Page 140 of Heartbreak & Cupcakes
ALEX
The automatic doorsslid open and as I walked through them. I felt like I was walking a plank. They’d kept Sadie overnight for observation, but I’d spoken to Charli and she’d told me that they were releasing her today.
I’d cleared my schedule for the next few days so that I could stay with her and make sure that she had everything she needed to recover. I didn’t want to think about what was going to come after that.
I tried to force the decision that I’d made last night out of my head. I’d spent the night in my home office, sitting in my chair, alone with my thoughts. Those thoughts had been clear.
I couldn’t do this again. I didn’t have the reserve to love someone again and risk losing them. And there was no way that I was going to put Lexi through that pain. She’d been so concerned when I’d picked her up from Maddox’s last night. My number one priority was to take care of and protect that little girl. Inviting pain into our lives was the exact opposite of that.
My heart was broken thinking about Sadie not being in my life, but it would heal. Or it wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure, but I’d survive. If I let this go on any further, I couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to. And as a single father, I didn’t have that option.
The responsible thing to do was to end this now. As soon as Sadie was feeling better, I’d tell her that this was over.
As I stepped onto the elevator the world around me felt surreal. Nurses were walking briskly down halls, a doctor talking on his cell phone, visitors of patients were arriving and leaving. It seemed like I was walking through a movie set. Like these were all actors and nothing was actually real.
I remember thinking the same thing after I lost Ash and AJ. I would see people walking around, living their lives, going about their days, and I would think that it had to be a simulation. Surely, the world wasn’t just going on. But it did just that.
The sun kept rising and setting. Days, weeks, months, years passed. I knew it would again.
People say that time heals all wounds, but I didn’t believe that. I believed that time was just what it took to learn to live with the pain that never went away. And I would learn to live with this pain.
The elevator doors opened to the seventh floor, and I did my best to mask any emotions that I was feeling. What Sadie needed now was support and comfort.
A nurse with purple streaks in her hair and a tattoo of a phoenix rising from ashes on her neck was walking out of the room as I walked in.
She smiled brightly at me, totally unaware of my soul being twisted and wrung out inside of me. “Morning.”
“Morning.” I nodded as I took a deep breath.
I needed to put my game face on. This was a triage situation. I needed to make sure that Sadie was okay, then I could deal with the fallout of my broken heart.
When I walked into the room, my broken heart expanded with love. Yesterday, when I’d entered her room she’d been lifeless, her eyes closed, tubes coming out of her nose and arms. Now she was sitting up in bed eating her breakfast. The color was back in her face, and the swelling had gone down around her eye. Her hair was braided and revealing the portion they had to shave and the black stitches that they’d put in.
She looked over at me, and her mouth split in a wide smile. That smile had my broken heart splitting even wider. “Hi.”
“You look…cute.” I wasn’t sure why that was the descriptor I used, but it was true. She looked adorable.
She lifted her hand and ran her fingers down one of her braids. “Charli did my hair.”
Hearing her voice, seeing the light back in her eyes had my legs moving without permission from my brain. I found myself standing beside her bed, lifting my hand and running my thumb along her jaw. Her amber gaze looked up at me with trust, and love.
I closed my eyes, unable to see that reflected back to me, leaned down and pressed a light kiss to her forehead.
Her hands reached up and she held my forearm. “Hey, I’m okay,” she assured me.
I felt tears begin to sting the back of my eyelids, but I forced them to dry. This wasn’t about how I was feeling. Sadie was attacked, hurt. This was about her.
In an attempt to get my shit together, I dropped my hand and pulled my lips from her soft skin. When I stood back up she kept her hold on my arm and repeated, “I’m okay.”
“I know,” I lifted my arm and wiped the moisture beneath my lids with my forefinger and thumb.
Her hand dropped and so did her smile.
“Charli said that they are going to release you today. Has the doctor been in?” I stepped back and tried to focus on the task at hand. Get her home. Get her better. That was all I needed to think about.
“Alex.” There was tension in Sadie’s voice. “Look at me.”
I forced myself to lift my head. The moment our eyes met, I knew she saw straight down to my soul. It was always that way with her. From the first time I’d laid eyes on her, it was like she saw me. The real me. It had taken my breath away then, and it did now as well.
