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Visiting hours were over at the Intensive Care Unit. Chloe drove home with her mom and sister, staying up late drinking decaffeinated coffee around the simple round oak table in the dining space of their kitchen.
Chloe had made it home on a grueling red-eye, extended flight back from Germany.
She cradled her head in her hands, unable to face reality or look her grief-stricken mother and sister in the face.
“I can’t believe I just...left without telling anyone,” she murmured so faintly her words were barely audible.
She heard the comforting sound of her mother Donna’s voice fill the room. “You left a note sweetie. You can call Emelia tomorrow and explain everything.”
Chloe sighed, sagging back in the kitchen seat. The wood creaked in protest against her weight. She finally mustered the courage to look at her mother and sister without bawling. She still hadn’t told either one of them about Roman or how quickly their relationship was moving.
“I think I need to lay down,” she mentioned, suddenly feeling lightheaded. “I’m so tired that I’m not thinking clearly.”
Her mother gave her a concerned glance. She cupped her warm hand over Chloe’s and squeezed. “Are you sure you are going to be okay? You had a long trip. Have some water or a snack.”
Chloe’s lips curled into a half smile. What was it with parents, always trying to encourage their adult children to have snacks when they come home for a visit in order to feel better?
“I’m not hungry, Mom.” She sniffed and scratched the side of her cheek, giving Ashley a fleeting glance.
Ashley had a vacant expression on her face as she stared at the table in front of her.
“Okay, sweetie.” Her mom didn’t press her any further and to Chloe’s relief, didn’t protest her going upstairs alone either.
“I’m going to try to get some rest.” Chloe stood up with a robotic movement and shuffled towards the staircase by the front door. “Let me know if anything happens.”
“Good night,” her mother called out from the kitchen table.
Chloe shuffled up the stairs, barely making it to the top. She felt weak and fatigued, but it wasn’t a physical ailment. All her suffering was internal, rooting from her anxious mind. She climbed into the sheets, pulling them up over her head so that she couldn’t see anything but the darkness through her open eyes. She tossed and turned, unable to sleep even though the last twenty-four hours had been a sheer and unimaginable nightmare.
Her father was a distressing sight with his wilting eyes and bony, frail body. The cancer was ravaging him, eating at his body faster than he could fight it off. The chemotherapy treatments didn’t seem to be working anymore.
She laid in her bed as stiff as a board, as silent as a statue. She didn’t move. Chloe was using all her mental energy to float her thoughts to her dad. Where there was a will, there was a way. If she could just send him some kind of vibration, encouraging him to fight back and linger on before giving up....
That’s when she heard something raking against the side of her window. At first, she figured it was probably the wind tickling a tree limb against the side, and the scraping sound was coming from that.
It kept happening, relentless and harder and faster. Chloe sat up like a bullet, entangled in the sheets. She perked her senses, prickling her ears to hear better. The sound kept plunking against the side of her window pane as if pebbles were being thrown at it.
Chloe flung the sheets off her legs and draped her legs over the edge of the bed, apprehensive to stand up and wander over to the window and look down. The pebble sound kept coming.
Finally, in a mixture of both frustration and curiosity, Chloe’s interest was pegged. She shuffled on bare feet against the plush carpet of her second story bedroom. She pulled back the curtains ever so slightly, brushing them against her cheek in the process.
At first, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The moon was bright in the center of the sky, creating a white soft glow on the dew-soaked grass on the front lawn. She narrowed her eyes, trailing them across the entire yard.
That’s when she saw him.
Roman, standing there in a pair of jeans and a brown leather jacket. His blonde hair was glowing almost white under the light of the moon. He crouched to the ground, plucked a pebble from the lawn and tossed it in his hand a few times before standing back up, drawing his arm back and throwing the pebble at her window.
Chloe smiled. So, he was the source of the annoying and persistent window pelting. She raced to her bedroom door, throwing it open before jogging down the stairs and barreling out the front door.
She didn’t want to wake her mother or sister, so she cracked the door in order to eliminate some of the noise. Seeing Roman standing on her front lawn almost seemed too far-fetched, too good to be true.
But there he was, grinning at her with a mixture of concern and longing. For a brief moment, he knocked the breath out of her lungs. He was so handsome, and his gesture of being here was so touching that it made her knees feel weak.
“Oh my God, Roman?” Chloe rushed toward him.
Roman grinned, taking a few steps in Chloe’s direction to meet her in the middle.
“It took me a while to find your note,” he said in a deep voice. “But when I did, I knew I couldn’t let you go through this alone.”
He scooped her up in his arms, the warmth and strength of his body exactly what she needed to replenish her soul. They were two souls, two silhouettes under the cascading light of the moon.
“This is unbelievable...” Chloe trailed off, afraid of getting choked up and unable to utter another word.
“I had to come for you. I had to make sure you were okay.” His Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard.
There were a million emotions and sensations surging through her body and her mind. She was intoxicated by his gesture, staring into his eyes so hard that she was sure she would become lost in his gaze forever.
Her heart pounded, and her pulse swooshed violently through her ears. Her lips tingled, longing to kiss him as if they were two magnets being pulled together.
“I’m so sorry for leaving without telling you in person...” she trailed off again, wondering if he would get the impression that her excuse was insincere.
The way he stared into her eyes spoke his truth. He wasn’t mad; only concerned for her and worried and caring.
“Do you want to come inside?” She whispered into the night, surrounded by only the faint chirping of crickets in the trees.
“Yes,” Roman smiled, delicately stroking her cheek with his thumb.
They walked upstairs together, carefully padding back down to Chloe’s bedroom at the end of the hallway. She closed and locked the door behind her, staring at him expectantly while an intense heat of desire blazed inside of her.
“Chloe...” Roman stuttered as he carefully approached her. He had his hand on her cheek again, staring at her with such fond adoration she was confident she would melt into a puddle on the floor right in front of him.
“I love you so much,” he whispered. “I’ve loved you since Hawaii. You are the only one on earth I want to be with.” There was urgency in his voice as if he couldn’t waste another single second suppressing that bombshell information without exploding.
Chloe draped her arms around his waist, squeezing his body to hers. She needed to feel the warmth of his skin on hers. “I love you too,” she whispered into his chest as she buried her face into his shirt, drawing in an enormous breath of his familiar and safe scent.
“The band will be traveling for the next couple of days,” Roman reminded her. “I didn’t want to miss my small window of opportunity to come and find you.”
Chloe craned her neck to look at him. She smiled, and for the first time in a while; she felt blissfully content in spite of the turmoil of her father’s devastating illness. Roman made her feel like nothing on the planet could shatter her, as long as she was wrapped up in his arms.
“Thank you for being so dedicated,” she admitted.
“I don’t want to lose you again,” he confessed in a fear-soaked voice. “You give me so much strength.”
Chloe didn’t even realize she was shedding happy tears until her cheeks grew wet. She pulled him to the bed and straddled him, frantically kissing him as if she were afraid he would disappear if she stopped or let go.
There was no sound, no dialogue as they removed each other’s clothes. Only primal urgency and passion filled the room and suspended in the air above them. In the dark, their fumbling hands explored each other’s naked bodies as they intertwined through the sheets, becoming one. Roman thrust and rocked up against her, making guttural sounds escape her lips as she quietly tried to stifle them.
She dug her nails into his back, squeezing her naked thighs against his waist. As she came with passion and glorious bliss, she saw stars shimmering in her mind’s eye. Making love to Roman was the cure to all sadness, Chloe held the proof in the saturated pool between her legs.
He’d come for her when she’d needed him the most.
No other man on the planet could compete with that.