6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

W ith hesitation, I opened my eyes, blinking slowly: once, twice, three times, but it didn't matter how many times I blinked, for the image in front of me never changed. I focused on the blinking light, tracking my heart beat. But what it couldn't track was the ringing in my ears and the hole in my heart. Ryker lay beside me with his arms wrapped around my body. I moved closer to him so my back was fully pressed against his chest. Warmth flowed through me, and I wiped my eyes, searching for the forgotten tears.

"Em?" Ryker's groggy voice whispered behind me. He squeezed my hand, and heat pulsed through me there, sending the sun into my endless dark night. I turned and rested my head upon his chest, not caring about anything else but the need to feel him near me.

"Thank you, Ry. Thank you for not leaving me." I tried to stop the tears that spilled from my eyes, but I couldn't contain them.

Ryker reached over and brushed my cheek. "Em, there is no other place for me to be right now—only with you." His voice was tender, his blue eyes looked into mine.They reflected so many emotions back at me: sorrow, sadness, fear, and one more I didn't know.

"I just—" I tried to express in words how unfair life was, how it all had to be a sick joke, that it wasn't— no, it couldn't actually be real, I told myself.

"I wish I could tell you—" He paused and shook his head. I watched as tears dropped from his eyes. He must have really loved them, too. "—that we are not in a hospital bed and that—that your—"

I put a finger to his lips. "Don't say it yet, Ry. I need time before you say the words. If you say them, then it's real."

He smiled at me sadly and nodded. "I'm here for you, Em. I'll do whatever you want me to do."

"Please, Ry. Just hold me. I need you to never let me go." I scooted my body even closer to his, my legs meeting his, my face a mere inch away. and I needed it more than I needed to breathe.

"Nothing could move me from this spot, Em—nothing."

I woke up with a gasp, clutching my hand over my chest. I had not had a nightmare in days. The darkness of the room reminded me again of being in that hospital room after the crash.

Ryker had been with me for the whole thing. Maybe his return had made me think about it–think about the things I wanted to forget.

He held me for hours, was with me for days as I cried in that hospital bed.

It was that first night, however, when I had discovered the misery, which had started to curl itself around inside of me. No matter the warmth I felt from Ryker, misery had still slithered deep inside my heart and had made a home there. It had constricted my once beating heart and filled up my emptiness with endless pain. That was when my heart shattered. That night, after I realized what had happened to my parents, I came to understand that there were worse things than dying. I discovered just exactly what those worst things were: like living without the ones you love, being left behind, having a hole carved out of your insides–and the frightening truth that misery was a venomous snake, slithering inside of me, threatening to poison me with a numbing, final end, yet it never struck.

It's okay; that is over. You are better now. I told myself, running fingers through my hair as I lay back down. Misery, true misery, was a horrible thing. I still missed my parents, mourned the loss in my life without them, but I could no longer feel the snake curling inside. I could not feel the shattered, broken pieces of my heart, poking me from the inside. It was no longer my regular pain. I felt only past memories of it .

That is good. You are making progress. It's okay, everything is okay , I told myself.

I closed my eyes and hummed the melody that had been in my head since meeting Shad.

Shad. He is a better thing to think about. I pictured his smile and the rose he had given me as I hummed that made up tune out loud to soothe me back to sleep.