“Where am I?” Cherry’s voice echoed in the darkness. She pivoted around in her white nightgown, anxiety swirling behind the hopeful look in her eyes as she kept stealing glances over her shoulders. A searing gaze actively searching for a way out. Feeling the wetness under her barefoot soles as she did that, creating ripples underneath them that formed the only source of light. Aimlessly her feet carried her around. Minutes passed her steps quickened. More minutes passed her legs were racing around, beads of sweat forming on her pale skin as she pumped her arms while glancing helplessly around, feeling the pulse in her veins loud and clear.

“Is anyone there!?” she screamed, only to have her own voice scream the same question back.

“Anyone!?”

Nothing. Fear was creeping up on her, turning her immobile, and she found it hard to breathe.

“Brandon!?” And then smoke billowed in her face, earning a coughing fit from her. Her eyes singed, her throat heaved, and her hand flourished in the air in an attempt to disperse the smoke away.

When she did, she found herself out in the dark in the night. Chorus of stars overshadowed by the blaze of fire coming from a car. A vehicle tattered beyond saving, sheltering an unconscious figure from the harsh rain.

Haltingly, Cherry closed the distance between her and the unknown figure.

“What?” Her heart thrummed with a strength that could pulverize her ribcage once she recognized that the unconscious person was herself behind the stirring wheel.

Were these her memories of the accident? She inquired herself, drawing back her bottom lip between her teeth as she noticed the blood dripping off the edge of the seat.

“What happened to you?” She muttered to the her sitting on the other side of the broken window. The her half dead to the world. The her who was about to let the bud of life in her belly whither away- again.

“Hey.”

Startled, Cherry swiftly whipped around on her heels. Her eyes subtly narrowed at the child. A young pigtailed girl wearing a pink frilly dress, chubby arms folded in front of her chest as her nose scrunched up impatiently at Cherry, her lips pressed into a thin line.

Though young, the child in front of her was diffidently her. Pompous but her. The child stood a foot away from Cherry, but one blink from Cherry was enough for the child to suddenly materialize in front of her. Face to face, the small legs hovering above the ground as those stubby fingers held Cherry by her collar, pulling her impossibly closer. Sneering at her,

“Wake up.”

Gasping, Cherry jackknifed into a sitting position. Her eyes scanning frantically the room unknown to her, dimly lit by the beams of sunlight leaking through the cracks of the darkened curtains. With the way her breathing sounded harsh, one would think that she had sprinted a mile. She had to remind herself to take three big gulps of air before her heart stopped overriding its limit and pushing her to an early grave.

“A dream?” She breathed to herself, assessing her surroundings and realizing where she was before heaving a sigh of relief and falling back against the soft mattress, having the back of her hand rest against her clammy forehead.

“Of course it was a dream.” She stared at the ceiling, still half in a daze, before her eyes traveled down her body. Noticing that she was wearing a gold-pink silky pyjama that she didn’t remember ever putting on. On that note, when did she ever go to bed?

Her expression went from puzzled to aghast to crimson in a matter of second as she recounted what happened last night. Brandon giving her a bath and her ending up falling asleep in it. Cherry knew that two plus two equals four and therefore knew that her nodding off in the bathtub was automatically resigning to her fate of Brandon having to carry her out and dressing her up.

Meaning that he saw her naked- fucking naked.

“Argh!” Cherry flipped herself over, pulling the duvet over her head. Her embarrassment took form in a raucous scream that got muffled by her pillow.

“Kill me.” She whined, wishing for the bed to cave in and end her life.

Granted, Brandon must have seen here body tons of times since they are married, but she, a person with a gap in her memories couldn’t even conjure images in her mind where their hands twisted in the sheets under the moonlight, where her hands meandered around his body memorizing the outline of his muscles, or her voice that would sigh out his name laboriously.

Those thoughts alone would summon the rouge tint on her cheeks. How could she retain a straight face facing him, knowing that he saw her birthday suit?

“Forget it, I’m going to stay here for the rest of the day-”

Her stomach showed its protest by growling and she clamped her mouth shut, feeling the flush creeping up her face. She pushed the blanket away and swung her good leg first before hooking her hands under the thigh of the encased leg and dragging it over the edge of the bed. Using her hands, she gave her cheeks a few taps to shake her out of her thoughts.

“Just don’t think about it and you’ll be fine.” She told herself, a meek encouragement. From the corner of her eyes she caught a glimpse of the red numbers displayed on the alarm clock, her eyes turning wide at the glaring 07:00 a.m. Her eyes then shifted to the world outside the window where the sun was kissing the horizon, blessing the trees around the house with a golden glow.

Was she always an early bird or was today an exception because of that dream? She wondered to herself.

“Speaking of early birds.” She spoke as she looked over her shoulder at the other side of the bed and when her hand run over the spot she met the cold sheets, void of any warmth. Lacking any signs that Brandon had spent the night next to her.

Or he has been up for hours or he slept somewhere else. She deduced, grimacing as she bit on her lower lip as she felt a tightness in her chest. Though feeling thankful for Brandon being considerate of her state, she never wanted him to walk on eggshells around her. He should just act like himself around her, maybe take it slow, but still do the usual. That’s what the doctor advised them to do, after all.

“I will talk to him about it today.” She muttered to herself before grabbing her crutches standing perched against the wall next to the bed and hopping off to the bathroom- or at least she assumed she was on the way there. She really needs to take a proper look around the house, she noted to herself.

While Cherry was freshening herself up, Brandon was just done prepping the table for breakfast when his phone went off. Looking at who it was, his mouth curved up, clearing his throat before picking up the phone with a voice dipped in honey.

“How is my favorite mother-in-law doing?”

“I’m your only mother-in-law.” Briana snorts at his honed skill of picking the right words that tickled her heart and putting an unwilling smile on her face.

“And that’s why you’re my favorite. To what do I owe this call?” Though he didn’t need to ask. He already expected for his in-laws to call in when he had told them yesterday that Cherry and him would go on a small vacation, using the excuse of him wanting to get Cherry become more acclimated to him before she settled back in her normal daily routine.

“We just wanted to check in and see how Cherry was doing. We wanted to call her directly, but remembered that her phone got busted during the accident.”

There was a small enigmatic rise at the corner of Brandon’s mouth. “She’s still asleep, mother Briana. I hope your stay at our house has been comfortable?”

“It has. We just miss you both a lot.”

“And we miss you.” Brandon answered with the same vigor, but it didn’t match the dullness in his eyes as he gazed heavenwards. Pacing idly back and forth in the kitchen, praying silently to himself that the woman would hang up already so that he could wake Cherry up.

Huffs mixed with taps of the tip of the crutches meeting the floor slowly but surely demanded his attention. The rhythm turning prominent by the second, rebounding off the walls and cutting into Brandon’s conversation. Stalling the words that he was going to say next as he gave a sidelong look, catching a glance of Cherry’s shadow looming on the floor peaking from out of the hall.

“Brandon?” His thoughts got pulled back to the voice from the other line, but his side-long gaze was strained on the hall.

Keeping up the preppy tone that hid the alertness in his eyes he paraphrased his words. “It saddens me to end our conversation, but work is trying to reach me. I will tell Cherry to call you back. Don’t worry mother Briana”

“I told you to call him later. Who even calls someone this early in the morning?” Richard interjected, berating his wife over the line only to be hushed back into the silence by Briana. “Yes, yes, you were right, now get off my back old man.” She grumbled petulantly under her breath before her voice took a brighter turn when speaking to Brandon. “I’m sorry for taking up your time, dear. Pass our greetings to our daughter and we will speak soon.” They said their goodbyes and as if timed the hopping and scratching stopped, Brandon turned around and saw Cherry standing at the opening.

He watched, searched, waited for the awareness to settle in those pure eyes of light. For them to shift to the frosty night sky. To see her falter and take a frightened step back, but instead she gave him the barest incline of her head, a soft curl on her lips as she crooked her brows at him, questioning why he was trying to bore a hole in her face.

The pressure on his chest lifted on receiving the confirmation that her memories was still bare and he knew that this was going to become a habit- a ritual. Him waiting every morning with a bated breath until she would unbidden him with words induced with sleep.

“What?”

He offered her a lopsided smile, feeling the lightness returning in his limbs as he approached her with a confident gait. Refusing to avert his gaze from the eyes puffed from hours of crying. 

“How are you feeling?”

“Ask me again after having a clear look at my face.” She grumbled as she pointed at her face. Her eyes were so swollen that she was watching him through squinted eyes.

Brandon chuckled, standing now in front of her. He clasped his hands around her cheeks. “That’s strange,” He mused with a teasing grin. “I only see unprecedented beauty.”

“Ha. Ha.” She laughed soullessly like a robot as she rolled her eyes at him, earning another laugh from Brandon as he descended to place his lips on her forehead, but inches away from dropping the kiss he stopped. Realizing that what he was doing must be uncomfortable for Cherry. He cursed inwardly at his kissing habit that was hard to break.

He closed his eyes, afraid to see the disdain in Cherry’s eyes as he untangled her from his confine. But before he could do that Cherry placed her hands around his, keeping his hands on her cheeks, ignoring the crutches that clattered against the floor.

“Do it.”

“What?”

TheGhostWriter

Hi all,

I finally came up with an uploading schedule that works for me. I’ll be uploading from now on every Monday and Friday. Upload time is undecided but I’ll try to upload it around 12:00AM.