I Love You, Always by Natalie Ward Page A

I’m in agony over what nearly happened and what I can’t stop seeing play out in my head.
    “I had to,” she whispers, leaning in to kiss me this time. “I had to protect you, Luke. I had to. I had to do it because I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you, Luke.” Her words are a desperate rush, a plea to make me understand, to make me believe her. They wrap around my heart and try to pull the broken pieces of it back together. I can’t believe how much I love this woman, how much that love grows, every single day, every single second. I’d never even known this kind of thing could exist until I met Asha.
    “Ash,” I say, my hand resting on her cheek. “I can’t lose you either, I can’t. So please, please don’t ever do that to me again.”
    She smiles at me now as a tear falls from her eye. Instead of brushing it away, I lean in and kiss it, taste the saltiness of her tears against the sweet smell of her skin. There is a faint trace of hospital smell on her too, but underneath it, I can still smell her. Our foreheads rest together as we breathe each other in. Her hand is in mine and my other hand is cradling her face.
    “Ah, so this is the one who’s made himself at home, huh?”
    We both pull back and I quickly wipe my face as I turn to look at the new nurse who’s walked into the room. She’s smiling at both of us and I get the feeling she understands why I’m lying in Ash’s bed with her.
    “He’s not leaving,” Ash says, her voice firm again.
    The nurse laughs now as she says, “That’s okay, sweetie, I wasn’t going to ask him to. I get it.” She squeezes Ash’s leg as she grabs the chart from her bed and starts looking it over. She’s asking Ash a bunch of questions about how she’s feeling and how she’d rate her pain on a scale of one to ten when a guy in a white coat walks in. I recognise him as the one who came to tell me she was still alive last night and I can’t help but wonder if he’s gotten any sleep either.
    He smiles at Ash and I do the right thing and sit up, hang my legs over the side of the bed. “How are you feeling this morning, Asha?” he asks her, standing on the opposite side of her bed to me. It’s so weird to hear someone call her that. Nobody ever calls her Asha, nobody except me. I stand up now, still holding on to her hand.
    “Okay,” she answers, squeezing mine.
    “I’d like to have a look at the wound,” he says, nodding towards her stomach.
    “Sure,” Ash answers, trying to pull herself up a little. My arms immediately reach out to help her slide up the bed. I see her grimace in pain, but try to hide it from me. I have to grab her hand again, but it’s more for my sake than hers now. When the doctor lifts up her gown and pulls back the bandages, I think for a second I’m gonna pass out. It’s not the blood or anything, I’ve never had a problem with that, God knows I’ve cut myself enough times at work. It’s seeing what that fucking asshole did to her that wrecks me. She has an incision about five inches long and her skin looks raw, angry, inflamed. It looks exactly like I feel and I want to kill the fucking bastard who did this.
    “Luke,” I hear her whisper. “Are you sure you’re alright?” She squeezes my hand again and I turn to look at her, smiling so she knows I’m okay, even though I’m practically dying on the inside.
    “I’m all good, Ash,” I say, and once more I know she isn’t buying it.
    I stand here watching her face as the doctor tells her what happened and what they had to do. Apparently losing a spleen isn’t that big of a deal and he says she’s going to make a full recovery, although they want to keep her in for a few days and then she needs to take it easy for the next couple of weeks.
    I’m not sure if I’m ever going to fully recover from this though. I’m not sure it’s possible to recover when you’re forced to watch the one that you love nearly bleed to death in your arms. When you’re forced to