Vitality (Vitality Series #1)

Chapter 46 Why Me? pt.2

Ava had fallen asleep, somehow, until her body was laid down on something soft and dry. She opened her eyes to a dark, round room, chipped and faded from time. The sky cast darker shadows on the dust-filled floor through the metal vine in the windows. Leaves twitched and swirled from the drafts. The room was empty, save for a small round table in the middle, a broken bench on the other end of the room, where a window stood parallel to the window behind the bed she lay on, and a small, empty fireplace across from the rickety wooden door.

Layton was rummaging through a bag on the table. He brought over a towel. "You should get out of that dress, and I'll clean your wounds."

Ava hesitated a moment before taking the towel, then stood up slowly. His eyes lingered from the side onto her bare shoulders and collarbone as she wrapped her hands around what was left of her strap.

She swallowed. "Turn around."

His eyes came back to hers before he finally turned and went back to pulling things out of the bag. How many times had her naked skin wrapped with his? But now it was no longer his. He was a stranger.

She pulled off her dress and the bandages and dried off as she watched him nervously, then sat on the bed with the towel wrapped around her. "Okay."

Layton took a deep breath before turning. Everything in her tensed as he walked closer. He bent down in front of her, reaching out for her shoulder with a soaked cotton swab. Her body tensed further; her teeth tightened together; she couldn't take it.

Ava grabbed his hand, stopping it. "I can do it."

Her fingers reached around his for the cotton, lingering there longer than she'd intended, a deceitful promise of everlasting familiarity. Knowing that what she once had was all gone now, or that it had never existed, only made her long for it even more. And longing for the impossible was a sure way to bleed the soul dry.

Ava's eyes wandered to Layton's, looking for something that wasn't there, the longing irremediable. It almost seemed like something inside him was shifting the longer she looked. But it wasn't him. It was her. And before she could let herself get carried away into a nothing, she pulled the cotton ball away. "Please, go..."

He stood and turned quietly, even though his eyes were loud enough, deafening all her thoughts into missing pieces. But before he went out the door, he stopped in the doorway without looking back and said, "I want you to know, I don't think you're weak. I think you're the strongest person I've ever met in my life... And I've had a long life." Then the doorway was empty.

Her chest heaved breath into her lungs, and she laid on the bed and pulled the covers over her, gripping onto it as hard as she could, and let out what she hoped was the last of her tears.