Chapter 9
Elani
What do I say when this man has said it all for me? I couldn’t stop looking at him as I ran my fingers through his hair. I watched as he rested his head on my stomach. He looked so at peace with his eyes shut. I wanted him to feel my fingers breezing through his hair even in his dreams. I heard him groaning, then his face twisted in agony as if he was feeling some sort of pain that held him back. I paused my fingers as I heard him. The first sob didn’t seem real to me, but then I heard the second one. That one tugged at my soul.
It didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t understand why Ales was sobbing in his dreams.
“Alana…” He finally cried out and broke into uncontrollable sobs. Those made me tear up in a matter of seconds.
I sat up and tried to wake him up.
“Ales…Ales? Baby, please wake up,” I begged him.
My voice must’ve triggered something because he cried louder. That ripped my soul apart. I had never heard or seen him cry, but he was suffering, and I didn’t know how to wake him up from whatever was torturing him.
I moved his head completely off me, and I sat up on my knees. I needed him to wake up because he was making me sob too. His pain became my pain as I called out to him through the tears.
“Ales… Baby, Baby, please wake up.” I couldn’t stop the tears that flowed out of my eyes. I felt the pain he went through as he sobbed. His cries were not of physical pain but of internal pain.
I knew that pain. I cried the same way when I lost him. I started to lightly shake him awake. I couldn’t bear to see him like this anymore. I needed him to look at me and know I was there for him.
“Achilles!” I screamed out.
With a gasp, his eyes finally opened.
Ales opened his eyes and looked right into mine. My sobs became hysterical in his confused state. He looked at me as if I were a ghost from his past.
I couldn’t help it as I reached out and touched his cheek. Even through my tears, I knew where to go.
“Baby…” I whispered through the hysteria. “Please don’t cry. Please, you’re breaking my heart. I can’t take that kind of pain,” I begged him.
Ales reached out and caressed my cheek. He looked at me for a minute. For that entire minute, he was silent as he studied my face. He looked at every single part of my face. I was glad I had ceased my hysterical crying. I watched him as he watched me. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he blinked, and I knew his moment of sobbing had passed. Whatever it was, he had let it go, as he looked into my eyes. He wiped my tears and pulled me into him. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck as I buried my face into the crook of his neck.
“Don’t cry, my love. Please don’t cry.” He begged me just as I had begged him.
“You scared me. You really did.” I confessed as he caressed my back.
“It will never happen again,” he replied nonchalantly.
I didn’t want to press the matter, but I still wanted to know what made him sob so painfully.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked him as I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair once more.
Ales was silent for a moment, and I thought he didn’t want to talk about it, but then he began.
“I have the same dream sometimes.” He sighed loudly. “At times, it plays out differently from the beginning, but the end is always the same. I dream of you when you were Alana. I dream of making love to you and watching you as you smiled up at me. Then, your face would turn sour as if someone was showing you a monster or something. Sometimes, I would bleed out of my eyes. Other times, you would be the one bleeding, but at the end, there was just so much blood. Blood shed everywhere and, no matter what I did, I could never get to you fast enough.”
Ales turned his face toward me and kissed my cheek. He tucked a loose hair behind my ear as he continued with his dream.
“I am never able to save you. Paris is always there to grab me by my heel and drag me back to my darkness. In that darkness, I see you die over and over. I watch as Cyril takes you and tortures you until you can no longer take it, then you pass away in pain, in agony. It breaks me even more when, at other times, Paris rapes you over and over, and I’m just an observer who is unable to defend you. Not able to kill Paris. I can’t take that kind of pain. The pain of losing you is much more than any other pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I don’t want that baby. I never did, and I never will.”