Dark Love (The Two Sides of Me Book 3) (11 page)

“It’s ok to be scared. I’m scared too; I want so much for him to wake up the caring man that loves you.” I bite my lip and look to Evan, he looks so much better than he did 48 hours ago. His skin is the natural native bronze that I am so fond of; he smells of spearmint and eucalyptus, his soft full lips have just a touch of pink.

Gabby gives my knee an encouraging squeeze and sits back in her chair crossing her long legs. “My Evan, our Evan will wake up, I know it,” I say the words but the fire behind them is lacking. She knows I have doubts, and I love her for not saying anything.

“Ok so this is a good day, a happy day, fill your mind with positive thoughts. We may be talking to him by this evening.” She waves her hand in the air lightly.

“Yes, you’re right. Optimism!” I say sitting up straighter in my seat with resolve. “I’m going down to clean up and put on some makeup and some decent clothes,” I announce. I look like a slob sitting here with her in my yoga pants and a hoodie. I haven’t exactly been putting much effort into my appearance for a while. There’s been nobody I care to impress, no one to excite or influence.

What am I going to do if the beast wakes up instead of my Evan? I’m married to him no matter which personality emerges. I could be married to a sadist mafia leader, a drug dealer, a killer! I feel the adrenaline creeping into my blood, and I need to move, these thoughts aren’t going to do anybody any good especially me. I stand abruptly and go to my bag digging for what I’ll need in the bathroom.

When I’ve got my toiletries and clothes, I rush out of the room. I’m so very grateful David isn’t in his old room, I don’t have to be wary on my trips up and down the hall, he’s on the other side of the unit. I crash through the door to the small restroom intended for family members of patients and get to work making myself look as attractive as I can under the circumstances.

My face distracts me from my awful thoughts of Evan the terrible. I have never looked so stressed out, pale and bags under my eyes, thin, not a dab of makeup and my hair, God my hair needs help. Unfortunately, I can’t do much about the hair situation here, so I brush it out and pull it back braiding the thick mess and tossing it back to hang past my ass, I need a haircut, ugh. Some foundation and blush bring back my normal color of my skin, and I’m having good luck covering the bags. I sigh and puff a stray curl off of my face, good enough.

One soft sweater dress and a pair of deep purple boots later I look pretty good. Ok, Mia, let’s go do this I tell myself placing my hands on my hips watching my reflection stare back at me.

“Wow! What did you do with Mia?” Gabby teases when I return to the room.

“Shut it.” I throw back at her with my spunk.

“They did it.”

“What?”

“The nurse came in and turned his medication down.” It’s finally happening, the countdown is over, we will know by day’s end who won the battle for Evan’s mind. Shit, I’m terrified, but I hide it.

“Ok great, well what should we do in the meantime?” I smile through the fear and Gabriella holds up our deck of cards tapping them with her finger.

“Ok, what’ll it be? Poker? Pinochle? Old Maid?” Shaking my head and giggling I snatch the deck from her. “Poker, duh!”

After I’ve kicked her ass at Poker, we abandon the cards for lunch with Simone and Isaac. “So anything yet?” Simone asks. I purse my lips and tilt my head, he's the doctor, he knows it won’t be this soon. Isaac moves behind me and begins rubbing my shoulders helping to dissipate some of the tension that’s been building there all day. I drop my head forward and try to relax, but as soon as he stops to move to his seat for lunch the tension immediately returns.

“What do you think’s going to happen?” Isaac asks as we all unwrap the food Simone brought from a deli a couple blocks from the hospital, or so he says, I’ve never been outside these walls.

“That’s a loaded question, Isaac. I don’t think anybody knows,” Simone answers.

“I know exactly what’s going to happen, he’s going to wake up, be a little disoriented, he might not be able to talk for a while but when he’s ready he will tell us he loves us, recuperate and we’re fucking going home!”

“Yea!” Gabriella mirrors my enthusiasm while the guys look at us like we’ve collectively lost our minds. Raising my eyebrows high, rolling my neck slightly back and forth with attitude I wag my finger at them to stop any potential negative comments, today is all optimism now, good juju, period.

“So what’s the first thing you two will do when you get sprung from this joint?” Isaac asks obviously heeding my unspoken warning.

“Hmmm, I want to sit on the dock of the lake with him, just be outside breathing unfiltered air, listening to the water lap against the rocks and hold his hand.”

“So romantic.” Gabby smiles.

“I just want normal ya know? I’d like to experience life without all the drama, just Evan and I.”

Simone snorts “Well I don’t think life with Evan will ever be normal, calmer maybe but there’s nothing normal about him.”

“You never know…” I say, but I do know, he’s right. Not one minute of my life has been the same since meeting Evan. I will never again be that woman who was afraid of life, who kept her love locked away deep inside, hiding it, sheltering it from anyone who could hurt me again. Taking risks was never my thing but now that seems to be all I do, one after another Evan has pushed me to be brave and open but most importantly trusting. I trust him with my most prized possession, my heart, but I also trust him with my body and my soul, my spirit, and my essence. The me I used to be has been forever changed into who I am today and I adore him for helping me to change.

He makes me strong and weak at the same time; I am powerful and powerless simultaneously. Our devotion is equal, I give he takes, he takes I give, the way it’s supposed to be. If Evan wakes up a monster I’ll do whatever it takes to find the good in him and lure it out, I will not believe that good can be removed from a brain with a laser or scalpel.

While Isaac and Simone sit with Evan, Gabriella and I take a short stroll in the hall. “Come outside with me, just for a minute, Mia, he’s not alone, and you’ve got to be going mad cooped up in here.”

She grabs my hand before I can open my mouth to protest and pulls me toward the elevator. We’re inside and moving down to the main floor and my tummy violently drops, not from the elevator but the distance she’s putting between Evan and I.

“Don’t look so panicked! Just stand outside for five minutes and back up we go, no big deal.” I roll my eyes and let her drag me outside. It’s chilly without a coat but God she was right, I needed to see a tree, feel the breeze swirl the tendrils of hair that have escaped my braid and the sun saturating my skin with warmth.

“Mmmm, it smells so good out here.” I hug my arms around my waist and close my eyes, tilting my face toward the source of all heat for the earth. I wonder how something so far away can provide an entire planet with enough warmth to survive. It’s a miracle, just like Evan falling into my life, just like his surgery going so well. Now for just one more please God and I’ll never ask for another again, I promise! Let Evan wake up and know me, remember only good things about his life with no signs of his evil half remaining.

“Told ya, when are you going to start listening to your sister?” The corner of my lip rises in a smirk. Yea, I guess I hadn’t thought about it, but we are legally sisters now. The sound of Gabriella’s phone jingles from her back pocket and my body stiffens, we’ve only been gone five minutes, there couldn’t possibly be a change in Evan’s condition in that time…could there be? She slides her perfectly manicured hand to her backside to retrieve the phone answering it on the second ring.

“Simone? What’s going on?” Simone! He wouldn’t call unless it were important, he knows we were coming right back. I don’t even wait to hear what she’s about to relay to me, I turn and run. Thank God for all the practice walking in heels because running in them is exponentially more difficult. I hear Gabby yelling my name like she’s at the end of a tunnel. No time for elevators I find the stairwell and throw the door open sprinting up the steep stairs, my calves burning, heart pounding, I shouldn’t have left him, I knew it!

Damn damn damn. I begin to break out in a sweat as I near the ICU’s floor, the thick material of my sweater dress sticking to my skin, gasping for air that I can’t get into my lungs fast enough, fuck I’m out of shape! I burst through the door, and a group of nurses gathered at the nurses’ station all jump when it hits the wall.

“Sorry!” I puff as I run by; I don’t know how to say sorry in Italian, I haven’t learned a word of it being here, I suck with foreign languages. As much as I have pep talked myself about crying and fainting I feel both sensations coming on. Tears spring to my eyes and the ringing in my ears are both really pissing me off! No! Don’t be weak! I skid to a stop grabbing both sides of the door jamb of Evan’s room and gasp for breath.

Isaac and Simone turn to look at me with surprise, Simone still holds the phone to his ear talking with Gabriella. I’m only allowed a fraction of a second before I feel familiar shocking green and lavender ringed eyes on me, the magnetic pull between us so strong I actually feel my body being reeled in like a fish on a hook, helpless to escape.

He's awake, oh God he’s awake. Heat spreads from my heart throughout my body creeping up my neck the flush burns when it reaches my cheeks and now I’m panting but not from my run to his room. It’s the anticipation overwhelming me, does he know me? Is he my Evan? Is this the beast? What does he remember? The questions roll around my mind, over and over, crashing into each other until my head hurts and then I see it. Recognition, life, sparkle in those eyes I find irresistible, my Evans's eyes, it’s the same leer he slapped on me when he came out of his coma in my ICU in Seattle. The same way he looked at me when he woke up screaming my name until I arrived, only calming when he had me within his reach. He’s not yelling this time; he has family with him, he’s not alone, but this doesn’t make me feel any better about not being at his side the moment he returned.

“I never left you,” I say as I approach, the guys move away giving us space.

“I…know,.” he says slowly, purposely, carefully as if he’s searching for the words and plucking them from a shelf to string them together. He reaches for me, and I take his hand in both of mine kissing his knuckles my hot tears splashing onto his skin, but he doesn’t smile or blink. His jaw tightens, and his pulse accelerates as he parts his lips and closes them.

I wait for him to say something else but he doesn’t, he just looks at me with building frustration and I realize he’s having trouble with speech, a typical side effect after brain surgery.

“Are you having trouble finding words?” I cup my hand on his jaw and his eyes say all I need to know, they glaze over, and tears threaten to fall, but he reins them in blinking away the extra moisture. “It’s going to be ok, baby, this is common, you just need to relax and the words will come back.”

I lean in to kiss the cheek still cupped in my hand, and he pulls me gently closer until our lips brush lightly. My tummy flutters and the world is all set straight, aligned and in focus. I have him; he knows me, and he loves me still.

He won’t let me go, as in I’ve been held against his chest with his fingers tangled in my braid for twenty minutes in silence. His breathing has leveled off, blood pressure and pulse are down, and I feel the contentment radiating off of him like the warmth of the powerful sun. I’ve propped my hip on the edge of the bed, I’ll stay here for as long as he needs me to, until he knows it’s all real, until he knows it’s all over. Gabriella returned a minute or two after I did, he glanced at her, nodded I think but went right back to fussing with my hair.

“Honey, the doctor, is here, he needs to see you for a minute. Can you let her up?” Gabby asks him, I pull away just an inch and his arms tighten, not enough to keep me in place, he’s still weak, but the message is loud and clear, no he will not let me up.

I can hear the surgeon behind me shuffling around, probably uncomfortable enough having to look at Evan but now he thinks he’s dealing with a clingy wife.

“Evan.” I pull away and move until we are nose to nose. “Just for a minute, he needs to do an assessment, I swear I’m not going anywhere, I’ll hold your hand.”

Something I’ve never seen ripples through his eyes, panic. “Shush…it’s all right, just for a second I promise.”

When I move to sit his eyes shift to the doctor and instant relief replaces the panic. David. He thought it would be David. So much can be said with only our eyes, he doesn’t need to speak for me to know what he’s thinking. This must be how he reads me so well; he always knows what I’m thinking without a word passed between us. His grip loosens, but he’s not letting go completely.