Mending Soul by Lauren Ruiz (digital ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Aurelia woke up in a start. The loud noise that had awoken her had sounded like a gunshot.
But she knew that gunshot had been in her dreams.
She had been dreaming of her parents.
“Don’t think of that right now,” Aurelia told herself.
She sat straight up, breathing heavily as sweat trickled down her gorgeous face.
The two men hadn’t came back to see her. And now there she was, alone.
Her thoughts went back to Seth. She wished that they had still been happy together, just like they were before everything went downhill for them. She wished things had never gotten this messy.
She wished he were still alive.
Impossible, she thought.
He couldn’t wake up from the dead. No one could.
“Good, you’re finally awake.” A familiar male voice said.
It was the voice of the man that had killed Seth Lennox.
She couldn’t see him.
Someone must’ve turned off the main light in the room while she really was asleep.
Even the lamp light had been turned off.
She was devoured in darkness and fear.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Aurelia asked, fearing his answer.
She was hoping that she was at least still in Los Angeles.
She heard the man sigh.
“My name is Caleb Reed.”
After his introduction, candles lit up all around the room.
She looked around, afraid.
How had he done that? Candles couldn’t light up themselves.
She wanted to scream.
Even with the candles lighting up the entire room, she couldn’t see him, she could only feel his presence.
Then she heard footsteps.
And faster than a blink of an eye, a tall figure was standing on the right side of the bed, staring down at her with dark eyes.
She caught her breath.
He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
With the many candles as their only light, she stared back up at him.
“How do you feel?” he asked with no emotion.
He was staring right into her eyes, yet she couldn’t see what kind of thoughts were going on in his mind.
She usually could always read other’s eyes, but with this man, it was almost as though she were trying to read a book with no words.
“Kind of better I guess. Where am I?”
“It’s nice to meet you too. And you will learn that later. Just rest and heal.”
“I’m sorry if I came out as rude, I just wanted to know.” Aurelia said in sad voice. And when she looked up at the face of Caleb, she saw that he was annoyed.
“My name is Aurelia Hastings. And it is nice to meet you Caleb.” She said politely, ignoring his annoyed expression.
But she did not know that Caleb was not annoyed with her. He just didn’t want to get too close to her. And when he had seen her waking up, his heart beat began to race.
Caleb had to calm himself.
He had wanted to speak with her since he had found her, but he knew now that he was not making a good first impression.
He knew that he was being unsympathetic towards her.
She had been through enough, and he was not the one to be adding to it.
“Are you in any pain?” he asked with worry.
Aurelia was surprised to hear the apprehension in his voice. He had just been annoyed with her, and now he was being nice to her.
The way she looked was sickening.
He had seen many people, girls in particular, who had been cruelly beaten up. But Aurelia was the worst.
His best friend, Duke Sanity, was right. She was beautiful and petite and too child like.
She looked and sounded innocent and vulnerable.
The right side of her pale face was more black and blue than the left side.
There were cuts from the rings that her boyfriend had been wearing and they showed all over her beautiful face.
Her bright azure eyes were encircled with blue, purple, and black.
Caleb just wanted to hold her in his arms to make sure that nothing like that would ever happen to her again. He wanted to let her know that she was safe with him.
But he couldn’t.
He was not hers, and she was not his. And he knew for a fact that her heart still belonged to the man that he had killed.
“My entire body hurts; and my head is throbbing.” Aurelia muttered wearily as she held her head in her hands.
She knew how weak she looked, but at that precise moment, she did not care. It was just the way she felt.
Although small, when she was not in pain, she was vibrant and strong.
She was independent and only relied on herself.
She had never asked anyone for anything.
Not even Seth.
She winced at the thought of him.
He’s dead now, she thought, let it go.
“Are you all right?” Caleb asked as he saw Aurelia’s entire body tense.
He could tell that something was wrong. It was something deeper than her physical pain.
“He’s dead…isn’t he?” Aurelia asked as she stared down at her hands. They too were bruised.
That’s what it is, he thought, she remembers.
The last thing he wanted to do was lie. He was a man of truth.
“Yes.” He said, straightforward.
She looked up at him.
She was speaking to the man that had killed him.
Even though Seth had tortured and manipulated her for years, she wanted to bring Caleb to justice.
But she thought twice.
He had saved her life.
If it weren’t for Caleb, she could possibly be dead right now.
“You know, he never hit me before.” She confessed softly.
She felt Caleb’s eyes drilling into her.
“I was leaving him. I always said I would, but I loved him too much to actually do it. But I just woke up that day and knew that I had had enough. I wanted out. I was invisible. Compared to the girls he called ‘friends’, I was nothing. And then when I tried leaving…” she paused as tears rolled down her cheeks, “he went off on me. And now here I am. All I am now is a broken and shattered twenty two year old girl. God, I could only imagine how ugly and beat up I look now.”
She looked up and saw the sad and angry expression on Caleb’s face.
“Tell me Caleb, do I look horrible?” she asked as more tears came.
He didn’t say anything in response.
She looked up at him again and saw that his jaw was set tight.
Surely he was annoyed to hear her cry and whine.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she wiped away her tears.
“I just wish I could have done more. I can’t stand to see a woman cry.” She looked up at him and smiled.
Damn, she was beautiful.
“Well, he’s gone now. Whether he hit me or not, I probably would have never truly gone through with my departing. I would have probably gone back the same night. I would’ve gone back in hope that things would go back to the way they used to be. I know that I will always love and miss him. And I will mourn his death with every day of my being alive. Is that crazy? Still love a deceased person who had hurt me emotionally, and then later, physically?”
The way Aurelia was searching for an answer from him made him think of her…
Caleb shuttered.
Aurelia looked just like her.
She had the same dark hair, the same pale skin, and the same full red lips.
That was one of the main reasons he had saved her.
Not because he had to because who she was, and what she had been going through.
But it was also because she looked just like her.
“Since you had spent so much time together, I would say no. It’s not crazy. It’s sane.” Caleb said as he blinked away the storm in his own eyes.
Hopefully she hadn’t seen that he was losing control just at the sight of her.
He had to get out of there.
“All right, well, I’m going to let you get some more rest. I’ll come to check on you later.”
Before she could look up to say goodbye, he was already gone.
Aurelia shook her head.
She wanted rest, but rest didn’t want to go to her.
She wished that Caleb could have stayed there with her until she fell asleep again, but he had left in a hurry. He probably had better things to do.
When he said that he would come back to check on her, the strain in his voice told her that he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the visit.
She wasn’t unerringly surprised.
She had been crying most of the time he was there.
Aurelia sat up more. She didn’t want to just be there, weak and helpless. She wanted to stretch and move her body around.
She wanted to feel like her old self again. She wanted to move around without the worry of pain stopping her every second.
She just wanted to feel whole again.
Get yourself together Aurelia, this is no rest home, she said in her mind.
With as much strength as she could muster, she lifted her body up off the bed and set her bare feet onto the cold wooden floor.
She walked to the door, and gently opened it.
She was curious about where she was and who besides Caleb and the other man, were there. She absolutely had a right to know her whereabouts.
She put her small hand around the golden knob, and opened the heavy door.
She poked her head out the door, and when she looked out into the hallway, she saw more candle’s lighting it up underneath many paintings.
The hallway was so large that she felt as though she were in the mansion of the scary movie, Rose Red.
She crept out, and officially abandoned the room.
As she walked down the hall, she noticed that all the closed doors had hand carved designs.
She had never seen such elegant designs in her entire life.
Aurelia had no clue of where she was going, or who she might run into.
She just hoped and prayed that Caleb would not be angry with her about her sneaking off.
She already had forgotten what room was hers.
“Shit,” she said out loud. Her word echoed through the hall, and she giggled.
She wanted to turn around and see if Caleb had gotten back already.
“Where are you going?” a male voice said.
This voice did not belong to Caleb.
Aurelia turned around quickly, and collided