Page 34

Story: The Day Love Died

Celeste looked up at the couch and then back at Lena. “Ah…,” she said with a stammer. “The nurse told me that you’re okay now?”
Lena wasn’t sure if someone was asking her about her health or telling her about it. “Yes,” she said, and that was enough for her.
A few more seconds of stillness went by before Celeste eventually sat down on the stool, looking strangely tired. “Lena, I know how I’ve treated you—how we’ve treated you—I and Kellen, it was so utterly awful. I can’t explain how much I’m regretting it all. And I can see how Alexis is devastated with remorse. It was a conspiracy well planned; it was a misunderstanding alright, but we should have given you at least the benefit of the doubt.”
Lena was peaceful and calm. But her heart was another story. It was a good thing that she had been taken off the heart monitor a while ago since she could really feel it pounding inside her chest.
“I know I’m asking a lot of you,” Celeste said, her eyes filling with real sadness. “And I’m sorry for asking you this, Lena. But can you ever forgive me? Can you ever forgive Kellen?”
Celeste nearly begged Lena to be motionless and silent, sniffling. She murmured, “Even God forgives a sinner…” as she twisted her hands.
Of course. Lena knew that Celeste was quite devout in a traditional way. The woman had never missed a Sunday church, and she had fasted every day throughout Lent, no matter what. So, it wasn’t strange that God became involved in this mess. Lena could now see why Celeste was so rigorous with her religion: she was terrified. It wasn’t a horrible thing, but it couldn’t be the finest thing either.
Lena responded, “But I’m not God.”  “I’m just Lena.”
She didn’t have the strength to do what was being demanded of her just now. And since she woke up, she had learned that she had a long way to go and that she needed to forgive herself first for the wrongs she knew she had done to herself and to the others who had put up with her messed up, depressed self for so long.
Celeste nodded in agreement, even though tears were flowing down her cheeks.
Lena’s gaze abruptly moved over Celeste’s head, and when she saw the sad figure standing at the half-open door, she froze. She thought it was Kellen, but at the same time, she didn’t.
Kellen stood there looking at Lena through the half-open door. He felt his pulse race when he saw how pale she still was. Her skin hue was virtually the same as the bandage over her head and the blankets that were drawn up to her chest. He saw that she was too slender. Her cheekbones had sunk in a little, and her eyes looked tired.
He stood there watching, listening, and hoping against all hope while his mother chatted to Lena. He looked at her with desire and then with sorrow. At that moment, all he wanted was to hold her tightly and never let her go. But he was aware that it wasn’t that simple. It would never be simple.
Kellen had to bite the inside of his cheek when Celeste spoke the word God. He shook his head in his mind at that.
“But I’m not God. I’m just Lena.”
Hearing her made his breath catch in his throat. She was only Lena, and she meant everything to him.
He tensed as her eyes met his after a time. He was too scared to let out the air he had been holding when she saw him.
Celeste said something quietly to Lena and patted her hand. Then she turned around to go. As she walked past him, she gazed at him for a moment. It was just a sad, empty sight. There was a profound feeling of sadness.
When he stepped in carefully, taking slow steps, Lena had glanced away. He knew she was still quite aware of him, even if she was just looking up at the ceiling. He could tell, maybe because her shoulders grew stiff or because her hands curled around a clutch of the bed sheet.
“L… Lena?” he mumbled in dread, holding on to the small amount of hope that was still alive in him. The hope that she would forgive him and that he would be able to hold his world in his arms again.
But suddenly, that last amount of optimism he had started to fade.
His finger came out to brush her cheek because he was greedy and couldn’t help himself. Lena took a deep breath and shifted her face to the other side, as if just seeing him bothered her or touching him would burn her. And he knew that there was nothing unexpected about how much she hated him. It hurt his soul. He had said and done enough to get her to this point, which was far away from him.
Was there any way to take back anything he had said?
Was there a way to take back what he had done?
He pulled his hand back and pushed it into his hair. One tear fell from his eye.
“Lena,” he croaked, hoping against hope that things might be fixed somehow. “I’m… so sorry—”
“Please go,” Lena said, cutting in and breathing hard. Her face was still turned away from him, and her voice was so low that it seemed like she was trying to hold back a sigh.
His stomach turned.
He sat down on the stool and grasped her hand with both of his, like a dying man holding on to what was keeping him alive. “Please, Lena.”
Her fingers moved about in his palms as she weakly tried to pull away from him. And then she immediately relaxed. She blinked a lot with tears in her eyes that she didn’t spill. She still didn’t look at him. She was still stiff since he was there. “I can’t,” she continued, and this time, her voice sounded terrified and urgent. “You need to know that I can’t. Please go.”
He felt like all of his power, hope, and light had left his heart. She slipped out of his fists like sand when he released his grip.
She let out a shattering sigh only when she heard him go. She diverted her eyes to the sofa where Ryan, Damien, and Lola had been sleeping because the stillness seemed wrong. She was the only one who knew that they were no longer sleeping and were now awake and looked at her with blank looks on their faces.
Lena moaned. “What?”
Lola snorted. “You could have done better.”
“Better?”
“Yeah, just punch him in the nose and get it over with. But I know you’re probably feeling weak from the surgery and all the medicine. In that case, we can sneak up on Kellen later, and you can punch him then.”
Ryan instantly started stroking his own jaw like he was thinking of a punch that a certain woman had given him in the past.
Lena sat silent as her pals fought over how to throw punches and how to do it so that the other person would be hurt a lot. She lost her focus. She thought about Kellen again. She couldn’t stop thinking about the sorrow in his eyes and the shame and regret she had seen there in those brief minutes. She had turned aside because she was afraid she would get weak. It was because she used to adore him. She loved him so much that when he pushed her away, it broke her heart in the worst manner conceivable. Her heart was still crushed inside her chest, and the cruel feeling of love hurt. She was afraid that if she looked at his eyes again, she would become putty in his hands again, and she couldn’t let that happen.
How much she loved Kellen was all-consuming, and one day, it would destroy her. It was a terrifying place.
She didn’t want to go back there. She didn’t want to have to think about just one person all the time.
She knew and could easily see that Kellen was just as much a victim of Selene’s plan as she was. But it wasn’t Selene who had put those cruel, degrading words in his mouth. He had been talking the whole time. Selene had been in charge, and Kellen had readily let her. They had set the fire to burn Lena, but she was embarrassed that it had been so easy for her.
Even though his apology seemed real, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about the hurtful past and let him off the hook. Not yet. Until she could find herself again.
Even though it made sense for her to forgive Kellen now that he was feeling guilty, her heart had already created the barricades.
How could she not think about the darkest times in her life when she looked at Kellen? There was no way that could happen.
Lena let out a sigh. And only then did she realize that her temples were damp with tears that had not been heard. She wiped them away because she was afraid the other three people in the room would see. They were sick of watching her weep, and after the previous time, she didn’t want them to see her cry again. She was mortified that people would believe she was the weakest of all weaklings, even though she hadn’t done anything to show them wrong.
But as she took her hand away from her face and looked up, she saw that Damien was looking at her very closely. When she bit her bottom lip, he grinned just a little and gazed at her knowingly as if he knew she was shy of being discovered. Ryan and Lola were too busy arguing over the extremely bad subject of correct punching techniques to notice. Damien was nice, but Lena knew that the other two would have hit her hard on her already broken head.
Lena was able to obtain her promised guards to go home, clean up, and have a good meal after a few hours. They had agreed, but they had also made it clear that at least one of them would always be with her. Ryan had volunteered for the first round, but Lola had given him a warning scowl before she departed with Damien.
Ryan said a minute later, “That woman is f*****g crazy,” as he pressed a button on the bed’s remote to raise the upper half of the bed.