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Chapter 9: Touch Base

Chapter 9: Touch Base

"Wake up!" I shout into the room before opening the curtains, allowing the sunlight to seep through. "You can sleep in!"

Jay groans in irritation and reluctantly opens his eyes. "Seriously, Aqueela? The one time I sleep in and you decide to wake me up," he grumbles in a tired voice before rolling onto his stomach and placing his pillow over his head. "Tempted to just suffocate myself right now," his muffled voice adds.

"I'll do it for you!" I volunteer out of the goodness of my heart. When he doesn't move, I take a spare pillow off the floor and throw it toward his head. "Come on, get up, we have a lot of things to discuss."

"Like what?" Jay sighs in disapproval. "I thought we're all good now."

I jump on his back when he refuses to move. "I'm comfortable talking like this. I wanted to ask about your time away, about the silver chain you gave me. I want to know everything that I missed. Start talking."

It still hurts knowing that I missed out on five years of Jay's life by choice – foolish, Aqueela, foolish! When will I learn?

"It doesn't matter. What's important is..." he rolls over onto his back, knocking me beside him, his gaze meeting mine, "is that I'm here now, with you, the only person I have ever been in love with."

I shake my head, not budging. "Nah-uh! Those sweet words will not work on me. I'm made out of stone, carved out of diamond, more cool things, etcetera."

An impish grin floats over Jay's lips, making it evident that I'm right and he's just trying to butter me up so that I can leave him to sleep. "Ask away," he says and before I can react, he's flipped himself over, pinning me under him. "I'm listening," he smiles down at me, failing to hide the conniving smirk following soon after.

I do what I always do best in these types of situations and hit him on the head. When I see his stunned expression, I giggle aloud. "Sorry, was a fly," I lie and slide out from underneath him.

"Sure there was..." Jay scoffs at me, wholeheartedly believing me as he pulls himself up into an upright position.

I wink at him and blow him a kiss. I sit down beside him, leaning my back against the headboard and glance his way. "Who gave you the cross?" I repeat my question from earlier.

"Let me start from the beginning if you're really forcing me into this. For the first two years, I was pretty much depressed. Even when I left the US for three years, I was pining for you for most of the time," he begins his story ever so reluctantly, almost as if it's a burden reliving everything that he's been through.

I stare up at him, sadness clouding my eyes. "Sorry," I say softly, not really knowing what I'm apologizing for. I lean my head on his shoulder and gesture for him to proceed.

"I met Kyle, Trish, and Ava through the volunteer program. Trish was the doctor and Calvin is the lead of it. We initially traveled all over Africa together, building schools, repairing houses, helping villages with water systems, that kind of thing. When you're working in an intense environment like that, you come to depend on the people around you. It's how we all became such good friends," he continues. "As for Leban, he only joined later."

"Tell me how you stupidly saved his pathetic life," I press, curious. I still don't know that story.

"He owed money to some loan sharks. Kyle and I heard the racket and we ended up in a fist-fight with these guys. Leban was on the floor, hurt. Everything escalated very quickly. The one guy took out a gun and was about to shoot Leb but I jumped in the way without really thinking and took the bullet for him," Jay finally tells me.