Home - COD Simon Ghost Riley X Female OC

Chapter 35

MJ had little sense of time passing. She wanted to see the sky so badly that it physically hurt but she didn't ask. She wasn't a child. She knew they would let her move when she was ready.

Simon had told her that it had been nearly five days from the time they arrived and she fell out to the time she woke up. She knew it had felt long, but it still surprised her. Not as much as knowing he had stayed with her all that time, though. He had forgone his normal duties in order to sit in an uncomfortable chair and wait for her to wake up. It must have felt powerless, but it also confused her a bit.

She had finally convinced him to go back up to the main floor and lie down on something where his feet didn't hang off the end. She certainly wasn't going anywhere. His eyes were wary when he finally said yes but he didn't let it show on the rest of his face. She wanted him to rest, to get some energy back. He looked so tired.

He had been looking for her before they all met for the failed captive exchange, but only because they didn't want the family to have both her and her sister. He had gotten captured and they had both been fairly certain that one or both of them would die there. So that explained the tenderness, pet names, deep conversation. But they were back now, safe, they had the upper hand and yet he had hung back. It was hard for her to come to terms with the fact that he had stayed beside her because he wanted to. It made more sense that he somehow felt responsible, but she didn't see how he could reconcile from down there instead of out with his team.

It was the second time in just a few months that she sat alone in a hospital bed utterly disconnected from the world outside. And the world outside was just the Mexican desert that had swallowed any memory of her too long ago to matter. Outside of that, back in the real world, she wondered if she could even reacclimate at all. People who went through these types of experiences often never recovered. She had seen it plenty of times in her line of work. They had to fight their entire lives just to keep their feet on the right plane of reality, let alone lead a normal life.

Simon was like that. He didn't lead a normal life, he never had, but as an adult he had thrown himself into this deadly, grueling work, only breaking long enough to let himself recover to a point of jumping back into action. She wondered what would have happened if someone else had found her that night. If she still would have gotten close to him. She figured that she would have, his gravitational pull was extremely strong. She would have been pulled into his orbit no matter what, and never able to leave.

And she couldn't now. She didn't want to, she didn't care if it killed her. She loved him. She acted like she didn't remember saying it, but she did. And she didn't regret it. Well, she regretted saying it then instead of in a moment that wasn't addled by shock and urgency. Love as a last dying confession was cold and unfair. She wanted to tell him again when they finally had their feet on solid ground. She didn't expect him to say it back. She wasn't even sure she wanted him to. He was all action, she understood that so deeply. It was a part of what she loved about him, she didn't need him to change that. If he loved her, he would do his best to show it when the time came.

A couple of days passed that saw Simon sleeping in his own bed again since Mariana had settled into a fairly normal schedule. Her days were filled with regaining her strength and fine motor skills leaving little time for them to talk. He had told her that the focus was her sister but that the woman would be moved soon, extradited back to the US. All of that involved her in some way, and she was sure she would be pulled a million different directions if things went to trial. She wasn't ready to even think about that yet. So much for even contemplating going back to a normal life.

Simon had given up on going back to the life he knew. He could pinpoint it pretty well to the night he had found Mariana's bloody clothes in that murder house. When he realized she wasn't there, that he was a hair's breadth too late, it had made him so sick that he puked. Not having her close to him, safe, had elicited a physical response, one he'd been unable to ignore. Everything up to that point, the sitting quietly together, the sleeping together, it could all have been compartmentalized and put away by him when she left but at that point he had known it would always be her. And with someone like him, she would always be something he had to face the prospect of losing. And maybe she wouldn't think him worth it. He almost hoped for that, so the choice would be made for him. There's no way he would ask her to do something she didn't want to do.