Page 97 of Unveiled

While she takes time to process the events she didn’t get to see unfold, I stand up and remove my wet jacket and hang it over the chair before returning to her side.

“You never wear suits,” Ainsley comments absentmindedly. “And why are you soaked? You’re dripping all over the bed.”

My head hangs between my shoulders again, but I turn it enough to meet her confused gaze. I let her see the heaviness in my heart through my eyes and the exhaustion consuming me.

“John was shot in the head. When my father jerked the gun away and pulled the trigger, somehow the barrel ended up being pointed at John. We buried him this morning,” I tell her. My voice falls flat as my emotions are numbed once again. When the pain of John’s death finally hits, it’s going to break me nearly as much as when I didn’t think Ainsley was going to make it.

I spent hours thinking I lost both of them while John was being covered with a sheet and Ainsley was being rushed into emergency surgery. The doctor’s were with her for a grueling five hours, and even when she came out, they couldn’t tell me if she was going to survive. She didn’t wake up, even when the anesthesia wore off, but her vitals were strong. My girl is a fighter, that much is obvious, but even I doubted her for a while.

“I’m so sorry, Cain,” she breathes. She reaches for me, but her movements are restricted with the pain in her abdomen, and her arms fall short. I stand from her bed and pace the room, not able to be still any longer.

“Cain, you’re bleeding.”

Ainsley’s words register somewhere deep in my mind, but I’m too lost in my thoughts of what’s happened over the last three days to react. I continue pacing the room as I try to bury the memories deep in my mind, meanwhile Ainsley continues repeating my name.

“Cain!” she shouts, pulling me out of my thoughts. I stop pacing and meet her worried eyes, only to watch as hers fall down my body. “You’re bleeding.”

As she says the words, they finally process in my mind. Looking down, I see blood seeping through my white shirt, spreading along the wet material. Flashes of Ainsley’s blood seeping through her white dress cross my mind, but I push the images out of my mind before they cripple me.

“It’s nothing,” I assure her as I meet her gaze again. I should have changed before I came here and put a black shirt on so she wouldn’t know that I’ve spent the last week reopening the cuts between my hips over and over again until the pain became the only thing that could comfort me.

“Why are you bleeding?” she asks. I have to give it to her, she sounds strong for just waking up from a three day coma.

“Drop it, Ainsley,” I snap at her, sounding much harsher than I mean to.

She tries to sit up in her bed, but her body refuses to obey as she collapses back into the pillows and winces in pain. “Either you tell me why you’re bleeding, or I’ll get Jonah in here to do it for you. And we both know he’s going to listen to me over you.”

Jonah pops his head back through the door, raising an eyebrow at me. He knows exactly why I’m bleeding down there, since he walked in on the end of my first session after losing Ainsley.

With an angry huff, I pull my wet and bloody dress shirt out of my waistband and pull it up just enough that Ainsley can see the letters of her name bleeding on my abdomen. I reopened the wound this morning, just before we left for the funeral.

“Cain,” she chokes out as tears threaten to spill over her eyelids. “Why?”

Instead of answering her, I turn to Jonah and wait for him to give us some privacy again. He gets the hint quickly and pulls his head out of the doorway, though I know he’s still listening. I close the distance between us as I kneel by her bedside and take her hands in mine.

“What do you want me to say, Ainsley?”

“Tell me why.”

“I’m a broken man without you, little one. You were taken from me, kept from me for days, and even when I got you back you weren’t here. Today, I said goodbye to my best friend, and yet I didn’t dread that nearly as much as I dreaded coming to this room,” I answer her honestly.

She flinches in pain at my words, taking them the wrong way. “You didn’t want to see me?”

“That’s not what I said, Ainsley. I dreaded coming here because I knew you wouldn’t want to see me, and I didn’t want to have to go through that. Even though I deserve it.”

My eyes leave her, not wanting to see the moment she realizes she doesn’t have to pretend anymore. I know it’s over, she just has to say the words.

“Why wouldn’t I want to see you?”

When I look up, her eyes are filled with genuine confusion. Her thumb strokes the back of my hand, trying to soothe the emotions plaguing me at the thought of losing her.

“I failed you,” I remind her. “You were kidnapped because of me, and this time, you were shot. You almost didn’t make it. Why would you want to see me?”

“Because I love you,” she answers without hesitation, as if it’s the most obvious answer in the world.

“Ainsley -” I start, but she holds up a hand to cut me off.

“Don’t start with me. You made me fall in love with you, and when I left you, it nearly tore me apart. It took me months to feel like a normal person, and then you were there again, trying to remind me why a normal life isn’t for me. You fought me until you made me unveil my feelings for you. I let myself love you again, and I’m not about to stop. You belong to me, as my monster, just as much as I belong to you.”

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