Chapter Thirty One

With only the flickering of the mute television lighting up the darkened bedroom, I am dozily watching it on Rhys's comfier than comfy bed.

It's nearly 10pm and although I have been worried sick, boredom and loneliness has me feeling terribly sorry for myself beneath the warm duvet. Just as I am contemplating falling asleep, I hear the front door open and then quietly close. I listen carefully for the sound of Rhys's footsteps, but there's nothing.

No footsteps.

No sounds of movement.

Nothing.

Slightly panicked, I call out. "Rhys, is that you?" Again, absolutely nothing. I listen harder, but still there is nothing. Panic soon turns to simmering terror.

Maybe someone else is in the house?

Someone who shouldn't be in the house?

My heartbeat races, nearly exploding with fear. With quiet care, I slip out of the bed and start tiptoeing across the bedroom floor with my chilled body tense and trembling. When I reach the doorway, I peep around it. I can't see or hear anyone and that scares me more than anything. If Rhys were home, he would be calling out or doing something in his home that would surely make some kind of noise, but there are no comforting noise or sounds to be heard from anywhere. Everything is just so frighteningly still and quiet. Convinced that it wasn't Rhys who had just opened and closed his front door, my thoughts are momentarily frozen with mind-numbing fear. I can't think straight. I don't know what to do. I even feel weak and dizzy, I am that bloody scared.

Do I hide?

Do I try to escape?

Do I lay in wait and maybe hit them with something?

Do I try to get back to the phone to call 911?

All four options make me more afraid than ever. So I remain rooted to the shadowed spot; terrified and trembling in the bedroom doorway until maybe I am struck with a far less scarier option. It is then that I finally hear something that scares me more than anything else; uncontrollable sobs of desolation.

My heavy legs and feet take me in the direction of what I sadly hear; gut-wrenching gasps of sorrow. In the darkness of the entrance area, I see a lonely figure sat on the stone floor who looks hunched up in pain with their back against the front door. As I nervously get closer, I realise that the lonely and despairing figure is Rhys. Running straight over, I kneel down beside him, speaking with the quietist voice that my fearful throat will allow. "Rhys, what's happened?" He doesn't even seem to notice my presence, my voice or my touch. He is too shattered and broken to notice what is going on around him. Clasping my desperate fingers around his, the ones that are wrapped tightly around his bent up knees, I try to reach him again. "Rhys? Please talk to me." My fingers gently squeeze and stroke his, trying to get him to feel my touch. His head remains buried in the gap between his legs and his chest, refusing to look at me. Unsure of what to do, I kneel up and just drape my whole body across him, trying to cuddle every part of his stricken body that mine can warmly reach. Rhys deeply sobs and I just hold him. I hold him lovingly tight. Saying absolutely nothing, I just keep on holding him. I will do so until the sun comes up, if necessary. Something terrible has happened, I know that. I also know that it's to do with Maci. But I won't ask again because Rhys is too broken to speak, to move or to stop crying. My knees and my back ache, but I won't let go. He needs me and I need to be here for him. Time doesn't matter when someone is hurting. It just stops ticking. It stops passing. It doesn't matter how long we remain like this on the floor, in the dark and in the sad abyss that Rhys is falling deeper into. As he keeps falling, I will just keep on holding.

**

With Rhys asleep in my lap and with my arms still cradling him, I wake with an awful ache to my limbs and deep down within my exhausted bones. Still sat on the cold floor, I wearily look down at Rhys. Although his eyes are closed and his breathing is calm and soft, his silent anguish is still visible upon his sleeping face. His eyes are puffy and raw with purple vessels on his closed lids and his skin is depressingly pale with creases of strain running across his forehead. I wish I could magic away all of his pain. I wish I had a spell that I could cast while he sleeps, so that when he wakes up, it would all be gone. I still don't know what has happened but in my aching bones, I feel it. Maci is either close to death or is dead. Something awful has happened and I can't do a damn thing about it. As I shift against the uncomfortable stone floor, Rhys suddenly clings to my waist. He's waking up and desperately clinging onto me. "It's okay, I'm here." I comfort him with a gentle whisper, assuring him like a traumatised child.

Rhys's breathing is no longer calm and soft, it's now deep and tormented. Not moving in my lap, his muffled voice soon penetrates the morning silence. "She's gone, Clara. She was found in some street like she was nothing." His cheek moves against the top of my leg, trying to maybe get a little more comfortable. "I'm trying so hard to remember Maci as the sister she used to be, but all of those memories are overshadowed by the addict she became." Clinging on tighter to me, his voice is quaking and overwhelmed with such sorrow. "Maci is gone. The baby is gone. That's it, they're gone." His jagged voice is anchored to desolate sorrow and numb with misery and heartbreaking confusion.

Bending down to embrace him, I tell him over and over. "I'm so sorry. So sorry. So truly sorry." From out of nowhere, my own emotions get the better of me. We are both crying as I rock him in my arms, trying to soothe his griping pain. Grief is shattering Rhys, which in turn shatters me. I feel helpless but know that I must square up to his growing grief. It can totally deconstruct a person, take them apart; bit by grieving bit. I know, because I faced it when my dad died. The next few weeks are going to be hard for Rhys and his mum, but I don't have a few weeks to help them through it. I should be leaving on Saturday and although Rhys had asked me to stay, that was before any of this happened. He is going to be so consumed with his grief and his pain, he won't have time to even think about us. Nor should he. He needs to have the time to mourn. He needs to go through the awful grieving process, for him to be able to come out on the other and less painful side. So I think in light of everything, I will ring Dex later on and explain. I think he will allow me to have an extra week out here, because of the sad circumstances. It's not ideal, but at least it will give me just a little more time with Rhys.

Wiping his teary eyes, Rhys depressingly sits up. "I need to go and shower." He's now trying to be brave, trying to find some strength from somewhere within him. "I need to see mom and speak to the police." He's slipping into autopilot. "There's so much to do." He then stands, looking numb and slightly lost. I know exactly what he is doing, he's trying to cushion the shock by keeping himself busy—I did the exact same thing when I lost my dad.

Achingly, I stand up as well. "Do you want anything to eat or drink?"

Rhys glumly shakes his head. "No, I just need a shower." Not even looking at me, he then turns to leave.

"Rhys?" I call out to him before he disappears from sight.

"Yeah?"

"None of this is your fault."

Rhys keeps looking ahead but not really at me as his guilt whitewashes his sorrow-soaked face. "I knew something was wrong, Clara...I should have done more."

With bare feet, they quickly march me towards him. Holding his heartbroken face firmly between my loving hands, I try to banish his guilt. "You have done everything that you could do, Rhys." I wish he would believe me. He did all he could to help Maci, often going against his own morals to do so. He did all that he did because he loved his sister and he wanted to make her better.

Closing his sad and tear-filled eyes, he tries to allow my words to reach him, but when he slowly opens them again, I know that they haven't. "I have to go." His despairing spheres miserably look away from me.

Forcing him to look in my desperate direction, my devoted hands move his depressed head up. "You don't have to do this alone. I'm calling Dex later on, to tell him that I'll be staying on an extra week." I quietly say, offering Rhys a small and comforting smile.

Cupping his hand around the back of my neck, he pulls me closer and lightly kisses my forehead. Saying absolutely nothing, Rhys then leaves me with a doubtful trace of a smile before going to have his shower. That doubtful smile of his leaves me so very confused.

Although the kiss on my forehead felt like a silent thank you, his parting sad smile was something else.

Does he not want me to stay an extra week?

Does he want to do this all alone?

I want to go and ask him, but know that I won't. He has just lost his sister, he's hurting too much. The last thing he needs is for me to start giving him the third degree over what he feels about me staying an extra week. In fact, I have so much to ask. I still don't know all that happened with Maci. I wish I could ask Rhys, but know that he's already starting to put up his defensive walls. He's numb with shock and riddled with guilt. He fell apart last night and now he's trying to put himself back together by being there for his mum and talking to the police. I wish I had Will's number, I bet he was with Rhys last night. Maybe I could call Cameron and get Will's number from him? Before even giving it a second thought, I am soon calling Cam.

"Hey, Clara." Cameron almost answered right away at the sight of my name popping up on his mobile phone screen. "Are you okay?" His question comes full of genuine concern.

"I'm okay." My reply comes with a heavy and anxious sigh, indicating that I'm not really okay even though I have said that I am.

"How is Rhys doing?" Cam asks, picking up on my anxiousness.

"He's a little lost and broken, Cam." My voice breaks under the strain of all that is painfully happening. Biting my lip, I try to not fall apart on the phone to Cameron. "He's just in the shower, he's getting ready to see his mum and the police." I shakily tell him.

Cam breathes heavily down the line, sounding agitated. "It's all such a mess. It won't be long until the media get hold of what's happened to Maci."

"Were you with Rhys last night?" I ask, wiping a stray few tears from my eyes. "Was Will?"

"The latter part of it, myself and Jules were. Will was with Rhys right from the start."

"Do you have his number? I'd really like to talk to him." My emotions are beginning to get more unstable by the second.

"I'll text it to you." Cameron kindly says. "Are you really okay, Clara?"

His sweet concern starts to unravel me. My voice is shakier and far more emotional. "I just need to know what happened, Cam. Rhys has only told me a little and I need to know the whole story in order to fully understand." My hurried reply carries so much desperation and a need to grasp all that Rhys is going through.

"There's not much to tell, Clara. Rhys had been trying to find her. He and Will were chasing up known contacts of Maci. They scoured the streets and old haunts of hers until the police finally found her. They think she's overdosed on something. They think she scored, got high down some side street behind a restaurant and overdosed there. One of the staff found her apparently, but Maci was already dead by the time the paramedics arrived."

With sadness squeezing tight on my heart, I quietly answer. "It's just so tragic, Cam." Now knowing all that I painfully need to know and with my emotions unable to be restrained any longer, I quickly need to get off the phone. "Listen, I need to go...thanks Cameron."

He is quick with his kind response. "Take care of Rhys, and yourself, okay?"

"I will, thanks again." Then I promptly hang up, feeling unbelievably sad for both Rhys and Carol.

"Why was you on the phone to Cameron?" In the bedroom doorway stands a confrontational Rhys with a towel wrapped around his waist and an angry expression wrapped tight around his face.

Startled by his hostile tone, I stutter out my nervous answer. "I..uh..I just, just needed to know what happened."

Taking intimidating strides across the bedroom floor, he glares down at me from where he stands beside the bed. "But why are you asking Cameron?"

Guiltily, I quietly reply with my heart hammering inside my chest. "Because you're upset." I can't look at him any longer, his glare is just too angry and too intense to try and appease.

"Damn right I'm upset! I've just lost my sister and my chance to be an uncle." He angrily removes his towel and throws it hard across the room, knocking a glass ornament from off a chest of drawers and causing it to fiercely smash on the floor.

Looking over my shoulder at the broken ornament, I solemnly stand and walk towards where all of the shattered shards now rest on the carpet. Carefully, I start picking up all of the bigger pieces with my heart still thundering hard. Rhys is not in control of his tumultuous feelings, they are in total control of him. So I don't react to his overreaction. "Leave it, Clara." He's telling me to leave the glass, but I can't just leave all of the dangerous shards just lying there, so I continue to keep picking them up. "Damn it, Clara! Leave it!" He's suddenly by my side, knocking the glass so aggressively out of my hand that a piece slices right into his open palm.

Looking at him in utter disbelief, I angrily argue back. "What the hell are you doing?" Then I notice his bleeding hand. "What were you thinking, Rhys?" Grabbing the damp towel from off the floor, I quickly wrap it around his bloody wound.

Rhys falls down to his knees in a numb trance. "I'm not thinking. It hurts to think." Is his morose and detached answer. Naked and emotionally threadbare, Rhys heartbreakingly falls apart before me. Knelt down in front of him, I envelope my consoling arms right around him as he loudly cries. Seeing someone like Rhys traumatically disintegrate right in front of me, breaks my heart in two. He's completely being overwhelmed by his grief and his guilt. It's devouring him whole, piece by guilt-ridden piece. All of his sadness, I could feel; it was permeating through his naked skin. Stroking his back and shushing away his despair, I try to emotionally reach him. "I love you so much, Rhys. I wish I could take away all that you are feeling. I called Cam because I wanted Will's number. I didn't want to ask you about Maci because I know how much you're hurting, right now." Holding him even tighter, I keep on assuring him with my love-ladened words. "I know that you're blaming yourself, but you shouldn't be. What happened to Maci is not your fault. Maci was broken inside the mind, body and soul. Her addiction is what killed her, not you."

Rhys slowly lifts his sorrow-filled eyes to look at me. "Do you know how much it hurts when you call Cam to ask about Maci?"

I'm quick with my apology, desperately quick. "I'm so sorry." I take hold of his unhurt hand, kissing his knuckles over and over again because I'm so very sorry. "I would never do anything to knowingly hurt you...you have to know that."

Lifting my downcast chin with his finger, Rhys whispers. "Then talk to me, Clara." He tries to bring a smile to his shaken mouth with great difficulty. "I love you, I love you so much. I know I'm not going to be easy to be around, but talk to me, not Cameron." His glassy eyes intently search mine, wanting me to understand how strongly he feels about this. "I just need to work through my feelings. I'm so torn at the moment. I swing from loving Maci to completely hating her. I knew that this day would one day come, I just knew it. Each time that Maci relapsed, a little more of my sister I lost. But when she got pregnant, I thought that might be the game changer. I stupidly thought she would change. Not for me, mom, or herself...but for her baby." His voice becomes jagged with overwhelming emotions. "But all Maci really cared about, was her next high." He lets go of my chin, needing to keep at bay all that he's sadly feeling by looking down at the floor for a few moments.

If he's wanting me to talk to only him about what is happening, then I shall. "When I said that I was going to ask Dex about staying on an extra week, you didn't seem too keen about it. If you'd rather I leave this Saturday, Rhys...please tell me now." I bravely and guiltily ask—brave because I am asking and guilty because of the timing of my asking.

Rhys fiercely grabs hold of me, clutching onto my body for dear life. "Of course I want you to stay, Clara. My only problem is that you want to leave at all."

His look of sad doubt suddenly becomes crystal clear. He wasn't giving me that look because he didn't want me here. He was giving me that look because he always wants me here. "I'm sorry, I'm getting everything wrong today, aren't I?"

Rhys's pulls away from me, his mouth slowly curling into a slight smile. "Under the circumstances, I think we're both entitled to get things a little wrong at the moment." His absorbing spheres keep watching me, still so sad with the tiniest trace of relief within them. "I'm glad that you're staying a little longer." He finally states, quietly so.

Giving him an affectionate smile, I again tell him truthfully what I am thinking. "I really am tempted to stay here with you, Rhys. I have fallen in love with you and I want to be with you, I really do. But I don't think we should rush things. With all that has happened with Maci, I just think there's now even less of a rush. You have so much on your plate and I need to properly think things through. If we both want to be together after having some time apart, then we can seriously talk about me permanently leaving London."

"So you really are considering it, then?" Rhys asks, thoughtfully removing a strand of my hair that is caught up in one of my long eyelashes.

Smiling, I tilt my head with an easy-going nod. "I am, but even with the extra week, it's not going to be enough time for me to really think things through. I'm staying on because you need me. I couldn't leave on Saturday after what has happened to Maci."

I know it's not exactly what Rhys is wanting to hear but he seems accepting of it nevertheless. "At least you will be here for the funeral." His solemn eyes are fixed on me with an accompanying feeble smile.

Interlocking our fingers together, I lean in to delicately kiss his despondent lips. "When do you think it will be?"

Rhys heavily shrugs, sighing loudly. "That's what I need to sort out today. Mom and I want it as quickly as possible but we have to wait until the pathologist releases Maci's body." He depressingly states, finding it so hard to talk about his sisters post-mortem and then her funeral.

"Can I do anything to help?" I'm stroking his fingers with mine, wanting to be as useful as I possibly can all the time that I am here.

Edging closer, Rhys pulls me toward him. "You already are." Then he kisses my nose and my forehead in the gentlest of ways.

I really hope I am, Rhys is already trudging through so much sadness. If I can ease it in some tiny way, then that will make me happy. I also still have the small matter of speaking to Dex. I know he won't entirely be happy about me staying on in LA, but I can't worry about that. For now, I am exactly where I need to be. I have always put my work first before everything else in my life, but today, I am not.

Today, I am putting Rhys first.