Chapter 31: Share Your Secrets With Me
Chapter 31: Share Your Secrets With Me
Two Weeks Later
Jalan Marco and Park Anna spent several days in the Intensive Care Unit, each fighting their battles to hold onto dear life. A period which served as a turning point for Park Anna who only realized how much Jalan Marco meant to her as she regained her consciousness and recalled the incident that happened. Even though her surgery was a success, she’d sustained complicated injuries on her stomach due to the multiple stabbing. She was not allowed to move, so she requested to be transferred into the same room with Jalan Marco.
Jalan was already conscious when Anna was transferred into a bed next to his. The nurse in charge of Anna, reconnected the oxygen bulb around her face and made sure she was comfortable before he left them. They didn’t speak, but kept their eyes on one another until Anna slowly took off the oxygen bulb for a while, staring at Jalan who seemed to have become thinner.
“Why did you do that?” She abruptly asked, her voice barely audible. She wanted to get the thoughts bothering her out of her mind. “It was dangerous, why did you just jumped in?”
“Because you mean a lot to me, but I failed to protect you.” Jalan admitted sincerely. “I don’t think I can live again, without you.”
And of course, that was something. Anna never strongly felt any person’s sincerity as much as she just did now. His feelings seemed raw, unfiltered and natural. He was vulnerable, making her feel the sparks of emotion rising inside her. If only she could stand to go and hold him, she badly wished to be there to comfort this man. She felt her eyes moistened, and her heart was becoming heavy with unspoken emotion.
“I resented you for what you did to me, you didn’t deserve my forgiveness, you were a horrible jerk.” By now, she was trying her best to get the words out, through ragged breathing as her tears were welling up.
“But you know what, Jalan, I think I recalled every piece of my memory about that incident... it was you who came to save me on that cold Island. I didn’t see you though, but your smell was all over me and that warm jacket.” She was lost in the moment, weeping and letting the words flow, when she suddenly felt a warm body crawling beside her. Jalan had transferred himself into her bed, and his heavy arm was now hung around her chest.
“You’re not fit enough to be moving around, Jalan. You shouldn’t have left your bed.” She scolded, but she felt his face snuggling into the side of her neck, shooting his hot breaths straight onto her skin. He was being dangerously quiet.
“Talk to me. I think you have a lot on your mind” She kept going. “I need to know everything about your childhood. How you were raised, why you dated and dumped women randomly, why you became such a jerk, and how you begin to like me.”
Jalan groaned and shifted closer to her until there was not an inch of space between them. “We talk over dinner. When we leave this place.” He whispered into her ears. “My past isn’t nice, I don’t know why you insist on hearing it.”
“Because I want to bridge the gap between you and I. For me to be your woman, you must learn to trust and share your secrets with me.”
He raised his hand to her cheeks and wiped away her tears. “Then stop crying, if you really want to hear it.”
"Okay"
“I was told that my Mom gave birth to me in a very small farmhouse where my grandparent lived, I never knew how she looked like until I turned the age of, about eight to nine years, I’m not quite sure. So there was this day I got bullied in school, the other kids were calling me with names like; bastard, dumb head, mistress’s son, and I got so angry. I was raging and boiling when I returned home, but then I found my dad having a quarrel with a woman. She was slim and pretty with a very long, brown hair like yours...”
“When she noticed me, she stopped quarreling and rushed and hugged me, kissed my cheeks, forehead, and then quickly ran out of the house. I asked my dad who she was, and he simply said: ‘Your Mother’. That was the first and last time I saw her, she died on that same day. What was your next question again?” Jalan asked.
Anna kept silent for a while, before she asked the next question. “How were you raised without your mom?”
“I was... on my own. I didn’t know right or wrong, so I did everything other people taught me. That Anne... she was my first friend.”
“And I guess she taught you a lot of wrong things didn’t she?”
“Umm... We could say that I guess. She was more matured than I, so yeah, that worked to her advantage.”
“What did she teach you?”
“Save your questions for next time. I need to sleep now.”
“Did she teach you adult stuff?”
“No”
“Jalan you’re lying”
“Okay, yes. She taught me adult stuff.”
“And did you got addicted?”
“Sounds like someone fed you with stories about me. Who was the bastard?”
“You’re avoiding the subject... It means you got addicted.”
Jalan kept silent, pretending to be asleep and snoring into her ear.
“Go back to your bed if you don’t want to tell me your story. We’re not getting back together anymore.”
“Yes we are, like it or not.”
“Now where is the big guy pretending to be asleep, and snoring into my ears again?”
“I am sleeping”
Anna chuckled at his clumsiness. There were questions on her mind that she wanted to ask him, for example the trauma he experienced when those cruel people tortured him. but she decided to allow him a chance to escape the conversation. At least for now, because no matter what, she was determined to hear his story. She was so determined to make him tell her about the missing pieces in the puzzle. Now that they were like this, together with Marco, she felt like they were really going to get back together. Possibly more closer and stronger than ever. Who says their love story have to be perfect after all?