Almost Forgotten

Prologue: Don't Forget Me

When the night was full of terror and your eyes were filled with tears...

Rain was always a bad omen in my line of work. It must have been fate for me to learn it on a day like this.

It's a steel roof above our heads, guarding us from the pattering noise of wet drops. The slabs in front of it are barely managing to hold it off from the windows as the silence occupied the room.

The parking lot was crowded with dark and tinted cars possessing a mixture of colored light on top of it all. If my calculations were right, there are about a dozen official agents and a large SWAT team ready to burst down these doors.

"Will you say anything?"

My words are tired. Tired of life. Tired from all the lies I trusted only because they were spoken by the man I love.

The enemy I love.

Loved?

Never before has the truth felt more wrong than now as scared eyes are falling apart in my sight. The revelation seems to be breaking his facade faster than he managed to pull mine down. Which I admit is impressive considering how foolish I have been by putting my guard down so easily for him.

I have dealt with betrayal before, it comes easily in this line of jobs. Yet it never comes the same and it never hurts the same amount. Although I don't think it could hurt this much ever again.

I suppose that was his plan all along.

Break my family, crush my job and shatter my heart.

He did a fine job with each one of these tasks.

How could you do this, Miles Nelson?

There was never much of a heart behind my ribs, but whatever rested there it was his. His to hold, his to guard, his to break.

And he has done it too well.

"There is nothing to be said."

It's truly humiliating. Shameful. Unforgivable even, but from my side, as I have no issue segregating his apathetic tone of sweet voice through the sound of sirens.

They are almost here, clanging over the stairs of the motel stairs is louder than they think, especially with the pouring rain. Curtains are transparent, letting the all so familiar rays of blue and red wash away the person I thought I knew.

His real face is clear to me this second.

It's still the same sea of allurement and shore of grace that I have yearned for while diving deeper into his trap.

It was my fault really. I should have seen this coming from distant miles away.

"Nothing?" When I take a step forward, he is retreating back three steps as if my proximity might burn him.

He is biting his lip and shaking head when I ask. "Two years of lies and now nothing?"

He pulls back, looking at me with so much hidden horror in his eyes as if I have done this. As if I could put my hands on him with anything but tender touches and loving intention.

I don't understand this. The worst of it all is that I can't ask my men for answers then pay them down for good work. Because no book, no modern technology or written papers amongst people's whispers can tell me this.

Why does it hurt so much?

"Landon Thorne." wicked shout, following with fist on the door doesn't make either of us flinch. We have been waiting for it after all. One of us a long while before the other. "Open the door and surrender. There is nowhere to run now."

Nowhere to run.

If I have wanted to run, the chance would present itself for me in these last hours. I didn't want to run. I wanted answers and truth.

Now I have it.

"Don't fight them." he speaks over them. After the third shout of orders and the lack of my response I hear them shuffling around outside as I stare at hazel eyes.

I can't point it out at this moment. Is he ordering me? Or asking? Or even better, is he begging me to comply and come with them peacefully?

I know it's the last one, which is why I feel a wave of anger in my chest when I laugh at that. Not angry enough though. When I hear wood cracking, parts of it clasping on the floor around us when the men dressed in thick and protected fabric of boiler suits, surround us.

Surround me.

He stands there, arms crossed as the guns stay harsly throbbing on my head when they push my body down on knees. My head never dips down, still keeping my gaze on him even when I feel metal over my roughly cuffed wrists.

Then I am being pulled away from the room. When the last second hits the clock, the world is stolen from me. I am not talking about suited men in law taking away my job, wealth, freedom, but him.

When I thought he was completely removed from the reach of my arms, hidden from my eyes, gone from my life, the trail came. He was there, dressed in an expensive suit, surrounded by the same sort of people like him.

First time the judges gavel bounced on the wood was when she announced him in real life for the first time.

Winter Haden.

He talked of the months, year of lies so effortlessly. He didn't hold back, no lies about us were said as no wrong eye was batted at him. It's no wonder for this blackened system to be this dirty while the biggest liar of them all refused to look at me.

I never once moved my eyes from him.

The last time gavel was heard, words of my life sentence were listed and in that moment his eyes gazed at mine. I hope he could see the promise in them.

I will come back, Winter.