Chapter 60 #2
I inhaled and exhaled slowly, guiding Rose to do the same. She didn't pull her hand away from my steady grasp. Instead, she followed my directions, breathing in and out with me until the trembling in her body stopped.
"Good. You're doing so good." The pad of my thumb rubbed over her knuckles soothingly. I watched her slowly relax and sink back into the pillows on her bed.
A faint blush marred her cheeks as her eyes fluttered closed to gather herself. Her brain might not remember me. But her body…it knew me.
I dropped her hand, but not before giving it one final reassuring squeeze. I turned my gaze to Ezra, Hilda, and Dr. Danvers, they were standing next to each other a few paces away from Rose's bed and were looking at us closely.
Ezra met my gaze before he looked to his left, at Dr. Danvers, hesitantly.
“Doctor, maybe it’s best if you let her go home with me today. Being in a place she feels comfortable would be good for her.”
I bit back the impulse to growl in protest. My mate and unborn child belonged under my roof, my protection.
“It’s better for her to go back to the home she’s been living in for the past year. Aiden will take care of her. Have faith in him,” Dr. Danvers said firmly to Ezra. His eyes remained steady on me. “He is her mate. He will make sure she’s comfortable.”
I relaxed. Rose was going home with me. I’d take care of her and the baby. Our baby.
Rose sunk back into her bed.
Later that evening, Rose walked into the house with me trailing behind her.
“Do you want dinner?” I asked warily, Rose’s hospital bag in my hands as I hung up the keys to my car.
“Where’s Josie? And the kids?” Rose asked.
“They’ll stop by soon enough,” I assured her.
“I live here alone?”
A ghost of a smile tugged at my lips.
“We live here alone,” I corrected. “Mom moved out recently.”
Rose started laughing mirthlessly.
“It’s like I fell asleep and woke up in the twilight zone. In what alternate reality would you ever be OK with” —she waved a hand between us— “this?”
I took in a shuddered breath. This was torture.
Rose kept talking in response to my silence.
“You’re not even attracted to me!” Rose spat. I flinched. “I don’t even like you!” she added angrily.
It was like she was taking a jackhammer to my heart, trying to split it down the middle.
“Do you know how much it hurts to have the person who you care about most in the world look at you the way you’re looking at me?” My tone wasn’t angry. No, it was more of a morbid acceptance, almost helpless.
Rose stopped up short.Her facial expression told me that my admission set her mounting ire at this whole situation back a few notches.
“I…I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intent. I just…I’m trying to wrap my head around this.”
“You can ask me…about stuff,” I said the words haltingly. “I can’t tell you too much at once, but Dr. Danvers said it was OK to tell you a little bit every day. Something might end up jogging your memory.”
Rose shook her head. “I’m still convinced I was dropped into some alternate reality and none of this is real.”
I gave a grim smile.
“So I’m that bad, huh?”
“You never liked me. You love Lexia.” Rose’s response was simple and to the point.
“I never loved her, not really,” I admitted, more to myself for the first time ever, meeting Rose’s eyes. “And I’ll have you know, I broke up with Lexia before I got with you,” I said pointedly, walking by her and into the kitchen.
Lorraine had left out two plates of pasta before going home. I slid one plate towards Rose.
“I’m not all that hungry,” Rose protested.
“Come on, Princess. You need to eat something,” I urged. “If you want something else, tell me.”
“I don’t really want…anything,” Rose confessed, looking down at her plate of food.
“I think I want to go lay down.And my head is also hurting,” she added.
But deep inside I knew that she didn’t feel comfortable at all sitting with me in this huge empty house.
“It’s so quiet without the kids here,” Rose mused irrespective of my thoughts.
“My fondest memories of this house are of dinners with your family,” she confided a little hesitantly.
I wanted to tell her we’d made new memories in this house. Memories that were ours and ours alone.
“Eat some fruit before you go,” I intoned, grabbing a few bananas from the fruit basket. “You like bananas.” I put them in her hands. “It can’t be healthy for a pregnant lady to go to bed on an empty stomach,” Ireasoned when Rose looked like she was about to protest.
There was pin drop silence over my reminder that she was carrying my child.
Rose gripped the fruit tightly in her hands, sliding off her stool and slowly crept away up the stairs.
She was tired and needed to rest, but I knew she would never be comfortable in my room and probably had to find a room she felt comfortable sleeping in.
And as I looked at the spot she’d been sitting in as her smell got fainter and fainter, I felt the slow cleaving of my heart.
The woman I loved more than life itself couldn’t even acknowledge the life we’d created together.
A few hours later, I rubbed my eyes tiredly as I got off the phone with a memory specialist halfway across the world. I was willing to do whatever it took to help Rose. So far, the doctor agreed to look over Rose’s file and advised me pretty much the same as Dr. Danvers.
I checked my watch as I walked up the stairs to my room, wondering how exactly I was going to survive this. I bit back the impulse to sniff Rose out and figure out which room she'd walked into earlier to go to sleep. I would not suffocate her. I would give her space.
The memory specialist in Germany made it clear that chances of her recovering her memory were 50/50 at best for now. How was I going to get Rose back?
Alistair marked her, our mate bond had broken after I was defeated, and now there was no mark or bond to pull her to me, aside from the bond the alpha had to the chosen luna.
Which in retrospect paled in comparison to the love that had blossomed between us.
It was like we were back to square one again after making all that progress together.
As desolation seemed to engulf me, I slowly opened the door to my bedroom and was taken aback to see a lump under the covers.
Rose, sleeping on her side of the bed, her hair splayed out on the pillow under her like she belonged.
Because she did belong. And even though every atom in my body yearned to go, to lay in bed next to her, I slowly crept back, closing the door.
She might not remember, but on a subconscious level, on her first night back in our home, she knew this was her room. She knew where she belonged.
For the first time ever since I'd woken up, I smiled a relieved smile.