eleanor.”

“What do you mean?” Eleanor asked.

“The thought of losing you at some point in my life scares me. I like to think that I would not become like him, but I know it would change me.”

“I will never know your father, but I know you, Gabriel, and I know how strong you are. I don’t believe you would end up like him. And if we could change the subject, I would prefer to talk less about my death. I have no intention of going anywhere anytime soon. We will grow old together, and we should make a pact to die together.”

“Well, that sounds morbid,” Gabriel laughed.