Loving Levi Greene

Chapter 18: Absence

***Amelia's POV***

It has been over 24 hours since I last saw Levi.

I am due to meet him in the garden in less than one hour.

I have thought of him nearly every second that has passed. My brain has destructively conjured a multitude of different possibilities, of reasons why he doesn't want, or can't, be with me.

It has been absolute mental torture.

Is it because he doesn't want to marry?

Because I am not good enough for him?

Perhaps he has another he has promised himself to, and our time in the forest was a mistake.

Maybe he feels like I lured him into intimacy, and now regrets the acts we committed under that canopy.

I shake my head.

Stupid, stupid girl.

I have been a fool.

I should have read the signs. I mean- he basically told me the second I'd met him that he wasn't interested in any kind of commitment. Of marriage. Of love.

When someone shows you who they really are, you should believe them the first time.

I shake my head, as if trying to shake the poisonous thoughts from my mind.

I am sitting in front of my vanity, brushing my freshly washed and dried hair.

I look into my own eyes, but I can't help but to think of him. I close my eyes.

Cobalt blue stares back at me, curly black hair dusting his forehead. His heated stare melts me, even in my thoughts.

I think of his soft caresses. How he held me tightly on the forest floor. The rise and fall of his chest, and the soft thuds of his heart beat soothing me into a peaceful, exhausted sleep.

I dreamt of him when I fell asleep in the forest. I dreamt of a future with this man.

Of marrying him, buying a home, gardening with him, and eventually having his children.

My eyes still closed, I felt tears stinging underneath my eyelids, threatening to fall.

I opened my eyes, looking back at my reflection.

He told me it was a mistake. That we can't be together.

Anguish now muddles my features, nowhere near the acceptance of the situation I was hoping I'd have a grasp on by now.

I use a soft linen handkerchief to blot away the traitorous tears leaking from my red rimmed eyes.

I glance to my right, looking at the clock sitting on top of my chest of drawers.

It is time for me to meet him.

To face him in the garden.

After glancing in the mirror one last time, I pick up the skirts of my lavender gown, and swiftly head downstairs to Eden, where I am anxious to find Levi.

To find the man who is about to shatter me into a thousand pieces.

*****

I am sitting on the garden bench, facing the gate of Eden.

My heart is thrumming in my chest, anxiety causing a sheer layer of sweat down my back.

I fiddle with my gloved hands, they lay resting in my lap, finicking and twisting.