Solace In The Silence ✓✓

chapter 38

For the next week, Jake never left my side. Even when my parents insisted he went home—that he took a well-earned night off—he remained stubbornly intent on manning the fort.
Despite his whispered, heartfelt confession that first night together in the hospital, and all the times since then I'd felt him watching me closely, Jake and I had slipped effortlessly into a platonic falsehood.

I didn't know how to ask him if he'd been the one liaising with Officer Lampard, and he never tried to broach the subject with me, or any topic of importance, for that matter. The cloud of reluctance in his gaze told me I'd officially scared him off, and frankly, I hadn't anticipated feeling so miserable and angst-ridden about that.
It didn't help that the hospital staff had stopped pumping me full of drugs. Now that the meds were starting to wear off, I had trouble sleeping when night came. Everywhere was sore, like my bones were still bruised, and even when I did manage to doze off, I'd often be disturbed by the nurses doing their rounds, or by weird noises that floated down the hall at an ungodly hour.

Tonight, I awoke to the sound of footsteps at the base of my bed.
I peeled my eyelids open slowly, waiting for my vision to adjust to the darkness.
The lights were off, and the room was cast in the soft, dim glow from the hallway.
Jake was sleeping next to me on one of the cushioned chairs, his head tipped back. The curve of his Adam's apple was more pronounced, and I studied his chiseled profile. He was beautiful. He still looked so tired, his eyes shadowed by circles, and the stubble across his jaw was darker than normal.
Waking up to Jake, him always being by my side, never failed to tug at my heart.
God, I loved him so much. I needed him in my life like I needed my next breath. I missed him, and he was right there. Why couldn't we just close the distance?

That thought crept in, but I pushed it away, unable to get too attached to the possibility that there was a happy ending for us. That after everything we'd been through together, there was still a chance we'd be able to find our way back to each other.
I couldn't afford to think like that, because I knew, I knew, that sometimes, when a relationship broke, it wasn't always meant to be fixed.
Movement from the end of my bed drew my attention, and I rose up onto my elbows, wondering why the weeknight nurse was being so unusually quiet.
"I didn't mean to wake you," a familiar male voice said, and I squinted at the approaching figure. A sliver of light crossed Gery's face. He was clutching a bunch of pink carnations, and he put them down on the overbed table. "I'm just here to drop these off, they're from Lynn and I."

Straightening up, I settled back against the pillows that were propped up at the headboard. "Oh, wow," I whispered. The thoughtful gesture unleashed a rush of warmth. "Thank you, Gery. They're lovely."
He nodded, a blush tinting his cheeks. "Have you had many visitors this week?" he asked, settling into the other comfy chair.
"Yeah, a few," I told him, sort of smiling. "Vicky was here earlier, she stopped by before they discharged her."

It hadn't been a long visit, and I still didn't really know how I felt about it all. Vicky had apologized for deceiving me. She'd told me that befriending people when you were undercover, people you were supposed to protect, wasn't smart—something you were warned about in the academy—but she'd done it, anyway. I knew she genuinely cared about me, and I'd always care for her, but she was a twenty-two-year-old police officer from Atlanta, not my close friend. And she was leaving. She'd been stationed in in a different town for her next undercover drug bust, and that was hard to take. Brutal, even. She would no longer be in my life, and I'd had to say goodbye to her.

"Poor girl." Gery swallowed hard. "I still can't believe Joe hurt her, too."
Obviously he had no idea about Vicky's real identity, or half of the shit that had gone down, and I didn't really feel like explaining it to him right now.
"Yeah," I agreed sadly.
He glanced over to where Jake was sleeping. "Man, he's giving a whole new meaning to around the clock care."
"He's been here every night for the last week."
Gery shook his head in amazement. "Well, if that's not a declaration of love, I don't know what is."