Alice flinched at the warm brush she felt against her hand, suddenly going very pale. Though her instinctive reaction was to snatch her hand away, Tim had already managed to tangle their fingers together and held hers in a gentle grip. It was such a simple thing but held so much weight, and on her part bad memory behind such a seemingly innocent action. For her it was one of the first places William would grab at her should he be in a foul mood. Worse still was that whenever they were in public, and she was holding hands with him like a married couple did, he'd use that loving link against her by squeezing her hand in a lethal grip to keep her in line or let him know when he was angry at her. The sorry thing was that those around them just thought them some lovery-dovery, inseparable couple still rosy-eyed for one another.<br/><br/>The terrible thing was that there had been a time when holding Tim's hand would have made her blush with happiness, especially with the massive secret crush she'd had on him back then. But right then she could only relive some of the pain from William's past abuses, feel utter heart ache for the very fact she desperately craved such warmth, massive guilt for even feeling and desiring such things when she was married, all of which turned into a ball of misery inside her gut. Trying her damnedest to hide the fact she was quivering, she said, "I'm sorry d-do you mind if I take a seat for a moment..?" Using the excuse to gently pulling her hand from his as she took a seat on one of the park benches, feeling ill like she was going to hyperventilate. Leaning back she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to keep her breathing normal and stop herself from shaking. Knowing Tim would be worried she fed him one of her most common excuses, "Don't worry I'll be fine in a minute. Just a little Anaemia, this sometimes happens. I'll take an iron tablet when we get back." Her words weren't entirely false, but she'd gotten over her Anaemia years ago. But the symptoms for lack of iron in the blood was a great mask for her real symptoms. Like right now.<br/><br/>After a few moments and she was confident that she had her breathing under control, she got back up. "S-Shall we continue?" She said, feeling like the energy had been sucked right out of her despite breakfast. This time however, she tucked her hands into her jacket pockets just to be safe. It was after a long few minutes as they were walking along, that it finally dawned on her she lacked any of her past social skills. Usually William did all the talking for her. And didn't that just depress her further.<br/><br/>Turning a corner she spotted a huge lake, with gazebos, chess tables, boats, childrens play areas nearby, and even...  "I haven't seen pedalos in forever," she murmured, biting at her bottom lip at the fond memory it threw up, of her and Tim attempting to race them across the lake in those stupid little red peddle boats. Trading one game for another, and whoever lost bought pizza or whatever junk food they wanted at the time.