Come With Me

Chapter 11

She felt her heart rate speed up and her eyes begin to fill with tears. He was so honest, so genuine and so sweet - how could she deny a man that had gone to so much effort? But, in contrast to that, how could she say yes to such a sweet man when she knew the pain she was going to cause him sometime soon was much worse than the pain of her saying no to him now? She was at a complete crossroads, and the advice from her elderly patient came back to her once again. It had been just over a year when that particular patient had passed, but she still remembered the advice vividly - don't let the illness hold you back.

That was what made Connie's decision all the more difficult - not only was she going to destroy the man she loved, and get rid of the most stable father figure that her daughter had ever had, but she was also going against a dying woman's will.

"I'm so sorry Jacob," she whispered, and she watched his face fall. "I'm so sorry, I can't marry you." He stood up, and looked at her, completely dumbfounded. He thought she would be happy. He had expected her to throw herself into his arms and kiss him until the sun rose in the morning. He had just put all his feelings out to her and she had turned him down. Did she not feel the same for him? "But while we're confessing things, I think there's something I ought to tell you. It's about time you knew."

Connie guided Jacob into a private area, and had the conversation with him. The conversation that she had rehearsed in the mirror since the day they got together. She finally told him about the cancer.

"And you've known all this time?" He asked, surprised. "Since we got together?"

"I did find out a little before we got together, but yes, essentially. I'm so sorry Jacob, I tried to tell you so many times."

"Really?" He asked, rising up from the chair on which he was sat. "I must be losing it because I don't recall once hearing you try and tell me that!" He shouted.

"Please don't be angry," she whispered. "I love you. I didn't intend to keep it from you - just with each day it got harder and harder until it became impossible."

"No Connie!" He shouted again, turning around to face her. "Don't give me that! We're a team, Con. We always have been! So don't you tell me it was hard to tell me! For God's sakes, if you trusted me you would've been able to tell me at any time! You know, a few weeks, I could understand that. But a year? Connie, you kept something this big from me for an entire year!"

"Jacob," she tried to protest but he silenced her, paced around the room for a while, and then walked out in a rage. "Jacob!" She called, watching him leave her. "Where are you going?" Tears were pouring down her face by now but she couldn't blame him for taking it the way he did. She'd lied to him since the day they got together - she couldn't blame him at all.

"I don't know," he replied half-heartedly. "I just don't want to look at you." She collapsed on a heap in the floor and sobbed into the ground, and it took every ounce of Jacob's strength to walk away from her without looking back. He knew that if he saw her in that state he'd run back instantly and apologise, and at the moment he needed time to process things. Why couldn't she have told him earlier? His girlfriend was dying, and for some reason he felt like should've noticed. He couldn't blame himself, not now. He needed to be angry - he could process it much faster when he was angry, rather than wallowing in self pity.

That night was the first evening that Jacob stayed out of the house since he had got with Connie, and since Grace was staying at her Aunt's (the idea was to give Connie and Jacob some "free time" following their night out, though that hadn't really panned out), Connie was home alone. She looked on her mobile phone - not surprised to find no texts or missed calls from Jacob - and in the spur of the moment, booked herself a one way plane ticket that left that night. She didn't care where it was going (it just so happened that it would take her to LA, where she could easily organise a work transfer) and so she made her way up into the attic, to grab the largest suitcase she owned, and packed it full of everything she needed - her clothes, her work documents, her laptop, and a couple of photographs of her family. She wrote a letter addressed to Jacob and Grace and left it on the kitchen worktop, then switched off her lights for the last time and locked the door, climbing in to the car. She broke down in to tears at the wheel, and sobbed until she could feel the pain in her chest beginning to make it difficult to breathe. This was the part in all the Rom-Coms where the man would come running down the street just as the woman was about to pull out of the driveway and leave for good, and confess how wrong he was, before kissing her and persuading her to stay. But as Connie dried her eyes and pulled out of her driveway, the streets were dark and there was no one to be seen wherever she went. No one to stop her now, and nothing holding her back, except from a daughter that she'd already abandoned once, and a man that couldn't even stand the sight of her. Wiping her eyes, she continued down the road, travelling straight to the motorway to the airport, where she could leave this life behind her. In all honesty, she had feared death ever since her diagnosis, but the breakdown of her relationship had felt more painful than she could ever have imagined death to be.

It wasn't too long before she was waiting to get on her plane, and she was feeling quite a bit better about herself. Perhaps leaving was the best option for her now - she didn't have long left to live, so she might as well spend the last year having fun and living life to the full without any regrets. She boarded, and still had no texts or missed calls, and so she thought that she may be able to sleep a little on the plane flight. Just because he wasn't trying to get in touch with her didn't mean that she wasn't desperate to get in touch with him, but she knew she had to be strong now. As soon as she had to switch her mobile phone off, Connie began to get emotional, as if that final straw of hope that they had just disintegrated and completely vanished from existence, and it wasn't long before the tears were pouring down her face. She was given some strange looks from other passengers but she didn't care - she just wanted to forget everything that had happened this past year and move on, before leaving Jacob - and everyone else - behind her for good.

About twenty minutes later, Connie was silent, but only because she had cried that much that she'd just fallen asleep. She found that this was possibly the worst thing she could've done, as images of Jacob kept sprouting into her mind, and then visions of Grace, and her entire family. When Connie woke, she tried telling herself all the good things about this situation. She told herself that she could be open about her treatment in LA, as she didn't have to hide it from any family members or work colleagues. She told herself that she could do anything she liked without having the normal restrictions of every day life. However, with every excuse she found to persuade herself that it was a good idea, Jacob forced his way into her mind to make her think back to what was keeping her in the UK. The flight time from the UK to LA was approximately 11hours, and Connie had set off at about quarter past ten that night. That meant that it was due to be 9AM (UK time) when she landed, but it was going to be 1AM by LA's time zone, which allowed her to get a couple of hours decent sleep in the hotel too.

It was very early morning when she checked herself into a hotel under the name of Mrs Masters (she was taking advantage of the fact that she could mess around a little bit now) and she managed to catch a few hours of sleep before she planned her first day in her new life. The first thing she did when she woke up - besides check her mobile phone (still no missed calls) - was work out the way to the local hospital from the safe confinements of her room. She went to the bathroom to throw up twice before she was able to settle down properly - that's what jet-lag, and being an emotional wreck causes! As she moved over to the couch in front for the television to relax, she realised that she had absolutely nothing in, and so she decided to add 'grocery shopping' to her to-do list. From the hotel she was able to go house-hunting, and set about finding herself a nice apartment to rent nearby, which in all honesty, proved to be quite an easy task as LA was full of beautiful apartments. She managed to get two viewings for the next day, and so once that was sorted, she got herself showered and changed, and ready to go to the shops. Connie was feeling like a weight had been lifted, and was glad she could forget about Jacob and the family she had left behind for a few moments. Just as she began to smile and walk confidently down the street, she got a message on her phone. She didn't even need to check it - she knew it was from Jacob, as he had a unique text tone. She didn't make any effort to look at it, as she knew that it would break her if she saw it, and so she just continued on as if nothing had happened.