Listen to "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" by Zayn ft. Taylor Swift.
**
I felt pain.
The kind that you would give anything to get it to stop. I felt like I had gained weight and my body pressed down on the soft background of whatever I was lying down on. Sinking in.
My head hurt as I tried to coerce my eyes into opening to at least know what was happening. Was this how death felt? I had always thought it would be painless, I had to still be alive to feel such extreme pain. I gave up trying after another bolt of pain shot through my entire body.
Did I die and end up in heaven?
No, I dismissed all thought of my possibility of being dead because I couldn't end up in heaven even if my life depended on it, and lying down here didn't feel like hell either. It was painful, but no as much as I thought hell would be. My throat felt dry and I longed to scream out but was currently incapable of that.
I tried moving my arm but it felt heavier, almost like it weighed more than my whole body. I was trying to wriggle my fingers when I heard hushed voices, low and soft.
"What's she trying to do? Is she going to wake up now?" I recognized Gerard's voice but this time, it didn't contain its usual coolness. He sounded extremely worried. I hated that, I wanted to hear him talk all cool and soft, not agitated and worried.
"The painkillers are just wearing off, she's fine," an unfamiliar voice replied. It sounded cracked and dry, elderly. "But I still think it's best to let us transfer her to the hospital."
"She's not going anywhere. She stays here," Gerard said, his voice containing finality with just a hint of frustration. I could tell what he was trying to do and was deeply grateful for it; he was trying to keep my suicide attempt away from the public.
"Please." He sounded desperate now. "This stays between us."
"I understand, sir," the cracked voice said, reassuringly. "Let me give her another shot of sedatives."
I hardly felt the needle prick my skin before I drifted off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I didn't realize how much time had passed but when my eyes finally got the strength to snap open, I noticed a few things. Firstly, my left forearm was now heavily bandaged and lifting it was now going to be an issue.
Secondly, I was in my bed, dressed in a light blue free gown and completely no underwear beneath. It felt so breezy and I couldn't help but imagine who had handled my body when I was unconscious.
Third, I was currently staring up at The Jade-Eyed Bastard, his jade meeting my brown in a fierce gaze, burning with passion and what looked like anger. His hair was utterly dishevelled in the sexiest way possible and his jaw set into a hard line that I could bet would cut through stone.
The coldness of his next words shook me.
"What the fuck, Karina?" He was angry, and I could tell by his clenching and unclenching of his fist. "What kind of stunt was that?"
I didn't know what to say. No words felt good enough so I shut my eyes. "You don't understand," I managed to say.
"I do understand a lot. But suicide, really?"
"You should have let me die," I said, the walls of my throat feeling like they had been scratched with iron nails. "People like me aren't meant for this world, we're toxic and our negativity just keeps spreading."
"Hear yourself out, Karina. That makes no sense."
"I deserve to die."
I was positive that he had seen the pictures, he knew everything now and I wasn't sure how that made me feel. My secret was out, my big secret, he knew.
"And your dying solves what?" He growled, getting up from his sitting position by my beside and running his hand through his hair. "Do you have any idea how it felt to think I was losing you the second time?"
"You don't understand anything!" I snapped, trying to sit up and wincing in pain at that little activity. I noticed Gerard's hard expression soften at my pain but masking it immediately when he realized he was still mad at me.
"Don't sit up yet, baby."
I winced, obeying. "You don't know how it feels to have guilt eating at you, to live in constant fear of people finding out about the freak you actually are." My voice broke around this point, as I gently brushed the cascades of black curls from my face. "You don't know how it feels to be unable to feel anything but nothingness."
He was quiet, so I continued. "My life is ruined, completely. God, do you know how many times I've tried to say no to men and couldn't? How many therapies I've gone through? I'm an addict." I gave a burst of shaky laughter. "You don't know anything, Gerard. At all."
We stared at each other for a few seconds, my chest rising and falling, making my naked breasts strain out of the material of the dress. Beads of sweat were starting to form on my face and I suddenly longed to have a drink of water to quench the ache.
Gerard sat back down, his weight depressing the bed and I noticed the usual tired circles around his eyes caused by his insomnia. My eyes dropped to his grey v-neck and I felt like burying my face in it, soaking my worries into his chest.
"Is that what you think?" He asked, quietly. "That I don't understand how you're feeling?"
I nodded once.
"Karina, honey." His voice was soft and gentle now, as rich as dripping honey. "Why do you think I paint?"
I bit down on my lip, thinking about his question and coming up with no sensible enough answer. "Because you have mad talent which half of the world's population would trade their souls for?"
"No, not that." He chuckled, mirthlessly. "Sweetheart, I paint because I'm emotionally tormented. You'd be surprised that it runs even deeper than yours."
I raised my brow but he was still talking. "Guilt, like you talked about is a powerful thing. It eats you alive, it's eaten me for years now."
"What do you mean by--" my question was interrupted by the door opening and clanking of a walking stick by a character I knew all too well.
"Hey, G, I heard voices, she awake now?" JT was without his shades, his eyes staring at the bed where he assumed that I would be. He was dressed in a white tee that had the slogan 'weirdo' in bold red and jeans.
"I'm fine, Taelor," I said, picking his middle name which he expressly told me to never use. His eyes fell onto my exact location on the bed and he shook his head slowly.
"Bella, I thought I would never hear you call me that again," he sniffled, making his way to the bed with relative ease. He settled on my side, Gerard staying on the other and tackled me in a bear hug. "Promise you'll never try that again?"
I patted him on the back with my right hand, my face buried in his shirt and tightly hugged him back. "How'd you guys find me?"
I remembered Gerard was supposed to be in England with some duchess, so I was naturally curious as to what led to my discovery. I didn't think anyone would find me.
"JT called me after you dropped him off," Gerard stated, watching our hug with a weary expression and a little crease on his eyebrow. "Said you were acting odder than usual, for me to come home."
"And you came? All the way from England?" I disentangled myself from the hug to give Gerard a look of pure awe. "Seriously?"
"No," JT snorted, patting my palm and lightly tracing it. "He was still in here New York."
"We delayed the flight due to weather, I was planning on coming home and leaving the day after," Gerard explained, the weary look still in his eyes as he studied JT and me. "And I came home the moment he called and found you..."
There was a moment of awkward silence in which none of us had absolutely nothing to say about my suicide attempt. I was embarrassed, honestly.
"Those pictures--" Gerard was saying, his fist clenched again showing that his temper was rising again but I cut off his sentence by holding up a hand.
"I don't want to talk about it." I sounded rude and unfriendly but could hardly care less about that right now. This was a part of my past I couldn't bear discussing at all.
"I could leave," JT suggested, scratching his head and frowning slightly. "I was hungry and about to raid your fridge, anyways."
"You don't have to--" He cut off my words by placing a finger to my lips and sighing.
"Shut up, Bella. I know couple alone time when I see it and this is definitely one." He removed his finger while I obeyed, watching him expertly get to his feet. He looked over to Gerard's side and murmured a few words in Italian to which Gerard only rolled his eyes to. They really had to stop keeping me in the dark. Then he left, making the air even more awkward than I imagined possible.
I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them and placed my head right in between the knees. "You saw it all? You know about what those men did to me?" My voice sounded like a whispering child but I knew he could hear every word clearly.
"Rina--"
I interrupted him. "But I don't understand why you're keeping my secret, it's absurd. If people found out if your parents found out, what would they think?"
"Karina--"
"Nobody would want the used property now, would they? I'm going to start from square one again. Please don't collect the money you've given my parents, you don't have to pay me anymore, it's fine. Just leave them."
"Sweetheart--"
"I swear, I'll not even disturb --" I was trembling now and my voice shook, but that was suddenly the least of my problems when I felt Gerard's lips land softly on mine. The kiss was slow and soft initially because of my shock but I responded immediately I felt his tongue taste my lip, tasting and teasing me. He cupped my face as my bottom lip was pulled into his mouth and I gave an involuntary moan before parting the seam of my lips and granting him unrestricted access to my mouth.
A bolt of pain shot up my injured arm and I winced in pain, the noise separating us. "I thought you said you were a virgin." I had never had a kiss as mind-blowing as that, I reached up to feel my lip.
"Be careful with your arm." He looked from the arm to my face. "I said I was a virgin, not that I didn't know how to kiss. I've kissed before, Karina," he told me dryly.
"Do it again," I whispered and he immediately leaned in, starting softly but expertly until he full on dominated my lips.
"Gerard," I moaned as his mouth expertly explored mine for what seemed like ages, building up a familiar longing in my inner core. I wanted sex, I wanted to feel his body on mine. It was an insane, unnatural urge I couldn't bury.
He broke off the kiss, his hands brushing away the strands of hair that had fallen in my face while I stared up at the man who just gave me an insight into one of his many more talents.
"You have no idea how glad I am that I finally found a way to shut you up," he whispered, his face just inches from mine and his minty breath fanning my face.
Oh Lord, if this was how he planned on always shutting me up, I was never going to be quiet again.
"Karina," he breathed, his hand holding my unbandaged hand, our foreheads touching and eyes locked onto each other. "I don't care."
I raised an eyebrow for him to explain what he meant. "Uh?"
"I don't care about what's happened in the past and fuck anyone that cares because I really don't. This is just us here, in the end, it's just me and you." He pointed a finger to his chest and I raised my hand to feel the same spot, his rapid heartbeats came after.
"And that's all that matters," he finished, reaching out to hug me as tightly as JT had earlier. I buried my face in his shoulder, inhaling his usual fruity and turpentine scent.
This man does not care about the fact that his wife has been raped multiple times by different guys.
He's not running away.
He kissed me.
Damn.
I bumped my bandaged arm on his back and recoiled in pain, which was replaced by laughter at the alarmed look on his adorable face.
"Jesus, be careful with that arm, Karina."
"Calm down, I'm fine --" I was saying when a knock interrupted my sentence, I called out a permission to come in knowing it was obviously not JT.
That guy never knocked, but let's face it, he was never in danger of walking into anything he couldn't unsee anyway.
The door opened slowly and I locked eyes with the clear, blue eyes I've befriended for over twenty years now and he wasn't smiling.
Lance stared at me, for the first time, his face completely devoid of any emotions and empty. My eyes strayed away from his face to his tall, lean body casually dressed in sweats. Since when we were way younger, he made a stupid rule about never wearing sweats outdoors because they made him look 'sickly' so I knew I had done something to him.
I looked down at the blue covers to avoid the remorse flooding my system and heard Gerard clear his throat loudly. He could probably feel the tension too, a blind man could probably do too.
"I'll give you two some privacy," he murmured, scratching the back of his neck and releasing his warm hold on my hand. I watched as my husband left the room, closing the door behind him and sighed waiting for the inevitable. I really appreciated how Gerard always respected the relationship between Lance and me, it was yet another sweet part of him. He never did question my relationship with Lance.
Lance's arms were now folded across his chest as he glared at me, a scowl firmly in place.
"Look, if you're just gonna stand there and criticize--" I was cut off by just one word he said.
Three letters.
"Why?"
His eyes were now clouded with a veil of tears threatening to fall as he slowly made his way to me. It was funny how I was the one in pain and he was the one in tears. I had still not shed a single teardrop since that day in the hospital, thirteen years ago.
"Why the fuck would you try to kill yourself?"
"I'm sorry." It was a lame thing to say but his reaction really hit me where it hurt.
"You once said you weren't going to let life win," he stated, looking at my arm. "But this was taking the easy way out, bailing out and you promised you were going to fight till the end. You said you'd always be there for me, you were going to fucking leave me, Karina. The fuck."
"I don't know why I did it, I guess it just got too much to handle," I tried explaining, my eyes still glued to my hands. No explanation felt good enough for my actions.
"Then why didn't you call me? Why didn't you talk? You know as well as I do that if you called me from halfway across the globe, I'd come to you as fast as I could. Do you know what your death would have done to me?" He was staring at me while I couldn't bring myself to meet his intense gaze. "Rina, you're closer to me than any of my siblings."
He sighed. "Did you even think about your parents? Do you know how guilty they even feel about making you marry this guy for money?"
"Did you tell them?"
"No one knows," he told me. "Except the blind man, your husband and me."
I just continued staring at my hands, his words hitting me like blows. I heard him move from the door, coming to my side and soon his blue eyes filled with tears were looking into mine.
"I love you, Karina."
I reached up to his face, wiping away the tears with my hands and crushing him in a tight hug, minding my arm. "I love you too."
**
So, for some strange reason, I found this chapter really hard to write and your thoughts on it are greatly appreciated❤❤❤.
Special thanks to those sending me angry VNs to continue this book;)
Remember, you can connect with me on my Twitter at @_petty_official and my IG @_loohla_
Love,
Lola✌