The Love I Need

Chapter 3

--BEFORE--

"Emy! Angel, I'm coming!"

"Cal!"

"Emy!"

No matter how hard I try, I can't get any closer to him. I'm trying to scream at the top of my lungs, but my voice only sounds weaker and more faint, each and every time his name falls from my lips.

"Cal..." I try to scream again, but my voice comes out in a barely there whisper. The image of Cal is growing hazy and distorted.

He's reaching a hand toward me, and then I hear a voice yell, "Tase him!"

No!

Cal's body convulses and he falls forward.

I whimper at the sight.

Suddenly, his body is lit with flames. He pushes himself onto his knees, and then his feet. He's in front of me now, and he looks down at me and slowly shakes his head.

"Pathetic," he says. "It's a shame you made it through surgery."

I look at him with tears in my eyes. "You left me... I can't believe you left me."

"You can't believe it?" he asks, then throws his head back and starts to laugh. "You mean, you let yourself believe that I actually loved you? I never loved you, Emy. No one ever will. You will die alone and unwanted, just like our child."

----------

My body jolts awake, and I sit up with a gasp.

Big mistake.

Pain shoots through my body from the incision in my abdomen. It makes me gasp again, and I slap a hand over my mouth to quiet myself.

"Lia!"

Justin's panicked voice comes from a couple feet away. He drops to his knees on the floor beside the couch.

As I expected, he was once again sleeping in the recliner next to the couch I've been sleeping on.

He places a hand on my back and sympathetically rubs between my shoulders, while trying to make eye contact with me. "Are you okay? What's wrong? I'm right here."

I lean away from him and shrug one of my shoulders to try and get his hand off of me. "I'm fine. I don't need you to fucking hover over me, Justin. Back off."

He moves his hand from my back, but doesn't give me the space I asked for. "I'm just trying to help, Em. I know you're really upset and—"

"It's too late to help now, Justin! Where were you that night?"

He frowns with a confused expression. "What?"

"That last night he was around! You convinced me to go watch his fight with you, but when the fight started you weren't there. So where the hell were you? Fucking Bébé in the bathroom? Doing lines? You didn't show up and help until he was already a beaten mess! After Pops, we took care of him together, remember? You were supposed to help me take care of him!"

"I... I didn't know he wasn't okay. I mean, I noticed that waitress got under his skin but—"

"He was never okay! Don't act like you didn't know that!"

"I'm sorry, okay? He was with you! You guys left together after the waitress pissed him off, and well, I had a pretty good idea what you were up to. So yah, I was fucking Bébé, but what did you expect me to do, Lia? I wasn't going to just wait around for you guys to finish fucking so that I could see how he was doing."