“I would’ve hated Declan for having you if you’d chosen to stay with him, but I would’ve always loved him as a brother and best friend. I know once the hurt fades, he’ll feel the same. As for my mom, she doesn’t have to love you. I do. She’ll still love me, and she already knows I won’t put up with what she’s been doing to you. Besides, this way she might not bother us that much.”
I laughed softly. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I saw her more than ever once she started hating me.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to get her to at least like you,” he said simply, then leaned forward to press his lips to mine. “We’re gonna figure it out, Aurora, because it’s always gonna be us.”
Jentry
“What’s happen—are we in the wrong room?” Aurora asked slowly as she looked at the empty room just minutes later.
Declan wasn’t just out of his room . . . the room was completely cleared, as if he’d never been there.
I touched Aurora’s arm as I backed out of the room into the hall, and looked around for the first nurse I could find. “Excuse me, can you tell me where—”
Recognition lit in her eyes when Aurora joined me, followed quickly by confusion. “Oh, Mr. Veil? I’m surprised you hadn’t heard the news yet, or that you weren’t here. He was released yesterday evening.”
“He was released,” Aurora echoed dully. “He went home?”
The nurse simply smiled. “Yes, poor thing didn’t want to stay in for another weekend. Who could blame him?”
“Thank you,” I mumbled, and waited until she’d walked away to start pulling Aurora back out of the hospital.
“I don’t understand why they wouldn’t tell us,” she said once we were back in my car and I was pulling out of the space.
“My parents are mad.”
“But why wouldn’t Declan have told us that he was getting out? He doesn’t remember that night; he would have called me to tell me, wouldn’t . . .” She trailed off and sank into her seat as my worries hit her. “They told him.”
I tilted my head slowly to the side. I wanted nothing more than to deny it, to take away everything that was weighing on her. But I knew I couldn’t; knew there was no point in lying to her for the sake of keeping her at ease now. “They had to have.”
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen,” she whispered to her window, then remained silent for a while. “I say that,” she went on with a dull laugh, “but I didn’t try hard enough to make it happen any other way. You were right; I was lying to your family by not telling them the truth of that night. If I had, I would’ve had more time to tell Declan once he woke up. Or maybe I should’ve just waited at the hospital until they let me see him and told him that first night, gotten it over with right away instead of letting a week pass.”
“No. That . . .” I blew out a slow breath and shook my head. “I don’t know when the right time would have been, but you were right not to do it that first night. You have to remember that you had already told him. How were you supposed to figure the right time to tell him again after he’d been in a coma and forgotten the first time? Not to mention that it was damn near impossible to even get a second with him. I went to see him every day after work this week, and the two times I actually saw him, I only got about five minutes total before I was kicked out again. So how do you lay something like that on him when you know you’re about to have to leave him alone in a hospital?”
“Those were some of the same things that went through my mind that kept me from saying anything, that kept him thinking things about us that weren’t true. But this . . . this is so much worse and makes me wish I’d just done it.”
The only reason I wanted to agree with her was because I wanted what was coming next to already be over. But no matter how much I’d hated seeing Declan think that Aurora still belonged to him, and no matter how much his words had amplified my need to keep Aurora a safe distance from me and my demons, no time in the hospital would have been a good time to tell Dec the truth about their relationship, or ours.
“Oh my God,” she said when we pulled up to my parents’ house.
I bit back a curse when I looked around the driveway and street. There were other cars, indicating my sisters and brothers-in-law were there, and what looked like Mom’s parents—I’d never gotten close with them.
“This makes it worse,” she said, sounding dejected. With a sigh, she unbuckled herself and opened the door to step out of the car.
She didn’t wait for me to catch up with her, just walked determinedly toward the front door with a grave expression on her face.
Once we neared the door, I stopped her. “Say the word, and we’re gone.”
She looked up at me with an amused expression. “Swear?”
I grasped her chin with my fingers and turned her head until she was looking up at me. “I mean it, Aurora.”
“I know you do. But I’ve been preparing myself for what’s about to happen inside this house for the past ten minutes, and if I keep looking into your eyes and don’t walk through that door right now, I’m not sure I’ll still have the strength to go through with it.”
She tore her eyes from mine and began pulling away from me, but at the last second, turned back and pushed up on her toes to press her mouth to mine. Her lips moved in sync with mine for a moment before she breathed, “I love you,” against them, and forced herself away and into the house.
Aurora
I held my breath while I walked quickly into the house, afraid to wait for someone to answer the door, or even for Jentry to open it. I needed to do this before I talked myself out of it, because the disastrous climax that waited for me in one of those rooms would only continue to wait. Only continue to haunt me and taunt me.
I already had Jessica doing one of those things. I didn’t need an entire family added on to that.
I walked through the entryway into the kitchen, somehow still holding on to my false bravado, but felt it splinter and crack when I heard nothing but excitement coming from the living room.
My footsteps faltered and slowed, and Jentry’s brief, reassuring touch on the small of my back was all that kept me going.
The final step, from the kitchen into the living room, seemed to freeze time.
The scene wasn’t what I had expected to find, and I just managed to hold on to my waning confidence until I caught sight of Declan’s face. He looked like he was seeing the sun rise for the first time. His excitement would have been contagious if it hadn’t seemed so out of place among my fears and worries.
I felt Jentry’s confusion as if it were my own, doubling what I was feeling and trying to understand. He didn’t speak, didn’t move, hardly breathed . . . but I knew he was studying every single person in the living room, taking it all in.
“Aurora . . .” Jentry’s whisper was nearly inaudible to me, and I knew no one else had heard him, but that one word seemed to push Declan into action.
He stood slowly from his spot in one of the recliners, his face showing his pain before he was able to control it, and then he was walking toward us.
His grandma, sisters, and their husbands all watched him with rapt attention as he walked; all with smiles on their faces.
Linda and Kurt were the only ones watching me. Their glares said more than they were able to in that moment.
“Didn’t think you’d be here just yet,” Declan said as he got closer to where Jentry and I were standing. His clear green eyes flashed over to Jentry for a moment, and in that moment, his face went cold. But it happened so fast I wasn’t sure if I imagined it.
“Uh, we . . . well, we went to the hospital . . .” I glanced quickly at everyone again before asking, “Why didn’t you tell us you’d been released?”
A mischievous smirk lit up Declan’s face, and for a second it was hard to believe that any of it had happened. The coma, the heartache, the worrying . . .
“Wanted to surprise you,” he responded simply, vaguely.
“Surprise
me? By letting me go to the hospital to find you gone?”
Declan’s smirk turned sheepish, and his eyes darted down for a second. A soft laugh flowed from his chest. “At least now I know why you haven’t been wearing your ring.”
“Dec . . .”
He pulled the ring he had proposed to me with out of his pocket—the same ring that was supposed to be in my jewelry box in our apartment—and grabbed my left hand.
Gasps of surprise, shock, and excitement filled the room, followed by one from his mother that was very clearly horrified.
For once, Linda and I were on the same page.
“Rorie Wilde,” Declan began, “will you marry me . . . tonight?”
“What?” My voice came out soft, but the dread I felt leaked through the word.
Declan’s smile didn’t waver; he remained as still and silent as Jentry although everyone else in the room immediately began moving and speaking.
“What?”
“Tonight!”
“Oh, that’s so sweet!”
His family’s voices bounced around the room, mingling with Linda’s as she tried to hold on to some semblance of calm. “Declan, let’s think about this! You haven’t even been awake a whole week!”
“Rorie and I nearly lost each other once, Mom. There’s no point in waiting.”
I looked from Declan’s parents back to him. This wasn’t happening. Not now, not in front of everyone.
Like before, Declan’s eyes darted to Jentry, and his expression faltered and went cold again for a split second before he could control it. I knew if I had still been looking at his parents, or even if I had blinked, I would have missed it.
And I knew if Jentry hadn’t been watching me for my reaction, he would have seen it, too.
Declan placed the ring at the tip of my finger and asked, “So what do you say?”
Just as he began sliding the ring onto the third finger of my left hand, I jerked my hand from his grasp and took a step away.
Silence filled the room and felt like a living, breathing thing, weighing down upon us, just waiting to see what would happen next.
“I can’t,” I whispered, and took another step back. “I can’t—Declan, I can—I need to talk to you.”
My eyes were burning with unshed tears and it suddenly became hard to breathe, and I wondered how I would get through this as I left the room. Just the thought of telling Declan the first time had felt impossible, but this—this made the first time seem laughable.
That time, he hadn’t been in a coma just a week before. I hadn’t known he’d even planned on proposing; I’d thought we were growing apart anyway. And now, all of that had happened, and he had proposed again in front of his entire family, asking me to marry him that night.
I would rather have died than told Declan the truth in that moment.
I didn’t walk far, just into the kitchen, because I didn’t know how far Declan could walk without getting tired, and it wasn’t long before Declan followed me in.
A mere second later, Linda began screaming at Jentry.
A sob burst from my chest and the tears finally began falling.
Declan didn’t speak or move; he just waited.
“I can’t marry you,” I finally said.
He nodded slowly. “I figured that out.” His mouth opened, then shut quickly, and he went back to waiting.
But I couldn’t figure out where to begin, because I couldn’t understand Declan. There was a sadness deep in his eyes, but he didn’t look as if I’d just rejected his proposal. He didn’t look like the girl he’d thought was his fiancée had just told him she couldn’t marry him. He looked as if he had been waiting for this conversation.
“Why, Rorie?” he said pleadingly. “Why won’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Dec. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you, but I—” I sucked in a sharp breath, as if my body was rebelling against voicing the truth to him again, then forced out: “I fell in love with Jentry.”
He winced in pain.
“It was before I ever met you. I just didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know who he was to you, and didn’t think that I would see him again! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I couldn’t continue a relationship with you when my heart belonged to someone else. It wasn’t fair to you. You have to understand than I never wanted to hurt you; he never wanted to hurt you.”
Declan’s lips formed a sad smile after a few moments. “God, that hurts just as much hearing it the second time.”
25
Present Day
Aurora
My eyes widened as Declan’s words registered. “Wh-what? What did you say?”
“Hearing that, hearing you admit you love him, hurts just as much now as it did the first time.”
“What do you mean?” I nearly yelled in a mixture of shock, anger, and confusion. “You knew? You remember?”
He took a step toward me and held his hands up as if he was going to reach for me, but I stumbled away from him as Jentry hurried into the kitchen.
Declan didn’t spare a glance for him, just moved one of his hands in Jentry’s direction as if silently asking him not to speak, then admitted hesitantly, “Yes, I remember that. I remembered when I woke up because it felt like just seconds after.”
Jentry looked at me questioningly.
“Declan already knew about us,” I choked out. “He knew when he woke up.”
Jentry tensed and slowly looked over at him. “Dec, how could—do you . . . do you have any idea how much she has agonized over telling you again? And this whole time you’ve just been—Christ, you’ve just been pretending not to remember? And for what?”
Declan’s head dropped and shook slowly as he spoke, but he still wouldn’t face Jentry. “Man, you’ve already taken her from me,” he growled in a low tone. “The least you could do is give me some fucking time alone with her.”
“The least you could do is give me some time to come to terms with the fact that you used your coma to your advantage and have let me believe that you thought we were engaged,” I seethed. “Do you know how sick that is, Declan?” Without waiting for his response, I turned and walked from the house.
The humid air shouldn’t have felt as refreshing as it did. I gulped down deep breaths of the heavy, midmorning air, letting it wash over and through me, and tried to imagine it calming me.
But that crushing weight now felt like heavy, sickening anger. That churning worry now felt like the most confusing betrayal—because I hadn’t just been betrayed. We’d all betrayed each other.
I had been sitting on the top step of the Veils’ porch for only a couple of minutes when I heard the front door open again, and I knew without turning around who had followed me out there. Because there was no yelling, no demands to know what had just happened, and I couldn’t feel his presence . . .
My head snapped up and I automatically reached out to help Declan when he groaned in pain as he tried to sit down beside me, but as soon as he was settled, I released his arm and went back to staring out over the large field I had run across just a week before when I’d tried to escape everything.
Declan sat by my side in silence for a while, but when he started to talk, each word was slow and filled with pain, as if he were reliving it. “I remember asking you and watching the way your face fell, like I’d just crushed you. I remember you started telling me everything about you and Jentry, remember it like you’d been thinking it for a long time and it was finally just pouring out. And I remember thinking I needed to leave, that I needed to get away from you because I couldn’t look at you anymore.”
“Dec . . .”
“It was like going from one moment to another,” he continued. “The last thing I honestly remember was storming out to my truck. I don’t know why I don’t remember getting in it or driving, or even this wreck everyone keeps asking me about. But I was heading for my truck, and then the next thing I know, I’m looking up at you and Jent. It felt like a split second bet
ween the two. But then . . . then there are times when I try to think back to see if I can remember more, and I swear I remember you, Rorie. I remember you . . .” He trailed off and laughed edgily. “God this sounds stupid, but I remember you talking to me. I remember your voice. Only your voice. I remember you asking me where I was and begging me to come back. But it seems like a dream.”
I clamped my hand over my mouth to muffle the sob that rose up my throat, and shut my eyes at the onslaught of tears.
“Rorie?” he asked softly, and reached for my arm.
“Not a dream,” I choked out.
“What?”
“That wasn’t a dream.” I wiped furiously at the steadily falling tears, and tried to calm myself enough to speak. “I kept thinking that you were lost, and if you could just find your way back, you would wake up.”
“So I heard you?”
I nodded quickly. “I must have called you hundreds of times just to hear your voice, whether I was sitting next to your bed or somewhere away from the hospital. And every time I would wonder where you were, and I swore that the time you finally answered me, I would apologize for what I had done to you. Because I knew you wouldn’t have been lost if it hadn’t been for me. Dec, I’m so sorry!” I sobbed. “I never meant to hurt you!”
“Come here,” he murmured, and pulled me into his side. “I can’t let you apologize to me.”
“Yes, you can!”
“Rorie, look at me,” he said gently, and lifted my tear-streaked face until he was looking me in the eye. “I can’t let you apologize. I tried to keep you when I knew you weren’t mine.” His voice wavered during the last few words, and his green eyes watered. “I knew during that weekend at the beach. I didn’t know what was going on between the two of you . . . but I knew. I could see it. I was so afraid of what would happen when he moved back that I tried to do everything I could to keep you before that could happen. Tried to do everything I could to keep you from pulling away and going to him. Especially to him. Jentry has girls for a night before he forgets all about them; that’s how he’d always been. I knew he would do the same to you, and I wanted to prevent that and keep you with me.”