Chapter 37
~Roxana~
I open my eyes to find Ralph sitting at my bedside holding my hand.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he says, smiling sweetly. “Welcome back.”
Groaning, I struggle to sit up and just about manage it. I notice all the tubes and crap hooked up to me. After the awful crash, I figured I’d wake up in a hospital room. Or, not at all.
The crash!
“Where’s Neil? Oh my God, is he—?”
Ralph squeezes my hand. “He’s fine, Rox. Promise.”
That relaxes me quite a bit. But I can’t completely relax until I see he’s okay for myself. “Where is he? I need to see him, Ralph.”
“Concentrate on getting better for now, okay? You’ve been out for about three days, Rox.”
That shocks me. But I’m too worked up to pay it that much mind. “No! I need to see him. You weren’t there. You didn’t see the state he was in. Please, Ralph.”
He rubs his shaved head and sighs heavily. When he looks at me, there’s pain in his eyes. Oh my God. What’s going on?
He reaches into his cargo jacket pocket and hands me something. A note with my name on it.
“What is this?” I ask, dazedly.
He can’t look me in the eye as he says softly, “Just…read it.”
I open it up and my breath hitches. I slap my hand to my heart, my nails biting into my skin. “No,” I murmur, shaking my head. “No.”
The note’s from Neil. It reads:
Beautiful girl,
I once told you I’d do whatever I had to do to protect you and this is me doing just that. I gotta walk. It’s killing me to write this, but I gotta do it. To keep you safe. As long as you’re with me, you’ll always be in danger. And I can’t live with myself knowing that. Can’t be that selfish no more.
Ain’t never loved nobody the way I love you. Ain’t never let nobody in to see the real me like I did with you. And I know what we got ain’t never gonna leave me. You’re a once-in-a-lifetime kinda girl, Rox. It don’t come along twice, especially not for a guy like me.
I’ll never stop loving you.
You’ll always be my sunshine.
Take care of yourself, my little ball buster.
Get better and go back to giving ‘em all hell.
I’ll love you for fucking ever.
Goodbye,
Neil.
I crush the note to my chest and screw my eyes shut, trying to will my tears away. But they come flooding out anyway. They won’t stop. My heart is breaking, shattering into jagged little pieces.
“Rox, come here,” Ralph says, pulling me into his chest.
He strokes my hair as I breakdown, screaming Neil’s name and sobbing without restraint.
“I love him, Ralph! I love someone! Why is this…it can’t end like this! It’s not fair! It can’t!”
He doesn’t say anything, he just strokes my hair gently, trying to soothe me.
But nothing can soothe me. No one. Only one person ever could. And now he’s gone. He’s left me. Me and….
“Ralph? My baby?” I ask, anxiously, pulling back to look at him.
His eyes are glazed over with tears too as he bites his lip and shakes his head at me. “No, Rox. I’m so sorry.”
“She didn’t make it?”
“She?” he asks, his voice strained.
“Neil wanted a girl,” I explain.
“Christ.” He wipes my tears away with the pads of his thumbs as he tells me, “You miscarried during the crash. The impact….it was too much…so sorry, gorgeous.”
Oh my God. I can’t contain this. It’s too much. I feel like I’m being ripped apart inside.
I snap.
Pushing Ralph away, I rip my IV out and fight with the other tubes to get out of bed, screaming at the top of my lungs.
I feel Ralph’s hands on me, trying to subdue me, but I’m insanely hysterical.
The door flies open and my dad rushes in with two male nurses at his back.
Seeing him only makes me worse and my screams escalate to shrieks.
The nurses crowd me and a sharp prick in my arm startles me.
“Dad?” I gasp as his face starts to fade into a haze all of a sudden.
His arms are around me in the next second and I realize why when my legs buckle as a sudden weakness takes me over.
“Yeah, princess. I’m here.”
“No…I…hate…you…killer…” I struggle to utter, feeling myself getting weaker by the second.
“I know,” he says sadly. “I know, princess. Just rest now, though.”
The room fades into darkness then as sleep pulls me under.