Free New Title 2 by K Larsen Page B

relationship with Dr. B had taught him to be careful when it came to government agencies and his learned distrust had been their saving grace in the end.
    ~ *** ~
    1994 - JULY
     
    Our studio flat is in the heart of Paris. Right under everyone’s noses—four weeks now. I exist. Sometimes it makes me laugh. I’m right here! I want to scream, shout it out. But I can’t. We are just three blocks from FogPharm. From Gabriel’s lab. From Monique. Obviously she hasn’t been in the news. Gabriel’s a smart man. He’s playing it smart right now . . . but everything has only just begun.
    ~ *** ~
    What torture those days had been. How hard it had been while she lay there unconscious. In serious condition, it had been hard to think past her in that room, to listen to anything more than the steady beep of her heart monitor. Matteo had burned both ends of the candle. Working still, playing the grief-stricken friend, keeping up appearances and listening diligently for any clues Gabriel might emit that would aid him in keeping Celeste safe. His heart had constricted with pain each time he and Celeste sat and watched the news. At her face, her horror, as she had listened and watched her insidious husband spew lies to reporters, to her parents. It had been the only way though. He couldn’t shelter her from the situation. If they were going to survive, and more importantly move on, she had to face it head on.
    ~ *** ~
    1994 - JULY
     
    My heart is a lesion. A rotting organ. An open wound. I’m angry still. Furious really. That fury, it’s a seed, small and inconsequential but I can feel it has taken root. It’s growing. It makes me wonder what it will look like tomorrow, the day after. The knife in my heart seems to plunge deeper and deeper.
    I have trouble sleeping, and it’s not just the pain now, it’s the nightmares. My nightmares are frequent. Most always the same. Pixelated at first. Gabriel coming for me. When he reaches me, I can’t scream. I try—I suck the air into my lungs and I propel it out—but there’s no sound, just a rasping. Sometimes, in my nightmares, I find myself smiling up at him. Pleading with my eyes for him to see the hurt that I harbor. To see what he caused. To see the state I’m in. To feel something about it. Something that will cause him anguish.
    Matteo sits night after night in a ridiculous yellow armchair at the foot of my bed. The tubes prevent him from sleeping in the bed with me. I’ve told him to go home so many times it’s become a joke. Dressings need to be changed. Drainage bags emptied. He refuses to make me spend a night alone. He is the light in my darkness. My sanity. I feel like I’m going mad trying to make sense of my life. Trying to look back and decipher what were truths and what weren’t. There is no greater agony, nothing more tormenting than not knowing, which for me, will never stop. I will never know the extent of Gabriel’s betrayal. I will never know if any of our moments together were pure. They could have all been a lie, and it’s likely they were.
    I’m so cold inside. Gabriel’s betrayal cut me down to the bone. I imagine him dancing all over my soul in my grainy dreams. Last night there was a thunder storm filled with cracks of thunder, a surge of lightning. I jackknifed upright. I gritted my teeth against the pain in my ribs. Matteo leapt from his seat. Rubbed my back. Whispered I’m safe. It was a dream. Something important had happened in my dream. I kept trying to hold on, but the more I tried, the further it disappeared. When I finally closed my eyes again, my head was filled with images of vicious deception. With the things I wanted, the things I thought I had and the lies they all turned out to be. What a joke.
    I would never tell Teo, but I like the smell of his cigarette smoke. I used to have one with him, when we were young and out drinking now and again. It’s arousing to me, that smell; it reminds me of him only. He’s cut himself shaving