Page 31 of Devotion: Isn't What It Seems (Love Isn't What It Seems 1)

What should have been a painful moment as the blade cut through the flesh of my wrists, felt dulled by the numbness inside of me. And as I lowered myself into the bath of warm water, for the first time in weeks, I felt a modicum of relief knowing that soon I would be reunited with my son. But as I drifted into that peaceful sleep, my mind was jerked back with the screams of my sister and the rush of the paramedics as they hurried to save my life.

I felt tremors through my body. I tried to breathe deeply in and out, hoping to calm my shaking but it only got worse.

I felt Lachlan’s body and heat wrap around me but my gaze remained locked to the same spot. There were police officers running up and down and an ambulance but none of it was registering.

“Eve,” his whisper was on my ear. “Look at me.”

He took my face into his hands and turned my head away from the window and to him. Our faces only inches apart.

“Breathe,” he commanded. “That’s right, take a breath in, let the breath out.”

I did as he said a few times and I swallowed hard. I focused on his eyes, needing those steel grey eyes to ground me.

“You’re doing good,” he praised. “Keep breathing.”

He glanced away for a fraction of the second to say something to the waiter and his focus was back on me. After a few minutes, my heart rate and my mental state were back to a somewhat normal state, at least appearance wise. He kept my face in his warm palms.

The waiter was back, and Lachlan pulled me up into his body.

“C’mon,” he wrapped me into his side, stirring me out of the restaurant. “We’ll eat at my place.”

We were at his place quickly although it didn’t even register in my brain how we got there. He sat me on his couch and kept his eye on me as he got everything together for us to eat.

I tried to shut my mind down and not think about what I just witnessed. The man’s body falling into the river kept playing over and over in my head.

Images of what I witnessed tonight and that fateful night when I attempted to take my own life mixed together. Even now, I couldn’t quite determine what I was thinking. I knew how I felt, drowning in the black hole of despair, hurt, loss, and hopelessness. It tore me on the inside and I couldn’t bear the pain anymore. My next conscious thought was waking up in the hospital, Elise’s teared up face, her hand on my fingers, and Brandon holding on to her.

I tried to shut down those images and focus on my surroundings, realizing we were in his apartment.

“This is a nice place,” I mumbled.

“I’m glad you like it,” his voice was calming. “Are you hungry?”

“Not right now.” I stood up and slowly walked around his apartment.

“This is not an apartment,” I told him, focusing hard on Lachlan and the space around me. It was hard not to dwell on the past and what we had just witnessed. The image of the man falling into the water was haunting me. “I think this would be classified as a penthouse.”

“As long as you like it, you can call it whatever you want,” he replied.

I glanced at him and noticed his eyes were watching me careful, like a wounded animal.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t expect… that.”

“No apology needed,” he replied. “That was hard.”

I nodded and looked away from him, my eyes scouting all the little possessions throughout his apartment. Standing in the middle of it, I felt lost, shaken to the core.

“I lost a very close person to me… to suicide,” his words were low as a whisper but I whipped my head back to him. I stood unmoving, waiting for his next words, scared if I moved, he wouldn’t say anything else. “I couldn’t save him. It is hard to get over that.”

I thought back to my attempt. I did the same and almost succeeded, causing pain to my sister and her husband, to my stepfather. Maybe to my mother, I wasn’t sure that I cared if I did do it to her. She did worse to me.

Lachlan came to stand right in front of me and took my face into his hands. His heat radiated from him and I soaked it up like a desert soaked up rain.

“Sometimes loss and desperation drive us to make bad decisions,” my voice was low, slightly shaking. “It’s not a good way to end the pain, but at that moment, reason and sanity are not there.” Silence lingered and my next words shocked me more than him. “I’ve been there and thought at that moment, ending my life was the only option. It’s not reasonable, I know.”

As soon as those words left my lips, I felt lighter, as if a heavy load was lifted off my chest. He hugged me tighter without another word, and we stood there, just the two of us in his living room, everything else forgotten.

The images of the man throwing himself into the river and my own life attempt flashing in my mind made me want to cry… cry that I was lucky enough to have had my sister pull me back to life, that life wasn’t fair, that the man suffered so much he ended his life. I leaned against Lachlan and soaked up his strength with my arms around his waist. He felt like a rooted tree that I desperately needed and wanted.

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