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Please let him be all right.
If he still hates me, I’ll disappear. If I’m a bad omen to his life, I’ll never search for him again.
As long as he’s alive.
And well.
And healthy.
My unsteady fingers push the door open and I freeze in the doorway. Daniel sits on a hospital bed, only wearing trousers as a male nurse wraps a bandage around his midsection.
He’s…sitting.
Although his brows are knit together in what I assume is pain, he has his eyes open and he’s conscious.
The nurse clips the bandage, then tells Daniel something, gives him a pill and water, then waits for him to drink it before he shoulders past me.
That’s when Daniel looks at me.
And the emotion on his face shakes me to the bones. I expected surprise, anger, maybe even coldness, but the one I find?
It’s relief.
The encompassing type of it.
The tears I’ve been holding spill on my cheeks as I step inside. “Are you okay?”
He runs his fingers through his hair. It’s a bit tousled, a bit imperfect, just like him right now. “Some pesky stitches, but I’ll be good as new soon. Besides, I’ve been told scars are beautiful so I’ll be rocking that look.”
Despite his light tone, the fire still burns hot and bright inside me. I stop a safe distance away because his closeness would turn that fire into a volcano.
“If that didn’t answer your question, I’m really fine. Stop crying, I hate it.”
A sob bursts free and I cry even harder.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Daniel grunts as he reaches a hand and pulls me to him, his warm, big palm wrapping around my hair, keeping me nestled to his side.
“Why?” I sniffle through the tears. “Why do you hate to see me cry, take revenge against Christopher for me, leave me your mansion and your money, but still refuse to be with me? Is it so hard to love me?”
He grabs me by the shoulders, pulling me away so his blue eyes, the mixture of the stars and sky, are staring deep into mine. “I became obsessed with you since you gave me that snow globe and laid your head on my thigh. That obsession turned to hatred and fascination over the years. I hated myself because I wanted you more than I wanted anything. I hated myself for never being able to move on from you, for avoiding all blondes because they reminded me of you. So the thing is, you never gave me a choice. The memory of you followed me everywhere like a ghost, or an angel, I’m not sure which. It’s hard to hate you and even harder to forget you, but loving you was the easiest thing that I’ve ever done. It was natural, inevitable, and fucking infinite.”
My lips part open and my brain struggles to process every word he said, but I heard them all. Every single one.
And I still can’t believe it.
I think Daniel said he loves me.
No. Maybe he didn’t.
“Did you… Did you just say you love me?”
“Always fucking have, Nicole. I only figured it out late, as in when you broke my heart, and I was stupid enough to let it rot inside me and not express it.”
“Then…then why do you want to leave me?”
He drops his hands from around my shoulders and I want to grab them and put them there again. I want him to keep touching me, to keep telling me things I would’ve never thought his beautiful mouth would say.
Daniel breathes so harshly, his abdomen contracts and his nostrils flare.
