Here's the next chapter.
Enjoy!
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Chapter Three: Bargaining
Hodgins, I'm sorry.
I should have trusted you and I should have done more to make you trust me. I shouldn't have kissed Grayson. I know I said it was just a goodbye kiss, which it was, but that still doesn't make it okay. I know you have every reason to never trust me again, but I just need to say that I'm sorry. Pleas, can't we just forget it all happened and go back to how we were before Grayson showed up at the Jeffersonian? Back when all I wanted was to spend my days as your wife, making love for hours on end, not a care in the world. When being completely and totally in love with you didn't hurt so much. When I could come into work and not have to spend the entire day avoiding being in the same room as you.
Even if we don't forget about this whole mess and just work through it. I don't care because I still want all the same things I did a month ago. I probably want them more now, knowing what it feels like to not have any part of you at all. I just want to ask you for a chance. If you don't want to give me one, then don't feel obliged to. I made my choice, and it's my fault, not yours, that I now want to change it. At least think about it. Please. Once again, I'm sorry.
You'll always have my love, Angela xoxo
Folding the paper neatly, Angela placed it in an envelope and licked the seal closed. Quickly scrawling the familiar address on the front, and fixing on a stamp, she put it inside her handbag for her to post later that day.
It had become too much. The churn in her gut every time she saw him. The ache in her heart when little things painfully reminded her of moments she'd had with him. She wanted to be able to just walk up to him and wrap her arms around his waist or just kiss him, and for no one to think twice about it.
She wanted him back.
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All week Angela had been a nervous-wreck. Every time she saw Hodgins walk near her, she worried that he was coming to confront her about the letter he had received in the mail.
Little did she know, that the postman who picked up her letter, along with hundreds of others, was involved in a car accident on his way back to the factory where all the mail got sorted. His van had collided with a Ford V8 and all the letters he had on him perished in the fire that had very near ended the postman's life.
That letter would never reach Jack Hodgins; who would never know what he was seemingly passing up.
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He had been sitting in the same spot for exactly two hours, nineteen minutes and eleven seconds. The majority of which he spent with his eyes glued to the phone on the wall. Should he? Shouldn't he?
Maybe he shouldn't. It was obvious that she wanted to move on. She hadn't spoken to him at all since the break up. She'd been acting so awkward around him, the past week especially. Maybe that meant she had already forgotten him. Already moved on.
Or maybe he should. If she was truly over him, she'd be comfortable around him, able to have a conversation with him; which she couldn't. He should. He definitely should. He would. He couldn't do nothing. Just sitting there is one of the things that lead to all of the what if's? He didn't want to live life always wondering if they could have had another chance.
Pressing speed dial, Hodgins raised his shaking hand to his ear. The phone rang, and rang, and rang, until her voicemail picked up:
Hi, you've reached Angela. Please just leave a message and I'll get back to you.
"H-Hey, Angie. It's Jack...uh...it's Hodgins. I would've preferred to actually speak to you, but if I don't do this now, I'll lose my nerve. I'm so sorry. God, I feel like such an idiot letting you go. Because now, all I want is to have you back. I know I need to trust you, which I do. I'm an angry man, and having Grayson come to the Jeffersonian pissed me off. You're beautiful, so damn beautiful, and having a man twice the size of me pining after you was not something I liked. He made me feel so small and unworthy in comparison to you," Hodgins sighed, taking a deep breath before he continued, "it's been weeks, so I know there's a chance that this really is permanent and that you're moving on as I leave this message. I get that. But I can't do that. I can't move on from the best thing that's ever happened to me knowing that we didn't finish what we started. So please, just call me back when you get this, so we can talk. So I can tell you how much I love you and how much I want you back in my arms. I miss you, Angie. I miss you and I want you back. Please, just think about it. I love you. Bye."
Replacing the phone in the receiver, Jack couldn't tell whether he was relieved, pr if he was more anxious than he was before.
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Hodgins had hardly slept that night. Or the three nights after that. Angela had not shown any sign that she had listened to his message; maybe she was trying not to. He had half expected to have come in the morning after he called her and have her jump into his arms, forgiving him for being so stupid. She didn't. She acted exactly the same.
It got to the point where not knowing was doing his head in. It got to the point where he just had to ask.
"Angela?" Jack asked nervously from her office doorway.
Looking up in shock, she replied, "yeah?"
Clearing his throat to break some of the silence, he asked, "I was just wondering if you got the message I left you on Sunday night?"
"Oh, my phone is broken. Something about the battery, or maybe it was the memory. But, yeah, I won't be able to get it. Was it anything important?"
"No, nothing important," Hodgins lied straight through his teeth. "Just something about the case, which I figured out anyway."
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Please review and let me know what you thought.
Em xXxXxxx
