TIMELESS 14

Chapter 1

Jake threw back his head, howling out his misery in his apartment. Sam had just told him that she had cheated on him with someone else.

To Jake, the pain was so intense, so absolute, he thought he might die from it. He wanted to die from it.

Death would be preferable to the agony he was feeling now. He felt as if someone had ripped his heart out. Someone had. Sam. The woman he loved. The woman he thought had loved him. The woman he wasn't sure he would be able to live without. He was about to find out if he could.

Finally, he had no more tears to shed. He was spent. He sobbed out his grief silently. He wanted to scream, but there was no sound. He had nothing left.

Then the chills came.

Jake crawled to his bed on his hands and knees, sobbing silently and collapsed. He curled into the fetal position, shaking and shuddering through the night.

He was ice cold but he didn't put the blanket over him. Jake knew that it wouldn't work. That wasn't why he was cold. He was cold because he was sure he was dead.

Something inside of him had died this night.

Jake had been in pain before. He had been savaged by a horse. He had broken his thigh bone. Neither of those things compared to what he was feeling now.

He knew he would heal from those things.

He knew he would never heal from this.

Jake was broken. Totally broken. His heart, his spirit and his will had been broken by the woman he loved more than his own life. Sam. Beautiful, loving Sam who had betrayed him as no one else had ever done.

She had betrayed his soul. Not just his love. Not just his heart. Not just bodily. She had destroyed his soul.

She had destroyed him.

Please let me be dead and none of this had happened.

Jake sobbed anew. He knew it had not been a dream. He knew he wasn't dead. Not really.

For an instant, he thought about his death. Did he want to live without the woman he had called the love of his life? No, he didn't. Jake wasn't sure if he knew how to live without her.

Then his survival mode kicked in. He had gotten through devastation before. He had survived it when Sam had been sent away.

He choked on a sob. This was worse than that. Sam wouldn't be coming back. She had betrayed him.

She had betrayed him on his birthday!

Somehow, he had to go on without her. It would be difficult, he knew. She had wrapped herself around his heart so easily, so efficiently fifteen years ago when they had met.

She had destroyed him in a matter of minutes. She had destroyed everything they had, everything they had shared, everything they had planned, everything they were in a matter of minutes.

Jake rolled onto his stomach, letting the pillow stifle the scream welling up inside of him. He screamed in pain. Pain in the heart, pain in his brain, pain from exorcising the woman he had wanted to spend the rest of his life with from his soul, from his heart and lastly from his head.

The pain, the misery, the anguish was unbearable.