Chapter 142: Remaining Connection
In the end, he didn’t even say goodbye…
He’s such a coward…
…
I arrived back home in the countryside late at night with my life packed up in many boxes. In the end, I had to haul back the expensive jewelry that Hayden left as well. I’ll figure out a way to deal with them later.
It’s only been a month since I left this place but coming back here feels a little strange. To my surprise, the mess that the men in black had made of the place on the day that they took my grandmother and me away was all fixed up. Actually, the place looked restored. The faded paint seemed to have been painted over with new paint. Broken windows and glasses fixed.
The smashed-up furniture had been either fixed or replaced. The place was decently clean as well.
I smiled a little to myself. At least, the mafia cleaned up after their own mess. I hated how they smashed up the place but right now I was thankful that they mended everything because that meant that I didn’t have to come home to a mess. That also meant that I could start settling in without having to clean up late in the night.
After pushing the boxes into the house, I locked the door and that was when the reality of what was going on truly hit me. Hayden is gone and I won’t get to see him ever again. I sat down onto the floor, pulled my knees up and hugged them. I curled up into a ball and just started crying my eyes out.
This is the worst.
Why did things have to end this way between us? The pain tore at me from the inside out. I cried so much that I could hardly breathe. I’m going to look like a huge mess tomorrow, but I didn’t care. Right now, I just needed to let it all out.
Once I used to believe that I would return to my normal and happy life when the contract was over. I looked forward to this day when I would get my freedom back. Now that the day was here, I felt more devastated than I had ever felt before in my life. I felt so lost. It was like I had lost a very important part of myself.
How can all this come to an end when we haven’t even really started?
I didn’t remember much of what happened that night. There was a very high probability that I cried so much that I just fell asleep in the middle of it all. The next morning, I woke up on the floor where I had been sitting and crying the night before. I didn’t dare look in the mirror because I didn’t want to see my swollen eyes, lips and face.
My face ached and I knew without needing to look that it was swollen badly.
A new day had arrived but my grief from yesterday still felt fresh in my heart and mind. I glanced down at my phone and was disappointed that there were no messages or calls from Hayden. But then again, what was I hoping for exactly? There’s no way that he would ever contact me ever again.
I wanted to call him but whenever I reached out for my phone, my hand would shrink back. That was when I realized that I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to reach him on that number anymore. If I didn’t call, then I could always believe that I still had a way to reach him…
When in reality, I probably didn’t…not anymore…
I wondered what he was doing. I wondered if he thought of me. I wondered if he had moved on with his life like normal.
I wondered so much that I stopped wondering…
…
The next few days flew by in a messy blur. My head felt light and hazy all the time and I was doing things randomly to pass the time. I hated being alone because when I was alone or if I had nothing to do, my mind would wander straight back to Hayden.
I visited my grandmother every day and I spent most of my time with her in her hospital room. My grandmother probably knew that something was wrong, but she didn’t ask me about it. Being in my grandmother’s room always felt bittersweet. I could still see it and I could still smell it…the flower bouquet that Hayden got the florist downstairs to deliver to my grandmother’s hospital room every day.
Although our contract was over, the flowers didn’t stop coming. Just like clockwork, a new bouquet was delivered to my grandmother’s room every morning.
I would take the flower from the florist who delivered it and arrange it in a vase on the windowsill for my grandmother. Sadly, that was the only connection I had left with Hayden. It was the only thing that made me feel that we were still connected.
A week went by like this and unsurprisingly, I never got a call or a message from Hayden. As time went by, I was starting to believe that perhaps I had dreamt about everything that had happened. Perhaps it was all just in my mind all along. Whenever I had that thought, my eyes would fall on the bouquet of flowers and suddenly everything felt real once more.
--To be continued…