THE COFFEE HAS YOUR SMELL

CHAPTER 16: COMPARING THINGS AGAIN

When she returned to the hotel that night, Kate found Jonathan there. He was standing in front of the fireplace, with his back to her, and staring at the dance of the flames and not around him. Jonathan didn't look at her, not even when the door closed behind her with a certain noise. This happened because of the amazement to see him there because Kate hadn't expected to find him there. Because of this, she couldn't control the shake of her hands and, releasing the door, it closed behind her.

Not even Kate understood why she felt like this. She didn't know why her hands were shaking and why her heart was strangely pouncing in her chest, giving her the feeling that she lacked air at one point. Kate also felt scared, although Jonathan hadn't ever been brutal, at least not with her. Even so, she couldn't chase that fear away, something she felt more vivid than ever while staring at the man's back... that man that she had adored once and had expected so many times before to come to their room and spend some time with her.

Jonathan hadn't stopped by that hotel room for so long though. There'd been days if not weeks since he forgot her there, abandoning her alone in that strange place and somehow forgotten by the world. A place where she had made friends eventually, even if she hadn't ever expected this to happen.

Yet, this happened and she was so happy. She spent a beautiful evening among friends and she felt, even if for a short time only, that her wings healed. She thought that, after that night, everything would change and her life would improve, that she wouldn't be as lonely as she'd been by then, that she would have someone to talk to about her thoughts and feelings, that they'd spend some time together, and that she would forget about loneliness. What she hadn't expected was to see Jonathan there, who seemed to have returned to her: so unexpectedly, something she didn't want at all at that moment.

Yes. For an unknown reason to her, Kate hadn't expected him to be there and didn't want to have him there. Jonathan was there though. He seemed to wait for her, even if she hadn't called him there. To be more precise, Kate hadn't called him at all in the last two weeks since she'd been to his office to bring him some clean clothes, seeing that it had been days since he hadn't stopped by the hotel. Yet, coming to his office, she had been told that „Mister Ward went on a business trip." This news confused her so much that Kate even felt dizzy after this. She even staggered to her feet because she felt betrayed.

Kate felt so betrayed that day. She felt all this deeply in her soul because this was unbelievable for her that the man that she loved and loved her, as Jonathan had told her before, left the town without even telling her about this. „He didn't even text me about this," Kate eventually thought. „He didn't do that because it seems that I'm not someone important to him."

Thinking about all this, Kate's eyes filled with tears. She didn't say anything though, for a long time. She only stared in front, at a blind spot, as she used to do each time she felt lost or betrayed. She did that each time to be able to control herself again, stand up, and move on. And, as it always happened, this trick helped her: she could deeply breathe in after this, calmed down a little, and asked in a shaking voice, „With... whom Mister Ward went this time?"

„With his secretary, with Mrs. Loyle," Jonathan's assistant told Kate that day, a man whose name was Mikel Stevens. She knew that man, who had been working for „Ward&Partners" for about six years already.

Kate smiled. „With her," she thought after this. „Of course, he didn't have time or desire to tell me that he left the town. He did that because he was with her, as it had always been."

Closing her eyes, for a few moments only, Kate felt dizzy again. She felt that the whole world collapsed over her shoulders. A world she had been building step by step, from solid bricks as she thought, but which was falling apart at that moment like those castles built from sand.