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I lead Samuel to my room and pull him onto the bed with me. For a few seconds, we simply stare. For me, I’m still somewhat in disbelief.
“So, this is where you spent your nights,” he whispers. Rolling onto his back, Samuel looks around the room and then stares at the ceiling. “Every night I tried to imagine you sleeping. What you saw from your bed. Your room. You…” He kisses me again, and his hands roam, lightly scratching my skin.
“My room is basic. I’m not one for clutter.” I follow his gaze to an oil painting on my wall—a palm tree and the ocean. A snapshot of serenity. On my bedside table is a framed photograph of us taken while we were in Brazil.
Taking his hand between mine, I study his fingers. Scaly skin peels around his nails. Every nail is short and cracked. His palm has a callous beneath every joint.
“How long were you home before coming here?” I whisper.
His gaze darts over my face then his lip quivers, and his demeanor cracks. His body shakes, and as much as I want to hold him, heal him, he’s scaring me. “Hey, you’re here, and we’re all safe and together,” I say gently. He’s never cried like this. Not even when I was in the hospital, those were tears of a man stricken with worry. Before me is a broken man, and I can’t let go of the feelingI did this to him.
I cry with him. Our bodies are entangled together. The physical bond is not enough to stop the pain of our broken hearts.
He needs time to heal.
Inesa’s tragedy broke Samuel. He abandoned society, hid in the jungle, and denied himself love. His mission was to be a better man by helping others, a physician working for free. His promise to prove he’s a good man. That promise transformed into a commitment to the people he called family.
His loyalty is second to none.
He vowed to come home to me.
It almost killed him.
I make a silent promise to help him pick up the pieces and show him he’s worthy.
Prove my love for him is everything he’ll ever need.
For right now, I feel unworthy of this man’s love.
1
EDEN
Two weeks later…
Happiness.
Many define it as the emotion of feeling extreme joy.
I’m now wiser in understanding I had to go through a period of complete sadness to experience the bliss, and I’m now riding the happiness wave every single day. From the moment I open my eyes, I feel only contentment waking up beside Samuel.
For months, I worried he might not come out of the jungle alive. If he survived the arduous trek through the jungle, finding seclusion for the Ularans’ safety came with a cost—the impossibility of finding his way out.
It’s been two weeks since he surprised me and burst through the office door, returning to me. A week where I cried, overwhelmed with many emotions. We’ve made love every single day, hugged each other, and sobbed or sat in silence simply to be together.
He’s still not ready to talk, only mentioning how the journey took every fiber of his being to find his way out.
Instead, he asked for time.
Time to heal.
Time to forget.
The thought of him traumatized by a dark memory fills me with terror—a silent scream slicing through my brain. The pain is an unforgotten memory of how I suffered when he was unconscious and almost lost to an unexplainable entity. In the dark of night, my anxiety heightens, reminding me of what I could lose.
For now, he’s content to be with Rose and me, and already his spirit has been lifted by being reunited as a family.
To help him focus on each day and not the past, I undertook a personal role as his tour host and showed Samuel around Adelaide. I was so relieved to see him smile and enjoy the coastal city I call my home, even if it’s significantly colder than what he’s used to.
