“Is this real, Jayden? It’s not a dream, right?” I murmured as my body slowly fell under the spell of Morpheus.
“It’s real,” he assured me.
I have no idea how long I was asleep. The curtains were closed, and I hadn't been disturbed by the nurses, so I had lost track of time.
Reality came crashing down on me as soon as I opened my eyes.
Daniel was dead. I was finally free.
But this also meant I had no real reason to stay in Seattle, nothing to keep me here. The fact that I was still alone in the hospital room seemed to emphasize this idea, and I whimpered.
What was I supposed to do? Take the hint and quietly disappear into the night? Wait and say goodbye to the owner of my heart and the father of my child?
I felt so lost, filled with doubts and questions, I was losing my mind.
A gentle knock on the door announced the nurse. “You’re up,” she said in a cheerful tone. “It’s time for your meds. Mr. Wells instructed us to bother you as little as possible, so I waited as long as I could,” she added as she handed me a couple of pills and a small glass of water.
“Is he here?” I asked, in a calm tone, as if her answer didn’t mean the world to me.
“No… he left right after you fell asleep. He asked us to call him as soon as you wake up,” she replied.
“There’s no need to bother him,” I told her with my best smile. “I can take a cab home.”
The nurse frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “You have been in bed for a few days, and you could get dizzy,” she warned me. “I’ll call him. Besides, he would ask for my head on a silver platter if I didn’t call him,” she said in a teasing tone.
Knowing it would be impossible to convince her otherwise, I let her make the call.
Jayden arrived a few minutes later, and though he acted, as usual, I could sense something was different. A shadow in his eyes I hadn't seen before was there, and all my doubts came back with vicious strength.
We barely spoke on our way to his place, and the clouds around me were getting darker by the moment.
“Would you like to get some rest?” he asked, the moment we entered the house.
“No… I spent the whole day sleeping,” I protested, as I looked around.
The penthouse had been elegantly decorated for Christmas, and I realized we were only days away from the festivity. With everything happening around me, I had lost track of time. Not that it mattered to me. I hadn't celebrated Christmas in years.
“Are you hungry? It’s still early, but I can order something for you if you want,” he asked again.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I assured him as I sat down on the couch.
“Mom called me this morning. She already has the first drafts of the foundation you discussed when you were together,” he informed me, as he stood a few steps away from me.
“That’s great,” I mumbled, but I really couldn’t care about that at that moment.
“She will come over tomorrow to go through them with you,” he added, in a forced tone, as if those weren’t the words he wanted to say.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, gathering my strength to face the new storm coming my way.
“I’m not sure I’ll still be here tomorrow,” I said in a low, sad tone.
“Right! I knew it!” he exploded. “You’re running away again, aren’t you? The nurse told me you didn’t want her to call me… what were you going to do? Run away? Without even saying goodbye? Was that it?” he ranted as he paced the room, oblivious of the astonishment on my face.
“I know you’ve been through a lot… I get that… I’ll never be able to erase that from your past, but I thought there was something special between us,” he continued, completely ignoring my attempts to interrupt him. “I know I screwed things up when I refused to listen to you, and I’ll never forgive myself for that, but don’t you think you could cut me some slack?”
He stopped for a moment and stared at me as I opened my mouth to answer his million questions, but he didn’t let me.
“This is new for me, you know?” he pushed his fingers through his dark hair, fussing with it in a way that always made me want to caress him. “Raised in a house where love was considered a dirty word, I never believed it existed. The more in love people looked, the more cynical I got. I used to make bets with myself as to how long people would last in love,” he mocked himself.
