Week 341 – How/why?!?!

She’d hit him.

His beautiful, sweet, perfect Lani had hit him.

White had known for the last three years that staying away from Alannah, allowing her to believe he was dead, was hurting her. But it wasn’t until this moment that he realised just how much. In his mind he had always believed that once the threat was gone he could return to her and they would pick up their lives like it had never happened. Now he knew that learning he was alive, especially like this, had made her hate him.

He was never getting her back.

The loss hit him hard and he finally understood how bad it must have been for Alannah. All he wanted to do was drop to his knees and scream how/why?!?!

As badly as he wanted to force her to understand that he had literally had zero choice, it was fake his death or lose the woman he loved for real, she had come here for a reason. A reason he needed to know because there were only three people in the entire world who knew he wasn’t dead, who knew where he was hiding and had the codes to gain access.

Alannah wasn’t one of those three people.

Since his attempts to soothe her had failed miserably, he stared at the woman with her back against the wall, her breathing erratic, tears streaming down pale cheeks, her silvery grey eyes so full of pain it caused a physical ache in his chest. She was his Lani and yet she wasn’t. This woman felt like a stranger. A stranger he still loved with every fibre of his being. A stranger he knew loved him back even as she hated him for his deception.

She was thinner than the last time he’d seen her, all those soft curves had disappeared. Her face was gaunt, much too pale, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. There was a stiffness to the open, vibrant woman he remembered, and the way she had her arms wrapped around her stomach in a gesture of self comfort had him longing to pull her into his arms to comfort her. Wipe away her tears, kiss her until she forgave him, feed her until her curves returned, and …

His thoughts trailed away when he noticed that her black hoodie was wet just beneath where her arms were wrapped around her stomach. It wasn’t raining out and she was wet only in that one place.

Blood.

His Lani was hurt.

Before he could demand answers, once again her eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed.