Anne leaned forward, her face illuminated by the candlelight to touch his face.
"Happy Birthday, Andrew." She said again with unbridled tenderness in her voice.
The shock in his eyes shifted as he moved to sit up, his gaze moving down to her hand where she held the familiar looking simple cake that carried a single candle.
He seemed speechless for a long time, processing the strange emotions surfacing within him.
In her eyes he saw love, tender and deep as she stared at him. When had anyone ever genuinely looked at him like this before?
He recalled a twelve year old boy who looked at a cake with so much hatred in his heart, the boy who pretended to no longer care about a day other kids anticipated, a day other kids shared specially with their parents showering gifts and loving words on them. That boy pretended not to care anymore until he truly no longer cared.
