Bonds of Attraction (Full Length Erotic Romance Novel) (28 page)

“I’ve never let it go. I’ve never been in
love and I’ve always felt that was because I don’t deserve to be in love. I’ve
never even had a strong feeling towards a woman. I’ve kept them distant, almost
cruelly distant. More than a few have even called me a sociopath.” Leon said.

“Then I met you. Immediately, I was
interested. But of course, I thought I just wanted to have you. I figured that
once we had sex, you’d be boring just like the rest. Even if you made it
interesting for a while, I would make sure I got bored before you could get
close. I’d never let anybody in and I wasn’t planning to ever start. But after
we had sex, you were in my mind like a goddamn computer virus,” he said,
laughing.

I wanted him to stop. Tears formed in my eyes
and fell down my cheeks. The pain was spreading down my spine and my whole body
was alight with torturous tumult. It was as if Leon’s words were spreading my
wound.

“Leon,” I said, my voice breaking with pain
and tears. I wanted everything he was saying to be true. More than anything, I
wanted this to be genuine, but I couldn’t trust anything.

“I knew that if I told you how I felt, you
could hurt me. And if anybody deserved to be truly hurt, it’s me. When you
brought that file, I thought you didn’t feel the same way. And after our
conversation, I had to prove to myself it meant nothing. But afterwards, with
Andrea still there, I just felt horrible. The guilt was so intense that I had
to leave. I wanted to chase after you and apologize. Beg for your forgiveness.”

Even if Leon Christensen was sincere, there
was no way this was going to last. I wasn’t even sure that this was the first
time he had given this speech to a girl. I wanted to believe that it was
genuine and at the same time I wanted to believe that it wasn’t. But the look
on his face defied any claim that he was putting on a show; Leon Christensen
was revealing himself to me.

“Leon,” I said, words were now like molasses
coming out of my throat. “Please, you don’t...”

Leon reached over and took my hand that was
next to the button for the nurse. Everywhere fire tore through my body and I
felt as if I was about to convulse with the horror of whatever was spreading
through me. I shifted my body to try to adjust the pain, to calm it, and a wave
of blistering torture shot out of my shoulder. I cried out softly and bit my
teeth down.

“I want you,” Leon said. It was everything
that I had ever wanted to hear from him, but at the moment he said it, I felt
something wet coming down my chest.

I raised my hand and once again I was staring
at my hand, dripping with red. Leon looked down at my hand and immediately rose
to his feet.

“Julie, oh my god, are you alright?” he
asked, alarmed. He looked back on me and I saw a look of terror adorn his face.
“You’re bleeding.”

Blood was flowing out of my once closed
wound. My hospital was soaked with red that quickly spread to stain all the
white that was around me. The pain was unbearable. The lights dimmed and then
returned as though someone had flipped them off and on quickly before I
realized that it was me, passing out.

Leon pressed the button for the nurse,
slamming it with his thumb over and over. A second passed. Two seconds passed
and Leon ran out into the hallway and started yelling. His voice rose and fell
in volume and I struggled to make out the words he was saying.

“Julie, you’re going to be alright. You have
to be alright. Please,” Leon said, his words miles away now. “Be alright. I
can’t lose you.”

People surged into the room like water from a
breaking dam. My eyes opened and closed, creating a strobe-like effect for only
me. I saw doctors hover above me and looks of concern turn to anger turn to
fear. Nurses ran around me, injecting me with things and pulling things out of
me.

“Sir, you have to leave. Now!” a woman
yelled.

“No, wait, let me stay. Please,” Leon
pleaded.

“Get him out of here or call security,” a
doctor commanded. “We need to get her into surgery, right now.”

I blinked and the lights above were moving,
passing over me with increasing frequency. I heard the sounds of wheels
creaking as footsteps pounded against the tiled floor. I tried to look around,
but the air was so thick with gravity that I could merely blink. The world
began to drift away. Everything felt far away. In that moment, all I wanted to
do was sleep.

My eyes opened and I saw a bright light above
me encased in a large metal circle. It looked almost like a light from a
dentists’ office. Before I could speak or even look around, a doctor lowered a
plastic piece over my mouth. I breathed in heavily and soon the darkness was
complete. As everything dissipated, my last thought was of Leon. I wished he
was right beside me, holding my hand. I wanted to feel his heartbeat against
mine as he told me everything was going to be alright and I believed him.

Darkness became my world and everything else
was gone.

I slept a dreamless sleep. When I awoke, my
mind was numbed from sleep and opiates. The lights were off in the room yet it
was not fully dark. After I passed out, they must have moved me to a new room
because now the window was on a different side and showed a wide city
landscape. Lights flickered on and off in concrete buildings and a full moon
cast its blue light down upon my hospital room. I looked around, trying to
adjust my eyes, thankful that it wasn’t daytime; even the moonlight was
painfully bright.

I couldn’t sit up. Every ounce of my energy
was focused in on keeping my eyes open. Even turning my head was such a laborious
act that I resigned to keep it pointed towards the window, treating the rest of
the room like it didn’t exist. I could not ever remember having felt this weak
and injured before. But then again, I had never been shot before.

Leon sat in a chair, slumped over. If I
wasn’t completely dulled with drugs, I would have felt alarmed at the way he
looked almost dead. His breath rose and fell in spaced out, shallow intervals.
I couldn’t make out his face, the moon was behind him and it cast darkness on
him, but I knew that he was asleep.

I let my eyes fall closed, feeling oddly
content and at peace. Sleep came easily, welcoming my return to a blackness
that was devoid of all color and light.

When I finally opened my eyes again, the sun
was shining. I had no idea how much time had passed. I felt stronger and the
pain in my shoulder had lessened to a dull ache. The taste in my mouth was
horrible and I imagined the smell rivaled the taste in its awfulness. I lifted
my arms and brushed my hair back.

Leon was still in the chair. He looked
disheveled, a fitting look for someone sleeping in a chair. Even with his eyes
closed, I could see bags under his eyes and wrinkles in his clothes. His hair
hung down over his face, this time messy and not in a stylish way. His hand
propped up his face and his mouth hung slightly ajar. I smiled as I looked at
him; he looked almost childish in his cuteness, despite the apparent exhaustion
all over his face.

I reached out my arm and delicately ran my
fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face. His head had been
leaning down slightly, pointed towards the grounded in his uncomfortable
looking sleep, and when I touched him, his eyes opened groggily. When he saw
me, his eyes opened wide. I smiled at the sight.

“Good morning,” I said in a hushed voice,
barely above a whisper. It was as loud as I could talk.

“Morning,” Leon said quietly, but still
excitedly. “Did you sleep well?”

I let a smile grow once again on my face. “A
girl needs her beauty rest and I’m no exception. How long was I out for?

“Two days,” Leon said, a hint of worry strong
in his voice.

I was speechless for a full minute before I
thought of anything I could say. “I woke up last night, briefly. I saw you
sleeping there. The moon was full and it was beautiful.” Every word was
labored, slow and thorough.

“Julie,” Leon began softly, “the moon was
full two nights ago.”

“Oh,” I said. I laid there, unable to do
anything else but lie there, and thought about what happened. I had a brief
flash of doctors hovering over me, talking about something. I remembered
blinking and I could hear music in the back of the operating table.

“Your wound opened up when we were talking a
few days ago. Apparently there were some complications, something about your
body rejecting the sutures.” Leon said. “When you woke up and started moving
around a lot and talking, the added irritation must have caused the wound to
open again.”

I could hear the faint echo of Leon being
told to get out of the room. They had threatened to call security because he
had refused to leave.

“You were rushed into emergency surgery and
they used something different to stitch you up. The doctors said everything is
fine now and that you’re out of the woods.”

I tried to take in all of what Leon had said
and it just felt too much to comprehend. The memory of Leon refusing to leave
warmed my heart in a weird way. I felt scared over what happened to me and at
the same time I felt joyous at the sight of Leon. More than anything, I simply
felt confused.

“While you were in surgery,” Leon said, his
voice growing horse and thick. “They weren’t sure if you were going to make
it.” Tears formed in his eyes and slowly strolled down his cheek. He made no
move to wipe them away. I reached my hand over and brushed away the tears
gently. He took my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. A loving squeeze.

I felt my defenses start to dissipate. I
noticed then that Leon was wearing the same outfit that he had been wearing
when we had talked two days ago. His hair was a mess and he looked like he
needed a shave, badly. It dawned on me that Leon had not left the hospital
since I had fallen back ill.

“Have you gone home yet?” I asked, shocked by
the truth that I knew he was about tell me.

“No,” he said solemnly. “I wasn’t going to
leave you. It was my fault that I had upset you and somehow made your wound
open. I knew I needed to be here for you the moment you woke up.”

“Leon,” I said, choking back tears. I was so
touched that it took every effort not to cry out to him to embrace me. “What
about your life? Your clubs?”

Leon smiled out of the corner of his mouth
and started nodding his head slowly, as if agreeing with something I said.
“Stills. I called him to tell him about what was happening and he didn’t even
need me to ask him to take over things for a while. And to be honest, I didn’t
even give a shit what happened to the businesses.”

I smiled back, thinking of Stills. On some
level, I should almost curse him. Without him, none of this would have
happened. But then again, without him, I wouldn’t have met Leon Christensen.
Despite all that had happened, Leon piercing my heart and then Marilyn
literally shooting me in the chest, it seemed worth it to know that my feelings
were being reciprocated.

“I realized that losing you would hurt too
much. No matter how I try to push you away, being apart from you is the last
thing I want. I hope you can forgive me for all of this. For Andrea, for
Marilyn, for all the bullshit defenses I put up because I didn’t want to let
you in. Maybe it’s too late Julie, and I can never take back the things I said
or the things I’ve done but I’d like to start over again. To start over again
with you. Will you give me that chance?”

To hear Leon open up to me like this was
something entirely new for me. Could I forgive him for the things he did? I
don’t know. But he was just asking for a chance. Maybe he didn’t know it, but
it wasn’t just a chance for him, it was a chance for me to melt the protective
ice that had covered my heart for so long. I felt the pangs of loneliness that
I had long kept repressed surge in my chest.

I knew what I would say before I even opened
my mouth. After all, what choice did I have? Bury my memories of Leon in the
past and continue smiling and selling clients a dream I didn’t believe in?

“Yes, let’s start over again” I whispered.

The nurse came in and paused when she saw us.

“Everything alright in here?” she asked
casually.

“Yes, everything is perfectly fine. Perfectly
fine,” I said, smiling.

“Good. I have to take your vitals sweetheart,
I hope you guys don’t mind,” the nurse said, looking at Leon.

“I think I’ll go to the bathroom and wash up
a little bit. I’m starting to look like a bum,” Leon said. I saw his eyebrows
rise at me and he gave me a small smile. His face looked completely new, still
tired and frayed with worry, but lighter, as though something had been lifted
from him. He looked happy.