One Night Stand With My Enemy

Chapter 8

Gwyn

By the time Luke makes it to the hospital, my mother has been taken off the monitors and the tubes have been removed. Her time of death was confirmed at 10:15 and I have been standing here, looking at her, slowly falling apart by myself. She looks like she is sleeping, no blood pouring out of her to show what wound killed her. Luke walks into the room at 10:30 and stops the second he sees me standing there. I don't have to look at him to see the pain in his eyes and, honestly, I don't want to look at him, I don't want to see pity, because that will just make this harder.

"Gwyn, I am so sorry." He says and wraps his arms around me. My body tenses and I stand there, refusing to wrap my arms around him. I told him more than an hour ago that my mother was here. He stays five minutes from the hospital and still, it took him more than an hour to get here. I know he probably has his reasons for not being here, but I don't care. Instead of standing there in his embrace, I turned away from my mother and pushed Luke away from me.

"Say your goodbyes. I will be outside." I told him. Luke reaches for me, but I step out of his reach. "Don't touch me. I don't need you to try and comfort me. I don't need you to be here for me. I called you because she needed you and she would've wanted you here." I tell him, still not looking at him. I don't want to see how much he has changed. I don't want to know if his blonde hair has grown longer, I don't want to know if he still has the same soft brown eyes. I don't want to risk another crack in my armor. I walked out of the room and walked right into another body. I look up and find Gareth standing there, his arms on my shoulders to steady me and the small touch has my body lighting up. "What are you doing here?" I ask him, furious that he is here after last night. Angry at my heart for skipping a beat at the sight of him when it did nothing when I saw Luke. I looked back down at the floor, afraid that he would see just how much I liked his touch by simply looking into my eyes.

"Look at me, Red." He says softly, his usual hostility gone, and I almost want to beg him to bring it back. I could handle his anger, could handle his sarcasm and his rudeness. What I can't handle is the sympathy in his voice. "Please, look at me." He says, taking a sledgehammer to what was left of my armor. How can anyone refuse him when he begs? I look up at him and he grabs my chin, keeping my head up and my eyes locked on his. His eyes search mine and mine searches his. I have never seen Gareth look at me with such soft eyes, no anger or distaste in them and when he wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his chest, I break down. His arms tighten around me when my knees give out and then he picks me up and holds my head against his neck, making me feel like I am being hidden from the world. I don't see where he carries me, just feel his legs moving, but I don't care where we are going, I just need to get out of here. I feel the cold air hit my back and a minute later I hear a car door opening before it closes again and the cold air can no longer touch me. "Look at me." He says again and I force my head to lift and turn to him. I suck in a breath as I take in his blue eyes, so much different from Luke's light brown eyes. Gareth's eyes remind me of the unstable sea, changing with his moods, the color going from light to dark, from happy to pissed off in seconds. His eyes are now dark, but filled with concern. "You did everything you could for her. You stood by her wishes and you did what she needed you to do. There is nothing you could've done differently to make her stay here longer." He says and for a moment I am stunned into silence. How did he know that I was fighting my guilt? How did he know just what to say when I didn't even voice it out loud?

"She is gone." Is all I can get out and with those words it finally sinks in. My mother isn't just sleeping in a bed, she is dead and she will never open her eyes again, never smile at me again. I will never hear her voice again, never feel her hugs. My mother is gone, just like my father and I am left alone in this world. "She is gone." I say again and I swear I can see tears in Gareth's eyes, but he pulls my head back into the curve of his neck and I wonder if I was just imagining it.

"I know, baby. I know." He says, rubbing circles on my back with one hand while the other cradles my neck. I never thought that Gareth could be gentle, at least not to me, but here he is, giving me the comfort I had refused from my best friend. I don't know how long we sit there, but at some point my breathing slows down and the pain in my chest turns into a painful throb and my head begins to clear. Reality comes flooding into this bubble of warmth and comfort and memories of last night come flooding back in.

"Did you tell him?" I ask him and his body tenses beneath me.

"No." He says, but his body doesn't relax beneath me. I start to push my body up but Gareth tightens his grip on me. "Don't", he says through clenched teeth. "Not yet." He says and I don't have the energy to fight against him. Instead, I stayed in his arms until we heard a knock on the window. Gareth sighs, but opens up the window.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" Luke says, clearly annoyed, and it feels like deja vu. I turn my head to look up at Luke, his eyes furious, but there is also sadness and betrayal there. I am not quite sure why he would feel betrayed, but at this point, I really don't give a s**t. Luke takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and then lets the air out of his lungs in a rush. "There are papers you need to sign and the lawyer is here to talk to you regarding your mother's wishes. I have been looking for you for the past two hours." He said, and I sat up so fast that I knocked my head against Gareth's chin. He groans in pain, but helps me open the door to climb out of the car. For a moment, I am blinded by the sun, my eyes so sensitive from crying that it hurts to open them. It pisses me off that the sun is shining and that everyone is moving on with their lives, smiling and laughing while my world has been turned upside down. But that is the thing about life, it will always keep moving even when you are standing still. This world doesn't need us to turn or to circle the sun. In the grand scheme of things, we don't mean much to this world, but my mother meant a lot to me and she meant so much to those two women that she has helped support. My mother might not have meant a lot to the world, but she has touched so many lives and I vow to always remember that.

I lift my head and force my back straight and then I walk back into the hospital and ignore the two men behind me as I prepare myself for what is to come. I won't have a chance to break down again for a while, and I am thankful that Gareth gave me that safe place to hide and fall apart, but that is over now. Until my mother's affairs are sorted out, I will need to be strong for her.

For the next hour I sit with the lawyer and go through my mother's will. She wants to be cremated and I knew that already, but it seems like my mother had planned her own funeral, going into detail about what she wants to wear and what flowers she wants and which church she wants the ceremony to take place. I know my mother planned everything to make it easier on me, but it saddens me that she had known that she wasn't going to make it and yet she had done everything in her power to give me hope. She had fought because she wanted to give me a little more time to prepare for the day that she is no longer here.

"She is my best friend. I am the one that should give her comfort. Not you!" I hear Luke in the hallway, clearly trying to whisper-shout, but sound travels in a place like this and I am sure that everyone in this hallway can hear him.

"Where were you the past six months when she needed you? Don't come with your hero s**t now." Gareth replies, and I am shocked to hear the venom in his voice.

"I tried contacting her. She was the one that wouldn't answer the phone." Luke argues. "You know I tried." He says, but Gareth laughs.

"You didn't try. You gave up. Tell me, did you bother showing up at her work with an apology? Did you bother sitting in front of her apartment for hours and wait to come home? You didn't even bother to visit her mother in the past six months. Go didn't even try to do more than pick up the phone and make a two minute call twice a day to make it look like you f*****g cared about her." Gareth says and now I know for a fact that they have no idea that I can hear them. I also know that Gareth is talking s**t because my mother told me about Luke and what he is going through every time I came to visit. She wouldn't know all those things if he wasn't there to tell her, right?

"I have been busy and you know that! I have my wife to support and a company to run. She didn't want me to come to her and I f*****g told you to stay away from her mother." Luke shouts, completely forgetting to try and keep it down. Gareth went to my mother? He was the one that visited her? Am I in some alternate universe? "Her mother already had enough on her plate and I didn't want to add to her worries and I didn't want to upset Gwyn anymore than you already had. I am in this f*****g f****d up situation because of you!" What the actual hell is going on here?

"Keep telling yourself that. You just keep making excuses for why you were all too happy to watch her leave. You were grateful that she didn't bother to pick up the phone because it would make her look like the bad guy that walked out on you instead of admitting that you were happy to finally move on with your life without having to constantly feel guilty because you couldn't return her feelings. You put in the bare minimum and you have done so for years, but she is too f*****g blinded by her hopes and dreams and her stupid heart to see that you never really cared about her, you just loved the fact that you had someone that was so dependent on you. But then Gwyn left and you didn't have someone to beg for your attention and you knew she no longer needed you to be happy and you found someone else who made you feel like a superhero and Gwyn was all but forgotten. The only reason you even pretended that you were happy to have her back was because now you had two women that was begging for your love and that put you on some kind of f*****g high. But you couldn't handle seeing her in my arms, could you? Couldn't handle seeing another man take away what you thought belonged to you. You would rather have her alone and cut off from everyone she loves than to see her with anyone else." Every word that Gareth says hurts, but I am again reminded of the sad, pathetic fool that I was, running after a man that would never be mine. I don't think that Gareth is right about everything, but maybe he isn't so far off. Luke could've put in far more effort to make things right between us. I mean, if I understood correctly, Gareth was the one to visit my mother and tell her everything and he was the one that left me the roses with the apologies and he was the one that left my favorite take always on my doorstep in sealed containers once a week for six weeks, each with a small note attached to it. I never bothered to read the notes because I expected it to be another apology that I didn't want to read. I never expected any of that to come from Gareth, but I know I shouldn't read more into it than what it really is. He felt bad for what he did and he should, but I can appreciate that he went through all that effort and I can forgive him for his part in my embarrassment, but that doesn't mean I will ever allow either of them back into my life. No, as soon as my mother is cremated and the ceremony is over, I will be gone and I won't look back. I refuse to be taken for a fool ever again.