Status Updates From The Tender Days of May (The...

Oh random to-read wheel, this one seems like a weird choice 😂🤷‍♀️ guess we'll see

Idk man. I think it was good. It was a good read though. The dark parts of the book when he was bobbing around the slums were pretty dark. The details are there. Ray character is very interesting.

Her hands went up and caressed his hair, and every little touch resonated in his heart, healing the scars that had been open for the longest time. 
“But you still didn’t answer, May. Will you marry me?”
She chuckled, trying to hold the tears, her heart ready to explode from overwhelming joy.
“Yes,” she didn’t say but whispered so as if not to scare away his soul that was just starting to wake up.”

And her eyes lit up like an ocean from within its depth, like a thousand lights that shot through the darkness all the way into his soul. He could see the emotions that swelled in them, ready to spill down her cheeks with tears, and he blinked slowly, trying to smile, for he never thought his words could have so much effect on anyone.

“Tell me, Ray,” she whispered. And he finally said it, barely audible as if he was afraid of his own words.
“Because I love you.”

“Tell me why?”
She looked in his eyes, and it was all there—his admittance of what he was and what he could be. Of what he was afraid more than pain and darkness.
The darkness in him was afraid of light. And the answer was gazing back at him through the bluish-gray eyes that were reaching the darkest corners of his soul.

“Will you marry me?”
He gazed at her, tense from uncertainty.
She shook her head, still not understanding.“Why?”
He closed his eyes.
Why did it have to be so complicated?
“Why, Ray?” she insisted, looking at him. “You asked me all these things about what I want. But why would you want to marry me?”
He looked at her and tried to smile but failed.“Just say yes.”
She shook her head again.

She was suddenly overly cheerful, hiding her emotions. “Would you like a drink?” she asked, pouring him one without waiting for a reply, her hands slightly shaking.
“No,” he answered, watching her, his heart heavy with reeling emotions. “I don’t want a drink, May. I want you to be my wife,” he said, and it stopped her in her tracks.

No other woman had ever loved him for what he was without wanting anything in return. How could she accept all this, all of him? Worse—why did he feel so scared, yet realized he was willing to jeopardize everything to be with the woman who gazed at him with more tenderness than his heart could handle? He looked at May in astonishment and wanted to crush the world around and bring it to her feet.

“Life is not a battle, Ray. Love is certainly not.” She walked up to him, lifted her hand, and stroked his face, searching his eyes for the understanding. “Life is what you think it is. Your words,” she said softly. “I think life is love. I thought it all along, and meeting you proved it.”
Lord Ashbee felt a lump in his throat. He wanted to scream, to cry, to take her in his arms and not ever let go.

“How can you say you’ll be fine marrying another man while you love me?”
She didn’t respond.
“If your feelings are so great,” he continued, “how can you stand here and smile while telling me you are going to marry someone else? How can you dance at the party and laugh at the jokes and act happy knowing that you are not going to be with me?”

“How can you smile?” Lord Ashbee swallowed hard and looked away with a smirk. This time the smirk wasn’t a weapon. It was a shield. For his heart ached with so much despair that he couldn’t find the right words. “You haven’t seen me for a year, yet you were happy. What sense does it make?”

“Are you doing this to hurt me?” he asked. “Or is there any other reason you are giving yourself to a man that you have no interest in?” 

He turned to give her a long stare.
“Lord Ramsay? Really?” His eyes burrowed into her with mockery, inquiry, fury.
She tried to wave it off with another smile.
“Ah! Yes! He proposed.”
“And?”
“And what, Ray? You want to know whether I accepted. I probably will. One should never marry for love but for convenience. You said so once.”
His heart turned upside down.

“May.” He chuckled. “Still so sweet. Trying to pretend you don’t care.”
“I do. Oh, I do. I missed you more than anything, Ray.”
She said his name, and it brought back all that it used to mean. He turned abruptly toward her, his eyes burning with intense emotions.
“Then why didn’t you find me?” he said louder, taking a step toward her

Guests talked around them, joked, laughed as May and Lord Ashbee stood on the opposite sides of the room gazing at each other, a year of waiting between them.

He looked around with an absent gaze.
The end of spring, his favorite time.
The time of awakening.
When nature gave birth to its most precious scents.
But in all this picturesque awakening, the triumph of all things that enhanced one’s senses, one thing was missing.
The scent of May.
His May.

It was May again.
It’d been a year since last May.
A year since his May.
He realized he was missing her terribly and despised himself for this. If he could only know where she was and that she was doing fine, he would let it go. Perhaps… But maybe the universe was keeping her away from him for her own sake. He could sell himself to the devil just to see May again.

“A woman that agrees to cross over to the dark world for the sake of love can be twice as dangerous as a man.”