What an intensely emotional and gripping chapter. I wanted to clap my hands over my eyes when I read this:
“Lois,” he was using a louder voice than I had expected, but I still didn't say anything. I hadn't even finished getting up the stairs – one foot was on the landing, but the other was still on the staircase and I couldn't seem to make myself move.
“Lois, I'm sorry,” he said, but I still said nothing.
“Hey.” Now his voice was soft. And in fact, now he was using his voice rather than… I turned around. Clark was behind me. He was the person who had been calling to me before. Of course he was – Clark – the man I had just kissed. Not Chad, my husband. What did he have to be sorry for?
Clark looked past me and saw Chad. I saw the color drain from his face and then suddenly he was all flushed.
Lois is running away from Clark, she comes home and sees Chad - who is definitely the last person she wants to meet at that very moment - and she hears Chad calling out to her. Only it isn't Chad. It is Clark who has come running after her, and in spite of his superpowers he is distraught enough to miss the presence of Chad. Until he is staring right into Chad's eyes, after he has just caught up with Chad's wife, while calling her name and pleading with her. How much more embarrassing can things get????
So Lois has to make a choice. She has to choose between Clark and Chad. I love how thoughtfully you wrote this chapter, how you showed us Lois's doubts, stalling and hesitation. And I love how slowly Lois was coming to a realization of her own true feelings. At first, while she knew that she had to choose whether or not to take back Chad fully into her life again, she wasn't even thinking that she was choosing between Chad and Clark. She was choosing between Chad and not-Chad. It wasn't until the very end of this chapter that she realized what kind of choice she was really making:
I couldn't imagine my life without Clark in it? Clark? How could that be?
Not that it mattered. One quick glance up into his face and I knew it was true. I couldn't picture my life without Clark in it. Or I could, but didn't want to – couldn't bear the thought.
I had walked away from the man I had been in love with since I was sixteen, but somehow, imagining a life without Clark was too hard to contemplate.
Lovely. And all us diehard LnC fans - by that I mean Lois and Clark fans, not Lois and Chad fans - all of us are delighted. But again I want to thank you for writing Lois so carefully, for making her commitment to Chad so honest and true. But this chapter was such a perfect way of showing her when that commitment must finally end, and give way to another commitment.
Ann
