Chapter 16 - EYES OPEN|
The green lines on the cardiac monitor danced frantically.
Elena’s fingers twitched sharply inside Adrian’s palm. Her chest heaved against the thin hospital blanket, her throat working as a small, gasping sound escaped her lips.
"Elena?" Adrian gasped, leaping to his feet. "Nurse! Doctor!"
Her long, pale eyelashes fluttered. Once. Twice.
Then, slowly, her gray eyes opened.
They were cloudy, unfocused, staring blankly at the dim fluorescent lights above. She blinked against the glare, her breath coming in shallow, frightened hitches.
"Elena... can you hear me?" Adrian wept, dropping to his knees beside her pillow, holding her hand with absolute tenderness. "I'm here. It's Adrian. You're safe."
Her head turned slowly on the pillow. Her pale gray eyes tracked across the room until they finally locked onto his face.
She looked at his disheveled hair, his dark, tear-streaked eyes, and the silver wedding band shining brightly on his left finger.
Memory returned to her eyes in a agonizing wave—the cream coat, the flatbed truck, the letter in her pocket, the divorce papers she had left behind.
"Ad... rian..." her voice was barely a rough, raspy whisper, dry as dust.
"Don't try to speak, my love," Adrian sobbed, pressing her hand against his face, bathing her skin in his tears. "I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry for everything..."
Elena stared at him quietly for a long, heavy moment.
She didn't pull her hand away, but she didn't squeeze his fingers either. A profound, heartbreaking distance lay behind her gray eyes—a canyon created by eleven months of betrayal that tears could not cross.
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"The... baby..." she whispered weakly, her eyes filling with instant, terrifying panic.
Adrian’s breath hitched in his throat, his heart shattering into a thousand pieces as he looked into the face of the woman he had destroyed.
