Page 23 of Penalty to the Heart

“You good then, sweetheart?” Caleb asks, doing a miraculous job of hiding his annoyance.

“I sure am! Thanks a bunch,” she replies excitedly, skipping happily down the hall with her prize.

It’s only when she turns the corner that his face falls.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I say, disgusted by what I just witnessed.

“Huh?” he mumbles, his gaze shifting to me with a look of confusion as if he forgot that I’ve been standing here all this time.

“I said that you didn’t have to do that. Not only was it extremely unprofessional on her part to approach you for an autograph, but it was also in bad taste. This is a hospital, for crying out loud. If you’re here, it’s for a reason. You shouldn’t have been put in such a position.”

“What do you know about it?” he retorts with a snarl, displeased with my opinion on the matter.

“I know that everyone is entitled to their privacy. Just because you’re a public figure doesn’t give people permission to harass you whenever they want.”

He blinks at me once, then twice.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he finally replies crestfallen. “I’m not entitled to shit. Not anymore.”

“That’s not true,” I begin to interject but am rudely interrupted by his sardonic laugh.

“But it is. I signed away any right I had to privacy years ago. They own me.”

“No one owns anybody. No one is entitled to your time or energy if you don’t want to give it. You can always say no. You’d be surprised how liberating that small word can be.”

“No…” he chews on the word as if it had never once crossed his lips.

We both stand in the middle of the busy corridor, staring at each other as he acquaints himself with the new-found word. However, the hopelessness that resurfaces in his stellar gaze is truly concerning.

I know that look.

I’ve seen it one too many times in my own reflection.

“Are you—”

“I should go,” he mutters before I’m able to finish my sentence. “Sorry about bumping into you like that.”

“That’s okay.”

He offers me a weak smile and then walks away, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, the slump in his shoulders bearing the heavy weight of all his despair.

I stand there watching Caleb leave, amazed that no one sees his pain as they pass him by.

Mind you, he doesn’t make it easy to spot.

In fact, I’m not sure why he let me take a peek under the veil—allowing me to witness his grief—when he looked so determined in portraying that all is well in his world to that godawful nurse.

Or maybe the only reason why he was unable to shield his misery from me was because I’d recognize that type of suffering from a mile away.

Like an old friend waving back to me, I’d know its face solely by memory.

After all, not so long ago, despair was all I knew.

Only after Caleb has completely disappeared from my view do I finally turn around and head in the opposite direction. But with each step I take, I’m unable to rid myself of the unsettling feeling lingering from the entire encounter.

The whole thing was… troubling, to say the least.

It brought back feelings that I no longer have room for in my life.

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