Not The One (London Lovers #4)

by Amy Daws

  Finally, my eyes aren’t taped shut anymore. Finally, I can see the voice that’s been nurturing me from the outside of that cozy place I was inside not so long ago. Her hunched over frame is blurry but I’d know her voice anywhere. It’s my mommy. My mommy is sad. My mommy is upset. Why is she upset?

  I manage to move my head over to look the other way and see three other incubators next to me. My sisters. Those are my sisters. I can feel their hearts beating with my own. I can feel their emotions. One of them is awake like me and she’s scared. She’s scared hearing our mommy scream like that. The other two are sound asleep, their hearts weaker and more muted than ours. I want to be close to them. I want to be next to them. If I was, I could help them. I could help their heart beats increase so they could wake up more. They just need me. Listen to our mommy! Please!

  I begin flailing inside my incubator, fighting against the straps holding my hands down. I need to get to them; I need to be close to them. My heart rate increases and a beeping alarm suddenly chimes loudly beside me. All of the sudden, several faces are looking down at me.

  “Doctor, she’s in tachycardia. What do you want to do?”

  “Check her BP, where’s it at.”

  “It’s elevated.”

  “Reyna?” my mother’s voice cries from behind all the masked faces. “Reyna Miracle…Don’t honey. Calm down…Be still, be safe my love.”

  “We need to sedate her. Push ten of Propofol.”

  A funny taste explodes in my mouth as a cool liquid pushes through my veins. Instantly, my eyes begin to feel heavy. Just before I close them, I see Marisa floating above me. But it’s not the Marisa I knew as an adult. It’s the child version of her. Six or seven-years-old maybe.

  She’s looking down on me with a serious expression. Her voice is like an angel. “Now do you see? Now do you understand?”

  Before I have a chance to ask her what she’s talking about, my mother’s voice is whispering in my ear. “You’re just going to take a nap, Reyna Miracle. Just a nap. I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving. Don’t leave me sweetie. Don’t you dare leave—”

  My eyes fly open and my pillow is soaked in tears and sweat. I sit up to find myself lying on my mattress in my Pimlico flat. My throat and chest ache like I’ve been bawling for hours. There’s a strange metallic taste in my mouth that reminds me of the taste I had when a nurse pushed morphine into my IV as a teenager. I had to have my tonsils out after an abscess got infected on one and it was brutally painful.

  “What in the hell?” I croak out. My voice hoarse like I’ve been screaming in my sleep.

  As realization settles over me as to what I just witnessed in my dream, anxiety overcomes me. I jump out of bed and rush into the kitchen, searching for alcohol. Something, anything to numb this overwhelming sense of sickness raking through me with sharp, defiant strokes. My hands wrap around a bottle of vodka. I unscrew the lid and put the bottle to my lips. At the same moment a painful ache seers across my chest.

  “No!” I croak out loud to myself. “Not this. Anything but this.”

  I check the clock to see it’s nearly five o’ clock in the morning. An anxiety attack is coming, I can feel it. I replace the lid on the vodka and place it back in the cabinet. On shaky legs I return to my mattress to find my phone. I dial the one person who can always talk me down from these attacks.

  “Rey?” he says groggily.

  “This one was bad, Hayden,” my statement causes a loud sob to erupt.

  “Another dream?”

  “So much more than a dream, Hay,” I cry into the phone and begin coughing violently.

  “Calm down, calm down. I’m on my way. I’ll stay on the phone with you until I get there.”

  “You’re not driving, right?” I ask nervously. Even in my frazzled state, nagging Hayden about driving is like a reflex to me. It was only a year ago that I spent weeks watching him in the hospital after he wrapped his car around a tree and nearly killed himself. The whole ordeal nearly killed me, too. I wasn’t eating over the stress and the crippling fear that I was that close to losing him, too.

  “I’m not driving. Stop with that shite, will ya? I’ll be there in five.”

  I slide down the hallway wall and ball myself up against the wall, trying desperately to stave off the impending attack. Having no idea how much time has passed, I’m startled when warm arms wrap around my shoulders and squeeze tightly. Hayden begins swaying me back and forth slowly—dropping soft kisses into my damp hair. He removes my phone from my ear and sets it on the floor beside him. His right hand reaches around and squeezes the base of my neck in long, pain-relieving grips…exactly the way he knows helps me.

  When the sobs subside, he lifts me up into his arms and carries me to the mattress, lying me down and tucking himself in behind me. “Do you want to tell me about it?” he asks, squeezing me protectively into his chest

  Still unsure how to process it all myself, I can’t possibly imagine telling him everything now. How can I dream of a time when I was a newborn baby? Was any of that real? Or was it all just a dream? Did my mother actually say any of those words that day? All I know about my birth is that I was one of four girls born when she was only twenty-four weeks pregnant. I was the only one that survived the NICU.

  That’s it.

  My mother doesn’t talk about them and neither do I. Regardless, I’ve always felt this strange connection to them. Like they are a part of me. Like I’m missing a part of myself every day of my life.

  Hayden doesn’t know I was born a quadruplet. All he knows was that I was born a micro-preemie. Marisa was the only person I ever revealed the strange pull I still feel to my sisters’ short existence.

  I roll over to face him. “Marisa was there,” I say quietly to his chest, trying to give him some nugget of information to understand my attack. My face is tight from the salty tears that have dried now.

  He squeezes my neck again and I tuck in even closer. “I figured.” The smell of alcohol on his breath is strong.

  “I’m sorry about earlier at the club,” I say, feeling guilty that he’s here taking care of me right now when I know he’s hurting deep inside.

  “Don’t even bring it up.”

  “I’m scared, Hayden. I’m scared we’re stuck in this place that we’ll never get out of if we don’t change. If we don’t do something.”

  He sighs heavily into my hair. “I miss her too, you know.”

  I pull away from him to look into his drooping eyes. “Hayden, why do you only ever talk about her after my dreams?”

  He shakes his head and turns away from me to lie on his back. “I don’t know. It just feels like there’s a safety in the night. You can go back to sleep and sort of start fresh the next day. Things just feel different at nighttime.” The security light from outside my window streams in across his face, illuminating his profile as he stares up at the ceiling and continues, “And…because I think she’s listening.”

  “You do?” I’m stunned by this admission. “You’ve never told me this before.”

  His face turns to me as he stares seriously into my eyes. His voice is barely a whisper. “I swear I feel her all around me after I see her in my dreams. Don’t you?”

  A prickling sensation cripples over my skin as I sit up to look into his eyes more fully. Nodding I reply, “I feel like she’s always trying to tell me something.”

  “Me too. But it’s so hard to figure out.”

  “Yes,” I reply, relieved to feel like someone finally understands what I’m going through. “She was the best friend I ever had.”

  “She was the best sister, too.”

  “It’s been three years, Hayden. When will it ever get easier?”

  “I don’t know. Christ, I wish I did. This darkness is bloody wretched.”

  He pulls me down onto his chest. His fingers draw lazy circles around the sleeve of my tattoo. Both of us lie there for a while…awake and silent, mourning the loss of his sister…mourning the loss of my best f
riend.

  In the darkness that seems to have no end.

  I wake several hours later to find Hayden has left. It’s not surprising. It’s usually what he does after opening up to me about Marisa. Opening up isn’t exactly what our relationship is about, so he always gets awkward when we do. I sigh cursing to hell what an awful night that was. Drunken oblivion was easier than this.

  This has to get easier.

  It just has to.

  Graduation day at Oxford was upon us. I was capped and gowned and standing outside Sheldonian Theater. I stared sullenly into the camera of my mother’s phone. Her face twinkled with hope and possibility and just bullshit everything.

  “Can you at least try to smile, my Miracle?”

  “Can you at least try to stop pretending I’m a miracle?” I bite out meanly.

  She smiles at me. “Never.” She places her hand on my wrist in a comforting gesture and I flinch away from her. “Sorry, I forgot.”

  I roll my eyes and lift the enormous sleeve up of my graduation robe to inspect my new ink. A pocket watch on the inside of my wrist set to the time of death that the medics called Marisa’s death. Four o’ three pm. She was dead for three hours before Liam was able to get a hold of me to tell me the awful news. The second skin bandage is still firmly in place, so I cover it back up and turn my back on my mother.

  It’s been two weeks since Marisa’s funeral and two weeks since I’ve actually eaten anything worth mentioning. I wanted to skip graduation all together but despite my continual resentment toward my mother, I couldn’t deny her this moment. She’s paid for every single bit of my schooling and I do not take that lightly.

  Since sleeping with Liam and learning of Marisa’s death, I’ve slipped into a depression unlike any other. I’ve completely sabotaged every other relationship in my life. I may as well walk across that stage today in my cap and gown and hold onto the scraps of the mirage that is my mother’s love.

  It’s also been two weeks since I’ve seen Liam. The real estate agent called to confirm our appointment to look at commercial properties in London, but I canceled everything. I took Liam’s absence and silent treatment as no longer being interested in a future with me of any kind.

  Not that I wanted one with him anyway.

  “I’m going to go inside and take my seat with the other parents. You look beautiful, honey.” She kisses me and disappears into the theater.

  I look down at the enormous and elaborate academic robe and red sash across my neck. I adjust it uncomfortably and then my eyes trip over a familiar figure. I focus quickly in on a furious looking Liam. He’s pushing through the hundreds of other robed students to get to me.

  “Christ, I hardly recognized you,” he seethes, the angry bulge in his jaw bone ticking violently. He grabs my arm firmly and pulls me off the concrete steps and into a covered archway away from all the other happy students. “What the fuck, Rey?”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask in utter confusion.

  He reaches beneath my chin, grabs the zipper and yanks it down harshly. I shove his hands away as my robe is yanked open.

  “Fuck, Rey! You’re skin and bones!” Liam’s face is tortured and sickly. Dark circles reside under his eyes but he still looks gorgeous as ever.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Grabbing the edges of my robe, I cover myself back up, protectively. I’m wearing a short blue shift dress that used to hug every one of my curves but now hangs on me like a potato sack. I know I’ve lost some weight since Marisa but I’m not about to let him scold me like a child over it. “I’m a twenty-five-year-old adult, Liam. I don’t need you chastising me over this.”

  “Rey,” he says my name on a sigh. “How can you expect me to ignore this?” His eyes are pleading and pained as they flash between my eyes and my mouth in utter agony.

  “I’m not your concern!” I push back my dark hair and squeeze the back of my neck to try to gain some of my control back.

  “You made that perfectly clear when you shoved me out of your dorm room. Fuck. How did we get this so utterly wrong?”

  “Just leave it, Liam.”

  “No.” He grabs my shoulders and turns me to face him. “Don’t you miss me? At all? I miss you like crazy. I feel like I’m mourning two deaths instead of one. It’s like you died on me two weeks ago. And now I see you today and it makes me sick to my stomach that I’ve left you the way I did!” His eyes are shimmering with tears and pain, only adding to the self-loathing I’ve developed the past fourteen days.

  My eyes are dead and cold, my voice flat and unaffected. “I told you I wanted nothing to do with you, Liam. I meant it.”

  “You’re lying to me. Again!” he roars, angrily punching the concrete wall beside my head.

  I flinch and yank myself free from his hold. “You need to leave me alone. None of this is right. It’s fucked up, is what it is.” I turn away from him, and cross my slender arms over my chest.

  “What’s fucked up? You and I staying friends? Marisa dies and our friendship has to die with it?”

  Her name on his lips so close to my face is like a dagger through my heart. I turn to face him, resolute written all over my face. “Yes, Liam. Our friendship ends. That’s what happens after you betray someone. Shit ends…badly. Leave it alone.”

  “Bollocks, Rey. You’ve gone completely mental. You need help!” He rips his cap off his head and shoves his hands through his hair. “I can’t just watch you wither away!”

  “You don’t have to. We’re done with school. We’ll never see each other again. Stop worrying about me. This is how it has to be, Liam.”

  “Why? Why, Rey?” he’s shouting again. His brown eyes are dancing passionately between my two gray ones.

  “Because—”

  “I still love you, Rey.” His words cut me off as his shaky hands cup my cheeks. He leans down to catch my downward cast eyes. “You have to stop pushing people away. This can’t be how this ends.”

  “It most certainly is,” I say, pulling back from his embrace. Pushing people away is what I’m good at. Keeping everyone at an arm’s length is rudimentary for survival. Marisa was the only exception.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t love you, Liam!” I scream the lie at him and the words echo of the concrete walls. “I never have! Whatever you think this is, isn’t worth it.”

  My words have the instant effect of turning his passionate expression to stone. He drops his hands from my face and steps back, releasing a shaky breath. Unable to watch a single second of him hating me, I shove past him, leaving his bereft face in my wake as the final, lasting memory I have of Liam Darby.

  “I need you to do more of that marketing magic, Oxford. I just checked the books for the week and that night you did all that work for Ginge on Top was our highest grossing night of the entire week by double!”

  My brows rise as I lean against the doorway of Lariza’s office. Frank is seated behind the desk in a white tailored blazer rolled up his slender forearms. His red hair is gelled so much it looks like he’s just come from a shower.

  I’ve been working at Club Taint for about two weeks now and am finally starting to not feel like a newbie. I’ve been able to focus and take in extra shifts since Hayden has been MIA. This isn’t the first time he’s disappeared on me. Whenever he opens up about Marisa, he always pulls away after. It’s during these times that I text with his sister Daphney to make sure he is being safe.

  Just thinking of the nightmare I had that night shoots chills up and down my spine. I’ve had dreams of my sisters before, but nothing that involved our time in the NICU. That dream was bone-chilling.

  I refocus on the flailing ginger in front of me. “Tune in, Oxford. I’m talking here!”

  “Am I a bartender or a marketing rep?” I ask cheekily with a wry grin.

  “You are whatever I bloody well want you to be. Don’t get smart, Oxford or I’ll send you to Brixton to pick me up the latest vintage porno that just arrived.”

>   “Say what?”

  “That’s what I thought. Get over here.” He grumbles beneath his breath and I can’t help but laugh at the utter randomness that is Frank McElroy. This guy is a breed all to himself. I make my way over to his desk. He has an Excel spreadsheet graph open and points out how much higher our income was the night of Ginge on Top. I’m impressed and even a bit pleased.

  “Now, we can’t open early every night. But I’m quite interested to see if you can increase our business with any other marketing ideas that don’t require a change of hours. We have a great clientele here but I’d love to show Lariza that I’m not a posh, spoiled tosser with no work ethic.”

  “So you want to exploit my mad skills to make yourself look good?” I arch one plucked brow at him.

  “Precisely,” he replies without shame.

  “What’s in it for me?” I lean back in the wheelie office chair and cross my arms over my chest.

  His eyes turn to slits and he props his chin on his fist, looking me up and down. “What did you have in mind? I have to say, I’m intrigued. This is the first time your badass ink actually matches your attitude.”

  Tightness forms in the pit of my stomach as my nerves kick in, but I school my face to look strong and confident. I’ve been dying to ask Frank this since the day of my interview, but never had a good opportunity. Now seems like the only chance I’ll get. “I just want a bit of intel. Shouldn’t hurt too much.”

  Leaning back, he waffles his fingers over his flat stomach. “Fire away, Oxford.”

  I glance back to the computer, unable to make eye contact as I ask, “How do you know Liam Darby?”

  Frank releases a small puff of air with a knowing laugh. He kicks his foot against my chair, swirling me to face him head on. His cocky grin is maddening, but I match it with one of my own, refusing to lose my poker face.

  “Liam’s a good bloke. We’ve become proper mates in the past year. He had a bit of a rendezvous with my flat mate, Finley, when she first moved here from the States.”

  “So what happened?” I ask, trying to mask the green-eyed emotions overcoming me. Jesus, Rey. You didn’t expect Liam to sit and pine over you for three damn years.