Time To Heal [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER THREE: THE FLASHBACK

Time stopped for Ana when she heard the devastating news coming so bluntly from the man in front of her.

For a little while, even for a transient moment, she'd felt genuine happiness at Kevin's party. She had even managed to stop the flow of memories from flooding her with grief, having put Devin's Crighton re-appearance in her life as an unfortunate coincidence. It had all been possible because of the wonderful time she'd been spending with Kevin who'd been so sure she would skip because of her hectic schedule. But she would never be too busy for him. For them. She loved them unconditionally and limitlessly.

The orphanage kids. Over such a short span of time, they had become such an integral part of her life that now she could hardly imagine her future without them. Especially when she brought such joy to them, not only for monetary purposes, but with her presence and love. When life had knocked her out with acute anguish, she had used them as anchor to rebuild her shattered world around them.

Now, as she stood transfixed staring at her worst nightmare, she rued the fact that life could be so unfair that he could still make her feel. She'd definitely not envisaged a cold greeting coming from nowhere which had given her the scare of her life. When she recovered from the initial shock, an amalgam of emotion assuaged her, a mixture of pain, remorse and anger. Not knowing the protocol in such a situation, she took in greedily his face, even if it was an effort trying to make out his features in the dark. Curiosity won as she deliberately tamped down all the other feelings to wonder what the enigmatic Devin Crighton could be doing at her doorstep at such an ungodly hour.

Puzzled to find not an ounce of remorse on his harsh face, Ana desperately searched for any sign of emotion other than that relentless derision. Anything aside the fact that he was ridiculing her like he'd always done, and found none. It fueled her wrath, as she hailed her cloak of protection, wearing her famous ice princess façade, knowing that her eyes glazed over with blue frost. He would not know that her heart was beating out of rhythm against her chest, that her hands were shaking or that her throat felt as dry as sand wood. Even if the task killed her. It was his time to squirm.

After all, he'd been the bastard who'd left her stranded at the altar where she'd stood waiting for him in her wedding dress, facing the ridicule of the whole world as he'd ditched her without a single word of explanation. Devin had never been interested in her, his main target had been her wealthy father, and she'd been so blindly in love that she hadn't seen it coming. It had taken her weeks of hindsight after having faced a multitude of wordless dismissals to finally accept the truth.

For the duration of their relationship, she'd been living a complete bliss imagining him madly in love with her, not even suspecting that he'd been playing her for a fool. And played he had. For her, he'd been the only guy who had had enough sense to look past her outer beauty to pay her singular attention. He'd been her hero, the special one who'd chosen her without hesitation when she'd spent her whole life being overshadowed by the overpowering Melissa.

She so hadn't expected him to break her heart in such a ruthless manner. To break her every dream and hope, until she'd felt herself disintegrate to pieces to never become whole again. In the profound depth of her heart, she admitted to herself that she'd still been expecting an apology, the confession that he was the guilty party, even if an outstanding redemption was not in order.

However, his abrupt announcement was uncalled for, knocking the remaining breath out of her body so that she stood lifeless, her only sustenance was years of training in the modeling industry. So that was why he'd calculatingly landed on her doorstep at the middle of the night, looking like his complacent self. He could not wait to deliver what he would consider the fatal blow. It made kind of warped sense for him if one believed in masochism. He was here to watch her grieve her beloved father, to extract revenge from a man he hated via his innocent daughter, only to soothe his huge ego.