Chapter 23

I'm sorry for not updating these past few days. My brother got married this weekend, and I didn't find the time to write. I'll do my best to resume my schedule of posting every other day again from now on.

Once again, thank you for reading and commenting!

It took me a while to realise that the jolting movements, the rapid breathing, and the grunts I was hearing weren't a part of my dream. Drowsily, I came to and squinted my eyes open, orienting myself and trying to make sense of the noises. In the exact moment I turned my head towards Jay, I saw him shoot up in bed. Panting heavily, he sat next to me hunched over and lowered his elbows to rest on his legs.

"Jay?" I asked carefully and propped myself up onto my elbows. My voice came out croaky.

His head angled towards the sound of my voice slightly, but that was the only reaction I got. He wasn't fully present yet as he was coming down from the nightmare he'd had.

"Are you alright?" I whispered and crawled out from underneath the covers towards him.

Gingerly, I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. Jay flinched but didn't move away from my touch.

He sucked in a ragged breath. "The boy... He bled out under my car. His eyes are dead, staring at me. There is so much blood everywhere, all over my hands," he sobbed, staring down at his clean hands.

Hearing the distress in his voice made my eyes well up.

"The little girl I killed, I keep seeing her face too, I-" A sob choked off his voice.

"Shhh, Jay, you had a nightmare," I whispered with a lump in my throat. "Just breathe. It was a nightmare."

My heart was pounding in my chest. I didn't know what little girl he was talking about. Was she real or just a figment of his dream?

He hid his face in his shaking hands and his entire body was heaving with his accelerated breathing.

Since my words had no effect on him, I moved to kneel in front of him and ran my hands up and down his arms in soothing circles, trying to calm him down with my touch instead.

Beads of sweat glistened on his bare chest and face. He rubbed his hand over his face hastily to wipe away a few stray tears and let his head hang to hide his face from me. As he fought to get his breathing under control, a tear escaped my eye and rolled down my cheek. It pained me to see him like this.

While I sat there in front of him, I kept wondering what he'd meant when he'd said he'd killed a girl, but if he didn't bring it up himself, I wouldn't ask.

A few minutes passed until he lifted his head and stared back at me with sorrowful eyes swimming with tears. Immediately, my eyes teared up again too, and I grabbed his face between my hands and placed a kiss on his cheek.

"It's okay, the boy is alive and doing alright," I murmured.

He looked down at his hands. "I know, Hailey," he whispered, "but in my dreams he's not."

I watched him struggle, and my insides twisted at the sight. He glanced at me briefly, then tilted his head up to the ceiling to keep more tears from falling.

"Three years ago, we came under fire," he began in a quiet voice with his eyes fixated on a spot in the room behind me. "I fired off one shot. The bullet went through the offender and a door and hit a little girl playing in an illegal daycare we didn't know about. She died later at the hospital."

When his voice broke at the last part, my bottom lip quivered and another tear ran down my cheek.

"I struggled a lot with it after it happened. Through the years, I learned to deal and live with the guilt, but the accident with the boy brought it all back. Every time I close my eyes, I see their faces, their parent's faces, the pain in their eyes. I wake up from the dreams and feel like I'm going to throw up from the excruciating guilt."

He looked at me with a scared and vulnerable expression on his face, and his eyes bore into mine searching for help. It pained me that I didn't know how to give him the relief he needed. If I could have magically channelled his pain into me to lessen his suffering, I would have done so in a heartbeat. But I couldn't. So I did the only thing I could do. Cautiously, I crawled onto his lap and pulled him into a tight hug.

"I'm sorry," I whispered as I stroked my hands up and down his back. "I'm so sorry that happened."

He expelled a shaky breath and wrapped his arms around me firmly, burying his face in the crook of my neck. I continued tracing random patterns on his skin with my fingertips and gently rocked us back and forth.

I don't know how long we stayed that way. He clung to me desperately, and I gave him all the time he needed until his breathing had slowed, the sobs had ebbed down, and he'd regained his composure. When he was ready, he loosened his dire hold on me and lay back, pulling me down next to him. I intertwined my legs with his and hugged my chest against his, listening to his strong and now steady heartbeat. I carried on caressing his back until his even breathing let me know that he'd fallen back asleep.

Throughout the rest of the night, I made sure to stay as close to him as possible and did my best to sleep with one eye open in case the nightmares returned, but he didn't stir again until the morning.

I had set my alarm for 8 am because I wanted to be at the restaurant by 10 am, but I woke when I sensed movement in the room. I blinked my eyes open and saw Jay, already fully dressed, rummaging around in his wardrobe. He pulled out a brown denim jacket and put it on. When he closed the wardrobe and turned around, he caught me looking at him.

A smile crept onto his face. "Hey," he said in a hushed tone, "I'm heading to work."

I rolled over in bed and pressed the power button on my phone to see what time it was. "At 6:50 am?" I asked, bewildered.

"Yeah, I want to get an early start," he explained. "Stay however long you'd like. I'm afraid I don't have any food in my fridge though. I've left a key for you to lock up with on the counter, you can just keep it."

I raised an eyebrow. "So we have reached the key exchanging stage of our relationship?" I mused with a tired grin.

"Looks like it," Jay acknowledged as the corner of his mouth quirked up.

He walked over to my side of the bed, placed his hands on either side of my head, and lowered himself down leave a soft kiss on my lips. He lingered for a few seconds, then pulled back.

"Good luck with your accounting lessons," he said over his shoulder as he left the room.

"Thanks," I called after him and buried my head under the blanket to get that extra hour of sleep before I had to get up and go to work too.

I arrived at the restaurant shortly before 10 am after stopping by my place. I had planned on doing the books for an hour before Zoe arrived and we would start the lessons for the day. But when I walked into my office, I was surprised to find Zoe sitting at my desk, working on the computer.

"What are you doing here so early?" I asked as I placed my bag on a chair.

"I woke up briefly at 4 am, and when I checked the time, I saw that I had received a message from Kevin." A shy smile played on her lips. "That got me so excited that I couldn't go back to sleep again, and I decided to come in early. I've done the books for the last few days. You can check if I did it correctly."

"Oh wow, thank you! I'll have a look in a minute," I told her and took a seat in front of my desk and watched her expectantly.

"What?" she blushed.

"Did you reply yet?" I grinned.

Her smile widened, "Yeah, we've been texting back and forth all morning. You gave him my number?"

"Yeah, he called Jay last night to ask for it. I assumed you'd be alright with it."

"Of course I am, thank you," she said bashfully. "I really like him, Hailey."

The corner of my mouth turned up. "Are you going to meet up with him?"

"I don't know. We haven't talked about it yet. But I hope so."

"Well, don't dance around it. It's obvious that both of you want to," I advised and saw her nod. "Now let me see what you did here," I said and moved behind my desk to have a look at the screen.

She got up from my office chair and stood next to me as I sat down and scanned over the numbers.

Her phone buzzed in her hand, and I glanced up at her to see her face light up.

"Kevin?" I asked.

She beamed and nodded and started typing on a reply. I watched her for a moment longer, taking pleasure in her excitement, before returning my attention to the screen.

I checked some calculations on the calculator and found only one minor mistake in her work, which she easily understood once I'd explained it to her.

"Well done, Zoe," I praised her when I'd finished printing out the tables and had filed them away. "You really did pick all of this up very quickly."

She smiled proudly.

"Should we start our lesson then?" I asked and gathered up a few folders, notepads and pens.

She nodded and went to get my mother from the kitchen while I set up at a table by a window in the dining room. The two of them sat across from me, and I got started on the first point on that day's agenda.

An hour later, as the first customers had started trickling in, we'd made good progress.

Susanna, the waitress working the early shift, brought us a tray with a jug of water and some glasses as well as a few snacks. We thanked her, and she was about to turn and leave when something outside of the window caught her attention.

"Dios mío," she mumbled under her breath as her brow furrowed.

I followed her gaze to see what she was looking at. The sun shone in brightly through the window and it took me a while to find him, but then my eyes landed on Elias standing in the shadows between two buildings on the other side of the street, looking over at the restaurant.

"Oh, that little..." Zoe growled as she started rising from her chair. "I'll go have a chat with him."

The sweet, love-struck Zoe from earlier had been replaced by a lioness.

"No, it's okay. I'll go," I told her, holding my hand out and got up while my mum gently tugged on Zoe's shirt to get her to sit down again.

Zoe obeyed my wishes and let herself fall back down onto her chair, but her eyes followed me closely as I headed to the entrance and walked out onto the street.

When Elias saw me walk out of the restaurant, his eyes widened, alarmed, and he shuffled on the spot, deciding if he should stay or run. He settled on staying and took a few steps out of the shadows towards me onto the pavement as I crossed the street, avoiding traffic.

When I got closer, I saw how quickly he was breathing and that his shirt clung to his body, damp with sweat.

"Hey, Elias," I said and came to a stop in front of him, squinting my eyes as the sun shone onto my face.

He looked at his feet and nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other a few times before answering. "Hailey, I don't know where to begin, how to explain what happened," he stammered.

"I know what happened. I was there when they interrogated you," I told him bluntly. When he furrowed his brow in confusion, I added, "Behind the mirror. I know Intelligence. They let me watch, and I heard everything you told the police. I know what happened."

"Oh, okay," he said and took a moment to mull over what that meant. "You know how and why everything happened, but you don't know how terribly sorry I am. I still can't believe how stupid I was. I feel so guilty about what I put you through."

I wasn't sure how to react. I hadn't thought about what I would say or do if I saw Elias again. He had stabbed me in the back, and I felt betrayed, but now that I was looking at him standing before me, all I could see was the young boy with whom I'd had broom fights in the kitchen, the kid who had brought a smile to my face thousands of times. His actions that had put my life and safety in jeopardy had been naïve and foolish but not malicious.

"I'm okay, Elias. No permanent harm done," I simply stated.

Bafflement flashed over his young, round face. He hadn't expected this reply from me and didn't know if I meant what I'd said.

"Why didn't you show up to your shifts?" I asked when he didn't say anything.

"I'm not fired? I was convinced that you and your parents wouldn't want to ever see me again after what happened," he spluttered. "I feel so guilty that after everything you and your parents have done for me, this is how I repaid you. I knew I had to come by to at least apologise to you, but I hadn't mustered up enough courage until now."

"Starting next week, I won't be working here anymore, so it's up to my parents to decide if you still have a job here or not," I shrugged.

"Oh right, you're going to be a badass police lady soon," he said with a momentary smile, and I caught a glimpse at the old, cheerful Elias.

"That's right," I affirmed.

"I wish you all the best with that," he said earnestly. "I'll call your dad soon to hear his take on my position at the restaurant."

"Do that. I'll tell him you stopped by and apologised."

"Thank you, Hailey. You're the best person I know," he acknowledged and reached his hand out so we could do our secret handshake that we've had for years.

"Don't let your grandma hear you say that," I warned him as I turned and looked out for cars before I crossed the road and returned to the restaurant.

I glanced back one more time before I went inside, and he was still standing where I'd left him watching me.

It felt good to have heard an apology and resolved the situation with Elias. A weight had lifted off my heart that I hadn't even realised had been there, and I felt like I could finally move on and leave the incident behind me once and for all.