Who I Became (Who I Was Book 2) (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

LILLIAN

I am being woken by the bed shaking and my hand being squeezed tightly. At first I thought it was an earthquake and Wesson was trying to wake me up, but then I see he is asleep and having a nightmare.  I remember how he used to have those and worry that they are coming back.  I feel ridiculously upset that he is having a nightmare. Just because he takes mine away, doesn’t mean I should feel inadequate because I don’t take his away.  I am about to shake him awake when he starts mumbling so I get closer trying to hear what he is saying.

“Mia, Mia I thought you were dead. Mia, where are you going?”

My heart breaks for him in that moment. I know he must be taking this hard but he doesn’t show it, he never shows it.

“Lillian! Lillian no! WHY IS SHE BLEEDING?!”

I lean over and hold onto him as tight as I can, unable to fight the war of being the Lillian that doesn’t remember and being the Lillian that he needs. He reaches out and holds me back just as tight. I can feel the tears on my shoulders but know he is still asleep.  His shaking slows down and turns into a slight tremor before he drifts further to sleep. I am going to be way too selfish right now and not let go—I am going to hold onto him and I won’t let go until he wakes up.  He doesn’t need to know that I knew what I was doing when I started to hold him like this.

I am awakened by the clearing of a throat in the room. I glance up and see Wesson looking at me, he doesn’t look like he was just sleeping so I know he has been up watching me like he used to.  I look over to see Park standing at the foot of the bed.

“Please tell me you remember Lil?”

Did I? no…

I shake my head no and painfully pull myself away from him and sit further back into the bed, as far away as I could get.  Parker shakes his head and gives a small smile toward Wesson.  Wow, what a traitor! You would think he would be upset knowing that Wesson was all over me and he is basically a stranger to me.  I study Parker closer and he looks back at me, not at all ashamed for being on Wesson’s side.  I guess all and all I prefer them to be close but come on!

Wesson doesn’t move from where he was on my bed.  In fact, I think he inches closer to me.  I shake my head and look over toward Parker. He obviously came in here for a reason.  Wesson beats me to it. “What’s up Park?”

He glances at me then Wesson, clearly debating on whether or not I should be involved in this conversation. 

“Don’t even think about it Park. I will get up out of this bed and follow you; I already told you that I will not be left out of this.”

Wesson laughs, shaking his head next to me. I scowl at him, not liking that he is laughing at me. He stops immediately and almost reaches for my hand before realizing what he was doing.

“Fine, we have secured a vehicle. We are supposed to be reassigned next Wednesday, so one week from now. That means we leave here no later than Tuesday evening. I would prefer to leave even earlier. I feel the longer we are here, the worse off we will be in the end, but I know it depends on how the healing goes.”

“I am ready to go now.” I speak up.

“No!” Both Parker and Wesson say at the same time.

I look between both of them, I feel okay, beat up yes, but I can heal easily on the road.

“Lillian love, you can’t leave just yet. They are still watching a few things and will need to be sure that everything is okay. We are going out to the woods and will be in there for awhile. We can’t risk you getting infected or something going wrong while out there. We will not be able to go get you medical attention.”

Or, I could stay in the hospital a few more days. I feel as though they are hiding something from me—something is off.  I don’t know if there were worse injuries than I knew of or what, but I can tell it just isn’t right.  I grow a bit annoyed at them and just sit back to listen to them talking.  They seem to have a pretty good plan in place, let’s just hope nothing trips us up before then.

The nurse comes in to give me a sponge bath and the boys head out to give me privacy.  It wasn’t lost on me the looks she was giving Wesson.  He didn’t reciprocate them, and I know at this point I have no say in anything as I am basically pushing him away, giving him an out, but seriously I know she sees him in here with me all the time. I continue to watch her try to toss her hair as they exchange a few words and she laughs at something he said that I am sure wasn’t that funny.  A low growl escapes me when she actually brushes his shoulder. That causes him to catch me watching; also I am sure he caught the displeasure on my face.  He just smiles and winks as he and Parker exit the room. 

I see them stop and talk with someone right outside my door and that is when I realize my room must be guarded. I shouldn’t be surprised but that makes me worry that escaping this place may not be as easy as they have made it sound.

“You have some great friends; they don’t leave your side for very long. They haven’t ever since you were brought in.”

Friends? I see what you are doing here lady, nice try.

“Well, one is my brother and the other one says he is my boyfriend. So yeah, I suppose they are doing their job.”

“Says he’s your boyfriend?”

“Do you not read the charts? I have memory loss.”

Okay, well, maybe I didn’t need to be that rude but this lady is getting on my nerves.  I am sure that it has to do with the small amount of jealousy I saw in myself that I don’t want to admit was ever there.

“Sorry, yes of course, I knew that.”

I do feel a little bad for acting like this and apologize before letting her get on with bathing me.  I am sure the fact that someone has to bathe me and that I have no control over my life right now has nothing to do with my growing frustration.  After she leaves and I am told the boys will be back in a while, I decide to take a nap.  I won’t get out of here if I don’t heal and resting helps people heal or so I keep being told.

***

WESSON

I
can’t hold back the smile as we leave Lillian’s room.  I am practically dancing in the hallways. Parker is looking at me like I am crazy which I very well may be but I saw it—she still has a soft spot for me. I know I have seen her old self shine through her without her even noticing it and I couldn’t be happier.

“Did you see that Park?”

“Your dance? Yeah dude, way cool.”

“No, did you see how your sister practically growled at the nurse in there.”

“No?”

“She was staring at her like she was prepared to fight for me. She may not really remember much, well anything about us, but she was totally jealous which means, there is hope.”

“Wes, I have told you time and time again, there is always hope, she will remember. You are going to make yourself crazy.”

I shake my head at him. He doesn’t understand how I feel.  She is my everything.  I have lost everything in my life, my sister twice.  I have done nothing but love her since we were kids and I saw how tough, brave and beautiful she was.  I was put on this earth to love her and she loves me back.  To have her not being able to remember the love we have is almost worse than never experiencing it in the first place.  However, Parker is right. I have been going crazy over how she doesn’t remember. I know she does deep down. I know she will remember but I need to be realistic and work on the things that I can do now. I can protect her. I can get Mia back. I can help finish this for everyone.

“Alright, you may be right. I just, she just, she makes me fucking crazy.”

“I can see that, you two are good for each other, I said that before. I know that I may not have seen you two together but I can tell.”

“You’re a good guy Park. Okay, now let’s go get this over with. I don’t like to be gone from her for that long. I wonder how Brax is doing. Wonder when we can get him out of here.”

I am a little concerned when I get to Braxton’s door and don’t see Vanessa outside. I mean I shouldn’t be, she can’t be there all the time but I can’t help the feeling that something is off.  I look around and notice he isn’t guarded at all, further putting me on edge. Parker walks ahead of me like there is nothing off and I grab his arm before he goes into the room, pulling him to a stop.  He looks back at me and sees me looking around so without saying anything, he looks around also.  I can see when he notices the same thing and he looks back at me wide eyed. I push him behind me a little, bracing myself for the worst when I open Braxton’s room.  I push it open peering in and stop.

“Why?” Braxton squeaks out, his voice still rough from being intubated.

I look between him and Vanessa who is standing just in the room.

“You weren’t guarded.”

That’s all I say and all I need to say when both of them look at me and nod in understanding.  I get pushed the rest of the way in by Parker who noticed that there wasn’t an obvious threat. 

“Sorry guys, I just walked in here. I had to wait for Chief to leave. Braxton wanted a real update on things since he was out.”

I don’t like the way she says things. I know he asked about her, hell I would probably be pissed if he didn’t ask about her.  I am such a mess. How can I get pissed that he was a good guy by asking about her? And yet I’m still pissed that he asked because it flares an unnecessary jealousy inside me.

“It’s fine, I understand.  I would want to know too.”

We stare at each other for a minute.  He still looks like shit. He breaks the silence first, staring me straight in the eyes. “Tell me Wes. How is she really?” I stiffen.

“I wish I could.  She is Lil, tough as nails on the outside.”

“On the inside?”

“I don’t know.  She isn’t my Lil right now.  Well, she is but she doesn’t remember it.”

He nods then turns to Parker.  They start talking about everything else while I talk with Vanessa.  She says that her cousin isn’t actually there right now, she had him leave.  She wasn’t sure how this would play out so she sent him to stay with other family.  Thankfully, he didn’t ask questions. Vanessa explained she is the rock in her family and there is no way they would question anything she would ask of them. That makes me feel a bit better.  We are going to be as wanted as the most wanted, even though we are innocent.  Parker and Braxton start talking with us and we get our plan more concrete.  Braxton was up and able to walk for just a few minutes today.  He is healing great since he healed for weeks while in the medically induced coma. He would have been able to walk longer and he wanted to but he had to get some more tests done.  All of his tests are looking great and for a guy who should have been dead, he is looking pretty great.

We are getting ready to head out when Braxton asks me to stay a bit longer.  He wants to talk about something. My inner clock says I have been away from Lillian too long.  Hard for the girl to remember me if I keep disappearing and hiding. Plus, with everything else going on, I really don’t like to leave her unattended.  I glance at Parker and he understands immediately.  I can see the anxiousness in him also.  We need to work on a better system; one of us should be with her at all times.  There is too much going on for us not to know where she is, who is with her and what she is doing at all times.  Wow, I sound like a creep. I immediately hate how overbearing I sound.  I know if someone was to plan my every move I would be pissed off. I am trying to get her to fall in love with me again; I don’t think this is the way to do it. Which means that may take longer than I had originally planned which sucks more than anything but her protection is the most important thing to me.  No hair on her head will be touched.  Not again.

“I’ll stay with her till you’re done.”

“Thank you.”

He nods again before exiting with Vanessa on his heels. I know he has the same goal in mind.  Free Lillian.

I stand and stare after them for a second, mostly because I am uncomfortable.  Finally, knowing I have no way of getting out of this, I head over to the chair and sit down and look at him. 

“Look, I know we aren’t friends and probably never will be.  I just want you to know, this isn’t your fault.”

It hits me harder than it should.  I don’t know how he would know what I feel.   I also know that it was my fault.  If I never agreed to do the job.  I am still unsure why I was put into that position from Lucas, my guess is that he was hoping to kill all his birds with one stone.  If I never let my feelings get ahead of me, fuck me if I could have stopped it.  If I never had to leave maybe things would have been different.  If I never made him come with me to get her then he wouldn’t be here.  If I never went all crazy when finding Mia, he wouldn’t be here. 

“No. No, I know what you are doing. You are going to keep blaming yourself. I see you playing out everything in your head.  Listen to me, I love her more than my life, so the fact that I almost died for her is okay with me.  I also love her enough to see that she loves you more than anything on this earth.  It hurts, but I know that after everything, you two are the best things for each other so I can get over the pain.  I know there will be someone out there for me just like she is to you.  So listen, there are a hundred different ways you can say what if I did this or what if I did that different then maybe… Fuck that, if you did anything differently, I may not be in this bed, but you know what…”