Mary in his arms was enough to wipe away other concerns.
In another timeline, he’d needed decades to get over Katie, to find Mary, and to accept the idea that he wasn’t poison to every living being he came into contact with. She’d had to break through walls and put up with a bunch of bullshit.
Not that the walls and bullshit weren’t there. They might have been even more prevalent. He hadn’t had the time to get over the losses he’d experienced. They weren’t exactly the distant past. But she’d done it anyway. Perhaps done it again. And maybe it was her experience with that other him that had made it happen so much faster this time around. Or maybe the difference between then and now was that he, this Johnny, hadn’t had decades away from contact. From friendship.
It was hard to say what it was.
All that really mattered, in the end, was that they were here, now. That he had her, she was standing in front of him. She was alive and breathing. And she understood. Parts of him that he hadn’t ever thought another person could understand, she did.
Johnny reluctantly broke the kiss. He wanted to see something in her eyes that wasn’t pain. He hoped to see there what he was feeling.