SMOKE (The Aurum Trilogy Book 2)

Chapter 45

Chapter 45

Lauren

It feels like a part of you has been taken away, but you can never have it back.

I wake up with a jolt. My body feels like its falling off the bed when it's safely tangled in Jonathan's arms.

"Are you okay?" He murmurs, slowly rising.

I nodded, rubbing my eyes. "Just a bad dream."

He sits next to me and smiles.

"I can't stop thinking about the cure, you know." I told him. "I can't stop thinking what if I were to take it..." Flashbacks of Dr. Carter's hopeful face enter my mind, and I try my best to shut it down to no avail. "Maybe he's right. Maybe I need to take it." I placed a hand on his cheek, feeling the slight curls of his hair tickling my fingers. "But I don't want to lose you."

"I don't want to lose you too."

And for the first time, I saw Jonathan's say in this story. I knew his choice.

He wanted me to take it even if the price is me forgetting him.

He wanted me to live.

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"You weren't in your room the whole night." Lia reprimanded, hands on her hips. "Dad says you burst out the room when he showed you something. He says you never returned. I came to check on you in the morning, but you weren't there. Where were you?"

"I was outside."

"She was with me." Jonathan and I said simultaneously.

I groaned, and Lia raised an eyebrow.

"Do you know about the antidote?" I asked her.

Her gaze shifted, and when it did, she need no words to answer. "Yes."

"I don't want anything to do with it."

"You need it more than you think." Lia snapped. She grabbed my arm and gave it a faint squeeze. "Think about it."

"I can't promise."

"Dr. Carter wanted to give you this." She said, handing me a purple compact. I took it, turning it over my palms.

"Another attempt to use me against Fiouris?" I cocked my head, clutching the compact till my knuckles turned white. "No thanks."

"Lauren, you can't be too hard on him." Lia said.

"Too hard?" I retorted. "You try being the pawn, Lia. You try being used over and over again and see if you don't get tired of it." I shook off her grasp and glared at her with dagger eyes. "You don't know what's it like to be treated as a machine instead of a human being."

"Lauren, I'm sorry."

"Yeah. You're sorry. But sorry doesn't change anything. You're still human while I have to take an antidote, murder a killer and lose my feelings just to become one."

I threw the compact and walked past Lia. Her mouth hung agape, and she was saucer-eyed. I ignored her and kept walking, stopping only when Jonathan grabbed my arm and spun me so that I faced him.

"I know I'm being too petty." I muttered. "But I'm so tired. They want me to be human, but they're treating me as an experiment as soon as I become one. What's the difference?"

"I don't know what to do when you die." Jonathan says out of nowhere.

"What?"

"I don't know what to do without you."