Page 47 of What Comes After

He was Teddy.

He was my best friend.

And he was everything.

It was those characteristics, the ones that were tucked beneath the surface of his breathtaking exterior, forcing me to reconsider.

Maybe I was still alive.

Maybe I had survived.

Perhaps this was real.

Because if all that I knew of Theo was true, there wasn’t a chance he’d ever learn about what happened to me and not be right by my side until he knew I was okay.

That understanding, as comforting as it should have been, terrified me. I didn’t want to face him. I didn’t want him to know the truth about what my life had become. We’d spent time talking to one another over the years, he’d made a few trips home to Iris ever since he’d first left, and I’d never once let on just how dire things often felt in my life.

They weren’t always bad, of course, but it was often enough that things were uncomfortable for me.

One bad stroke of luck after another had put me in a place that was so far removed from the place Theo was in. Embarrassed was all I’d ever feel.

Unless there was a way to hide it from him.

Unless I could do what I’d always done and pretend that my life was great.

Though, I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to accomplish that when he would have had to have some idea as to how I wound up here. Covering up the truth about this whole situation seemed impossible.

God, my face was already burning from the mortification and humiliation I’d be confronted with.

Unwilling to risk him opening his eyes, seeing me awake, and wanting to talk about it all, I did the only thing I could do in this situation to protect myself and take some time to figure it out.

I fell back into that feeling of heaviness that had consumed me from moments before I’d opened my own eyes.

I allowed the weight of it to drag me down into what I prayed would be a peaceful slumber. One that didn’t include me stepping in front of closed fists to protect a cheating boyfriend. And one that didn’t include the man I’d loved my whole life from coming back home at what could only be defined as the worst possible moment.

* * *

There was no sense of time when my eyes opened for the second time.

It could have been minutes, hours, days, or weeks. Nothing indicated to me just how much time had passed.

Well, other than one thing.

I had to imagine it could have only been a few hours at most, because when I woke, I saw Theo was still there, wearing the same clothes he had been when I woke the first time.

The only difference now was that Theo wasn’t sleeping. He was awake, and he was paying attention to me.

“Devyn,” he rasped, the moment his eyes locked on mine.

There was the additional proof I needed. This wasn’t a dream or some scenario my mind had made up to torture me.

This was real.

Because Theo had spoken only one word to me, and I felt so much move through me with just that single word.

My name.

Did he know how it made me feel every time he said it? Did he understand what it was like to have his voice be the first I heard after all that I’d been through?

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