What Lies Beneath The Clearing

13.6

Lennox's heart skipped a beat. Chelsea is gone? For good? She went to speak, but her voice cut out, so she took a moment to try and gather her thoughts. As wild as her imagination was, she had to try and restrain herself from imagining whatever she wanted to about Jay; he was, after all, 10 years her senior. After quietly clearing her throat, she managed to speak.

"Really?" It was hard to hide the relief in her voice, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah."

Say the right thing. "I'm sorry. That sucks." Lennox tried almost desperately to impart a dullness to her voice and inflect sympathy.

"Thanks, but I think it's for the best. I don't really think it was working out anyway."

"No?"

"No."

There was a certain ease to his voice that told Lennox he wasn't really all that broken up about the situation, so instead of trying to hide the evident lightness of her speech, she tried to give herself time to find her composure.

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm just finishing up on a lead."

"Why don't you come by the hospital? Not now, later, I mean. I don't want to pull you away from anything. But you can tell me about it. If you want to, that is, it's none of my business,"

"No, actually that sounds good. I was gonna check on you anyway. I'll try and get off in a couple hours."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Think you can stay out of trouble until then?"

"I'm sure I'll survive."

"Okay, text me if you need me. I'll see you later Len."

"Okay, bye." She waited until he'd ended the call before bringing her phone away from her ear, looking at the screen for a few seconds.

She noticed the small smile on her face in the reflection of her screen. Just seeing her own reflection after talking to Jay made Lennox's stomach flush with butterflies, so she couldn't imagine how she'd manage to stay calm when he arrived later that day.