"Did you hear what I said Alisha?
Tomorrow you will be a free woman, tomorrow you can live your life the way you did before I came into the picture, tomorrow you are free to be the woman you want without a freak like me.
You can fall in love with a better man, be free, get married for real, have children and do all the awesome things you want."
He was not drunk, hearing her cry had sobered him up, and he knew what he was saying, tomorrow, they would be divorced.
"Shut up Leo, you are spitting nonsense, go to sleep already" Alisha shouted so he could hear her.
He wanted to tell her that he was not saying nonsense, that he had thought carefully about what he had just said.
That he was giving her back her freedom. He decided to keep shut, he would let her sleep tonight, but tomorrow they would end this hell of a marriage.
The next morning Leonardo woke up late, Alisha was already out of the house and had gone to the bakery.
He ordered flowers and asked that they be sent to her in the bakery, while he called up the lawyer to draw up some legal papers to end the contract.
Leonardo buried himself with work when his phone rang, he tried to ignore it but the ringing won't stop. He finally picked up the call only to discover that Grandpa Alexandra was in town and wanted to see him for lunch.
"Grandpa, what are you doing here in California?" Leonardo asked the moment he saw him, he was supposed to be at Colorado with Nana.
"I came to see an old friend, it was important I met with him, how is Alisha?"
"Grandpa, things are not good, we are considering a divorce." Leonardo opened up, the sooner he let it out of his chest and told his grandpa the easier it would be, after all it was his grandpa's demands that got him there in the first place.
"You are such a stupid boy, I know it is your fault, so you want to divorce that beautiful and gentle young lady, have you lost your mind or something? I see the way that woman looks at you, that is how your Nana looks at me, she loves you and would do anything for you, and you want to break her heart?"
"No grandpa you don't understand, we are, she is not in …" grandpa cut him short before he could get the chance to tell him that Alisha was not in love with him, and their marriage was only a contract.
"No excuses Leonardo, I need you to fight for your marriage."
"You are not listening to me, it's all a contract."
"You are not getting it are you?
Marriage is a contract, it is a covenant, you made a promise to each other to love and to hold, no matter the conditions, until death do you part" Leonardo rolled his eyes, they quite alright made a sort of promise, but it was not until death do them part, it was until three years elapsed.
"Leonardo are you even listening to me?"
his grandpa called his attention.
"How am I supposed to fight pa?"
"How did you win her over in the first place? Woo her again Leo, make her fall in love with you all over again. Don't break your Nana's heart with the news of a divorce, please, she is troubled enough that Alisha isn't pregnant already."
"Nana is waiting for a grandchild?"
Leonardo asked in surprise
"What did you expect?
That's all she is wishing for right now, that is all she gets to talk about, so do something about that also."
Alisha was worried when it was 10:00pm and Leonardo was not yet home.
Ordinarily, she would have gone to bed after dinner and assume Leonardo was out with another skinny girl for the night, but tonight she was tensed, she couldn't eat or sit still.
She had tried calling his line severally, but it was going straight to voicemail. She gave up waiting for him and decided to go to bed when her phone rang.
Rushing to pick it up assuming it was Leonardo calling, she did not bother to check the caller's ID, and she simply picked the call.
Leonardo was involved in an accident and was at the state hospital.
Her hands were shaking and she could not seem to hold anything.
The driver drove her down to the hospital; she had already dismissed Mary for the night.
Leonardo was in the intensive care unit when she arrived at the hospital.
She was told to be patient while they ran tests, X-rays, CT scan and probably MRI.
The accident was a fatal one; Leonardo had driven off the road and crashed.
Alisha stayed up all night while Leonardo was being attended to; no one was telling her the progress of his health.
At the early hours of the morning, Alisha was told that Leonardo had taken a bad bump to his head and was currently in coma.
They were not sure how long he was going to be unconscious, all they could do at the moment was monitor him and wait.
Alisha was devastated; she called Grandpa Alexandra and Nana to inform them.
Days passed and Alisha could only hope that Leonardo would open his eyes.
His grandparents did not travel down, they said they could not bear to see him in such helpless state, but they called every day.
"Leo, please wake up, I'm tired of seeing you this way" Alisha said to an unconscious Leonardo on the seventh day after his accident.
"I'm tired Leo, I am not strong for this.
Please wake up, I don't care if we have to fight every day, I don't care if we have to stay in the marriage until the contract elapses, but please wake up."
"I miss you Leo, I miss the little things you do for me, I miss you sleeping beside me, I miss your kiss even if we've had only very few of it,"
"I don't care if I have to live as your wife or make love to you, I don't care if I have to fall in love with you and you do not love me back. I don't care if you have to leave me home for weeks to go after women in the city, but please just wake up Leo."
"I hate to admit this, I hate to agree with myself, but I love you, I have fallen in love with you, and that was why I wanted us to end this contract, because I breached the contract when I fell in love with you."
"I am ashamed to say this, so ashamed to fall you, I don't even know when this happened, I had my wall up, I didn't let me guards down, I was careful, but it happened. At first I thought it was mere lust, I thought I would get over it, but hell no."
"I care about you, I want you by my side always, I want you to kiss me, to hold me, to care for me, I want you to do too many things for me, I want to do many more for you too, I know it's wrong to feel this way, it's very wrong because I agreed not to, but look what I've gotten myself into."
"Leo, I tried to stop myself from feeling this way, I tried to stay away from you as much as I could, I tried to not care, I tried to talk myself out of this feeling, but nothing worked Leo, nothing I did worked."
"I think I should leave you now and take a walk." She said and went out of the room. She walked around the hospital in the evening breeze.
If only Leonardo would just wake up, and then they could go back to their normal lives, she would try to keep hiding her feelings for him, and she would not bring up the topic of ending the contract.
She would me more gentle and understanding towards him even if it killed her that she loved him silently and he did not care because he would rather keep on having sex with the women in California than be committed to her.
She did not care what he did from now, all she wanted was that he got up from the bed, and go back to Leonardo legend, her Leonardo.
The man she had come to love secretly.
Alisha went back to the room, she wanted to take her keys, and go home to get a few things she would need for the night, and food incase Leonardo woke up and wanted to eat something.
She did that every day, she would prepare food for him when she went home, or have Mary cook something, she always had breakfast, lunch and dinner ready and waiting for him.
She picked her key and was leaving the room when she heard him sneeze behind her. She ran towards him, to be sure he was awake. "Leo, come on, open your eyes if you are awake" he did not respond, he did not open his eyes.
She sent for the doctor, he did not open his eyes, but she was sure about what she heard.
"We can't be too sure of anything, it might have been from the hallway, it's very rare for a person in coma to sneeze, cough or communicate."
The doctor said making her sad after a short episode of excitement she had experienced.
"It's rare, but it is not impossible" she had encouraged herself, either he sneezed or not, the sneeze was going to be her sign to know that he was going to be awake soon.
Alisha did not go home again that evening, she stayed put at Leonardo's side, she wanted to pick any form of sign from him, "maybe he will shake his hand next" she hoped.
She sat holding her pee for a long while, she was scared that maybe if she left his side, he would wake up.
By the next morning, Alisha was in a lighter mood when the doctor took off the oxygen max and told her that Leonardo could breathe on his own.
"Maybe the sneeze had cleared his airway, that's why he can breathe on his own now" she said to herself. She was very sure he had sneezed.
By noon, Alisha had to leave the hospital to go work on a birthday design cake her staff were finding difficult to do. If it was for the money, she would not have gone, she wanted to be on Leonardo's side, but the mother of the child who was celebrating had pleaded with her to not break her poor princess's heart, she wanted just that specific type of cake.
When Alisha returned to the hospital later in the evening, she panicked when she could not find Leonardo in his ward.
She ran back to the reception to inquire.
She walked anxiously trying to locate his new private ward, he had been moved from the intensive care unit to a different room, Alisha was worried, she did not know if it was good news or bad news.
"He was breathing on his own this morning, what could have gone wrong?" she asked herself as she walked quickly to locate his new room.
"Please Leonardo, please be alright, don't give me a heart attack" she kept repeating as she walked swiftly to the room.
When she opened the door, she found Leonardo awake, with a nurse handing him a glass of water.
"Hi" she smiled at him, she had mixed feelings, did he still have his memory, or has he forgotten who she was?
"Hi" he frowned at her and her heart swelled with panic, why was he frowning towards her? He was smiling to the nurse just before she walked in.