Total pages in book: 150
Estimated words: 147136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147136 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 736(@200wpm)___ 589(@250wpm)___ 490(@300wpm)
I stood there silent and allowed him to process, wiping tears away and slowly composing myself.
Then Brian blinked several times through a deep breath, brought our hands that were still together in front of him, and wrapped his other hand around the back of mine.
He stared at our joining.
Someone paged X-ray on the intercom overhead. I told myself I’d respond to that in a minute.
I just needed another minute.
Just one.
“I’m so sorry, Brian,” I told him, finally speaking again, not remembering if I had said that already when I was comforting him minutes ago.
I whispered a lot. I know I whispered I loved him. I couldn’t help it.
His eyes lifted to my face, and I saw how bright they appeared now, still shadowed with sadness but not as much as they were when I first rounded the corner and saw him standing here. He looked different, relieved maybe, but it was almost as if he was hiding that behind a different shade of pain now.
Pain for the parents who had just lost their child. The kind of pain anyone would feel and sympathize with. And pain because he was looking at me and he didn’t know what that meant, where we stood, or how I was feeling, and he worried the worst while thinking it was useless to hope for the best.
“I—”
“I fixed it,” Brian interrupted my sad attempt at small talk, because I honestly didn’t know what to say to him and knew if I didn’t say something and kept watching him hold me and look at me like that, I’d end up kissing him.
I blinked up at Brian, absorbing his words.
“What?” I asked, stepping closer.
He sniffed, and the corner of his mouth tilted up the tiniest bit.
“Those videos are gone, Wild,” he shared. His voice was confident. “All of them. Got everything taken down from that site. There’s nothing left of me on there, and there’s no trace of it anywhere else. It’s gone.”
I heard what he was saying. I understood what he was saying.
I just didn’t believe it.
“How? How did you do that?”
He shook his head and held my hand tighter with both of his, telling me, “Doesn’t matter. It’s done.”
“But what about if someone saved those videos on their own computer or something? They could share them all over the Internet.”
That had become a worry of mine that I’d discovered while lying in bed that first night without Brian.
It stressed me out so badly, I didn’t fall asleep until the sun came up.
“Not an option,” he answered firmly. “That dickhead running the site wouldn’t allow anyone seeing his shit and not paying for it. You couldn’t save images or videos on your own devices. He made sure of that.”
“Oh,” I replied, pulling my lips between my teeth and looking away.
My heart started beating faster.
He fixed it, just like he said he would.
“Wild.”
My eyes slid back to Brian’s.
He opened his mouth, and I knew what he was going to ask me, and for some reason I couldn’t explain, I panicked.
I covered his mouth with my other hand and prevented him from speaking.
“I can’t, Brian,” I blurted out, suddenly feeling overwhelmed, watching his brows pull together, his eyes go sad, and feeling his breath burst against my palm. “I can’t. I’m …I just need to think a little more, okay? This has been really hard and I just, I don’t know if I’m ready.” I slid my hand away and stepped back, pulling my other out of his hold. “I’m sorry.”
Then, so I wouldn’t see that look on his face any longer, that look that was killing me and making it hard to breathe, I turned and ran out of the ICU, leaving the portable machine behind.
Brian called out for me but I kept running.
I rode the elevators to the bottom floor and hurried back to my department, shutting myself in the room I was slowly going crazy in and busying myself with the work waiting for me.
Work I was grateful for. I needed that distraction now more than ever.
Hours ticked by, and even though my focus was on my job because it had to be, my mind still wandered. And the more it wandered, the more I thought about Brian, and the more I thought about Brian, the more I thought about everything, him fixing us and the reaction I had to it, bringing me to the conclusion I didn’t want to make while being stuck at work.
I’d made a mistake.
What I’d said to Brian wasn’t entirely true.
Yes, it was really hard finding out what Brian had been doing and learning what all he’d kept from me.
It broke my heart.
Yes, I didn’t know if I was ready to go back to the life I was sharing with Brian, if I could allow myself to feel that kind of love again when I knew what losing it felt like.