Fighting for Love (Second Chances #4)(73)
Jace and I looked at each other, but he was the one who answered, “You blacked out again, Shelby. You were found in Matt’s driveway and taken to the hospital.”
She winced while trying to sit up and let go of my hand so she could touch her head. “My head hurts,” she moaned.
“That’s because you busted it wide open when you fell, angel. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to catch you. I promise that won’t happen again.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and when she closed them they fell down her cheeks. I wiped them away with my thumbs and leaned over to kiss her lips. My heart sank when she didn’t kiss me back.
“Shelby?”
Opening her eyes, she blew out a shaky breath. “What happened to needing your space, Matt? You can’t honestly tell me that you forgive me already? I heard what you said to Jace. You don’t know if you can trust me now. We can’t build a relationship without trust.”
“You were listening?” Jace asked incredulously with a sly smirk on his face. “I should’ve known.”
She looked over at him and smiled. I would’ve given anything to have her smile at me like that. “I was going in and out, but I heard most of it,” she told him before slowly turning back to me.
“Shelby,” I began, “I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you; I always have. I know trust is important, but what you kept from me wasn’t just a simple lie. You got to experience the first part of our daughter’s life. You felt her inside of you, and you got to hold her when she took her last breath. I didn’t get any of that. She never got the chance to know how much I would’ve loved her. I’m hurt and I’m angry. Those feelings aren’t just going to go away.”
“I know,” she sobbed, nodding quickly, “which is why you need to leave. I’m going to give you the space you need to think and get your head clear. If this accident hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be anywhere near me right now. You need to deal with your feelings and step away from me for a while.”
“What? No,” I snapped, taken aback. “We can work on this together.”
“I wish we could,” she whispered, squeezing my hand, “but we can’t. I do love you, Matt, and if we’re meant to work past this then we’ll know when the time is right. We’ll find each other again. Maybe then we can start over with a clean slate … with no secrets, and no lies.”
Slowly, she removed her hand from my grasp. “Good-bye, Matt.”
I never thought there would come a time when I would feel completely lost and unsure of what to do. I didn’t want to leave her, and I knew deep down she didn’t really want me to go, but I knew I needed to. Holding her face in between my hands, I felt the warm droplets of her tears fall down my fingers. I leaned over and kissed her … again, in hopes that she’d respond. If she didn’t then I knew all hope would be lost, but if she did, then I still had a chance.
She kissed me back.
“You’re mine, angel,” I whispered across her lips. “We’ll find our way back.”
I gazed down at her one last time, remembering the taste of her lips when I kissed her and the way her eyes, although full of sorrow, looked up at me with complete and utter determination … and love. Turning on my heel, I ambled out of her room, refusing to say good-bye because I knew it wouldn’t be the end.
I’ll see her again.
BEFORE I COULD GET ON my bike and ride away, Jace stopped me by hollering my name and flagging me down in the hospital parking deck.
“Matt, wait!” he shouted, running toward me. Hopefully, nothing bad had happened in the few minutes I was gone. That would be my luck.
Taking off my helmet, I waited for him to approach. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, it’s all good. I have something I want to give you and it took me forever to get away from Shelby. I’m parked just over that way,” he said, pointing to the other side of the deck.
Holding onto my helmet, I put my bike in gear and rode over to Jace’s car to wait on him. When he got there, he opened up his backseat, pulling out three small, brown notebooks that looked like journals, and handed them to me.
“What are these?” I asked, furrowing my brows.
Jace sighed and pointed down at them. “Before coming to the hospital I stopped by the house and picked those up. Shelby would kill me if she knew I gave those to you. They’re her journals, Matt. She stopped writing in them about two years ago, but it was mainly something she did after everything happened. Her doctor said it might help with the healing process if she wrote things down. I know it’s not the same as hearing stories from other people, but I thought you might understand Shelby more if you could read it from her point of view.”
My hands shook just holding them in my grasp because inside all of those pages were Shelby’s most inner and secret thoughts. I didn’t know if I was ready to read them just yet.
“Thank you,” I told him, carefully placing them in my backpack and sliding it back on my body. “Will you please keep me updated on Shelby? I don’t think I can handle not knowing how she’s doing.”
Jace nodded. “I can do that. I know she has to finish her article this week so she’ll be busy doing that, and just so you know, I plan on taking her back to North Carolina with me as soon as she finishes it. She needs a vacation, and since I have to get back for filming I figured she’d have a good time out on the beach. It’ll give her time to relax.”