Eternal Longing ✓

60. Guilt

JAYA

The carpet is different.

And so is the bookshelf that was on the other side of the TV, and . . . the TV is gone. Among other things, the knick-knacks that were tastefully scattered around the room are gone, nowhere to be found.

"What happened?" I keep looking around the room as Mrs. Barton closes the front door. "Did you guys renovate?"

"Something like that," she states cheerfully, but for some reason, I feel like it's absolutely nothing like that.

Before I can ask more questions, she's directing me toward the room with hurried steps. "The medicine he's taking makes him quite drowsy," she explains as we walk down the hallway, "so he's sleeping at the moment. Finally," she adds with relief.

"What does he do when he's awake?" I ask curiously, my heart beating faster at the prospect of seeing him soon.

"Since we've refused to let him leave the house, he's been typing on his laptop." She shakes her head in confusion. "His father and I have both asked him what exactly he's writing, what he's refused to tell us."

"Probably doing work, right?"

"That's the thing, the young man hasn't done any work. Someone else has had to pick up his slack." She pushes the door open slowly, and I blink to adjust my eyes to the darkened room.

I take a step inside the room, my eyes trained on the form on the bed, and when I turn around to ask her how long he's been sleeping, the woman is nowhere to be found.

Someone is in a rush.

Then again, the poor woman has probably had her hands full with her hard-headed son for the past two weeks. I don't blame her for wanting her space now that she can finally get away. Lord knows I should probably not be here, but something tells me that I should be.

Unless he's in the throes of a nightmare, Fin's sleep is more than often undisturbed and still, and with the addition of the meds, I'm not surprised that he seems to be sleeping like a rock. I inch closer and peer at him, watching as he snores softly, curled up on his left side with the blanket pulled up to his chin.

"You manipulative, big-headed, exhausting, beautiful, perfect man." Involuntarily, I reach a hand forward and gently push a lock of his hair away from his face. "I missed you, you know?" I mumble, and he doesn't move even an inch. "Did you miss me?"

Of course, he doesn't respond, not that I expected him to, so I retract my hand and move toward the couch by the side of the room, but before I can take a seat, my eyes catch on his open laptop that sits on the side of his table.

Because I'm a girl plagued by curiosity, before taking a seat, I snatch up the laptop and glance at him before plopping down on the chair. I'll be sitting down in this room for a while or something, so I decide that I might as well snoop a bit to maybe see what this man has been doing on his laptop.

When I unlock his laptop, his background photo image, a selfie of Cam and me smiling widely with our cheeks pressed together, makes me smile. After one night when Cam slept over and I took these silly photos, Fin splashed it on for his display photo despite my complaints that my face looked weird in the shots.

A file, the only one on his home screen, catches my attention. It's named Jaya, and when I open it there are several documents in the folder. I scroll down to the oldest one, titled with a date, and click on it.

The document opens, and I hold my breath as I begin reading.

-

August 2017