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Fan fiction and fond (mostly) memories
of soap days gone by
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Falling For You
by Deanna Lynn
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Chapter Sixteen
Sheridan stared at Luis standing just on the other side of the room. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but she
knew him well enough to know something was weighing on his mind. She could tell by the tense way in which he held
himself and she had a feeling she knew exactly what it was. Now that Hal had left he would want some answers as
to why she had turned down his marriage proposal. She had no idea how she could tell him her fears without making
him hate her in the process, but she knew she had to. She could never marry him without being completely honest
with him. The only question was after she told him the truth would he still want to marry her.
She took a deep breath as she waited for him to speak. She knew he was trying to find the best way to broach the
subject, but she knew there really wasn’t one. The tension in the room escalated as he finally moved from his spot
by the door and slowly turned to walk down the steps back into the living room. He stopped a few inches in front
of her and as he did, the breath left her lungs. She knew the moment she had been dreading had finally arrived.
It was time she told him about her nightmares, about her fear that she had killed his father.
"Sheridan," Luis said hesitantly as he searched her eyes. "I… I think we need to finish the conversation
we had before Hal showed up. I need… no I deserve to know why you turned me down. You said you loved me and that
you wanted to marry me, but you feel you can’t. I want to know why. Why can’t you marry me, Sheridan?"
He looked at her with a mixture of confusion, hurt, and love. The love is the part that caused the tears to fall,
the confusion is the part that caused her to hesitate, and the hurt is the part that caused her fall back against
the couch and cover her face in her hands. How could she tell him without making him hate her? You can’t, a tiny
voice in the back of her mind answered, you can’t because you know you deserve his hatred. You killed his father.
You’re a wicked, wicked girl, Sheridan. No one will ever love you.
The image of the body under the bloody sheet flashed in her mind and she got lost in the nightmare that had once
again worked its way into her life. She looked down and started trembling in terror as she saw that her hands were
no longer clean. In the next instant, she saw herself as a little girl standing in the middle of the living room
in the Crane mansion staring at the floor.
"I didn’t mean to do it." She screamed staring at the blood on the white sheet that covered the body
lying on the floor. "I didn’t mean to do it daddy! I didn’t mean to kill him."
Sheridan was so lost her memories of that night that she had no idea she was speaking aloud or that Luis had pulled
her into his arms and sheltered her in his warm embrace. As the memories continued to surface, Sheridan let the
horrible truth of that night spill out and when she was done, she told him her deepest darkest fear – her fear
that the body under the bloody sheet was none other than his father, Martin Fitzgerald.
Luis sucked in a deep breath as Sheridan’s voice took on an almost childlike form then he stopped breathing altogether
when she recounted the horror she witnessed all those years ago. She told him about playing in the living room
when she was supposed to have been in bed. She told of how she’d had a toy that was supposed to open but wouldn’t
and how she’d gotten her father’s letter opener off his desk and tried to open it. Then she told him of how she’d
heard her father’s voice from the other room and being scared she was going to get into trouble. She told of how
she’d hidden behind a curtain in the living room so he wouldn’t see her when he came into the living room a few
minutes later.
She had watched through a crack in the curtain as he picked up the phone and began to dial a number. She remembered
hearing him say a name – Fitzgerald. Then she remembered how his voice had taken on an odd tone as he spoke to
the man. "If only you had listened, Fitzgerald.
If you had then it wouldn’t have had to come to this. No, you listen to me. Either you come here tonight or tomorrow
I make life for you and your family a living hell. You know I can Martin and you know I will. Yes, I thought you’d
see things my way. Take the back entrance. I’m in the living room… waiting."
She had closed the curtain as her father’s icy laughter filled the air. He had called for Julian to come into the
living room and her brother had brought another man with him, a man she’d never seen before. She told him of how
she had seen four men in the living room that night - her father, brother, and two other men, one of whom she had
seen many times before. She told him how her father yelled at one man, the man she had seen before, and how he
had threatened to take away all the man held dear – namely his family. Then she watched as her father pulled a
gun from the pocket of his coat and aimed it at the man.
Sheridan told him of how she screamed when she saw the gun and of how one of the men, the one she didn’t know had
started to walk toward her. She told of how he’d walked up toward her and backed her up against the wall. The look
on his face had scared her and when he reached for her, she’d raised her hand to hold him off and the letter opener
she’d forgotten she’d held had stabbed him in the chest. She felt the letter opener go deeper into his chest and
the man had stumbled backwards in shock. That was when she had looked down at her hands and saw the blood on them.
She heard her father asked "What have you done, Sheridan, what have you done?"
After that she had passed out, but before she fell to the ground she heard a noise that sounded like a firecracker.
Luis sat frozen for several seconds as that last statement played in his brain. Did it mean that her father had
pulled the trigger that was aimed at the man? The man that quite possibly could have been his father? That seemed
to be the way things were pointing, but it still didn’t sit right with him. Who was the other man Sheridan had
seen that night? The one she had stabbed with the letter opener? What had happened to him? Had he died? And why
was her father threatening his? It had to be something big for her father to want his dead and he had no doubt
about that fact. But what was the secret and how could he find out about it?
He pulled back slightly to look at the trembling woman in his arms and wondered if she knew what the secret was.
If somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew the reason her father had threatened his and ultimately wanted him
dead and if she did, how could he get her to remember it without causing her even more pain than she was already
facing? |
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