Twelve Days The Beginning - By Jade Reyner Page 0,178

was a silence on the end of the line before Stephen spoke and when he did, the tone that he used filled her veins with ice and her heart thumped loudly in her mouth as she listened to what he said.

“I’m at the hospital Elise.” His voice was dead, flat. “I’ve been trying to call you all morning. You need to come Elise. It’s Vaughn.” Once he had choked the words out, she heard him break down and immediately, without hesitation, she threw her phone to the floor of the car, restarted the engine and floored the accelerator.

Stephen met her in the waiting room at the hospital, his face was ashen and his bright blue eyes were seared with pain.

Elise rushed into his arms and he held her briefly before pushing her away.

“What the hell’s happened?” she asked, “Where is he?”

Stephen regarded her carefully as if considering what to say. He looked completely shell shocked.

“Stephen!” she shouted, “Just tell me. You have to tell me right now! What the hell is going on?”

Stephen raised his tear stained face to hers, his eyes were red and swollen where he had clearly been crying.

“It’s bad, Elise” he said simply “Really bad. The stupid bastard took an overdose.”

Elise reeled back in shock and immediately felt her legs go from under her. Stephen caught her and helped her over to the plastic chairs along the side of the room.

She couldn’t comprehend what the hell was going on and what Stephen had just said.

An overdose? Her beautiful, strong man had taken an overdose?

Why, for Christ’s sake? Why the fuck would he take an overdose?

“Is he...??” she asked finding that she couldn’t even form the words.

“He’s OK at the moment. They’ve pumped his stomach and now it’s just a waiting game. I found him, Elise. Shit! The stupid fucking bastard! Just like....” Stephen stopped abruptly and punched the seat beside him in anger. Elise found she had nothing in her to console him. She echoed his sentiments completely.

“Just like..?”

“Nothing.” He said the subject clearly closed, and Elise didn’t really care anyway; there were much more important questions that needed answering.

“Why?” she asked, “I thought he was happy... I assumed...”

Stephen looked at her then his face full of anger and his next words cut her to the core.

“You saw what you wanted to see Elise and believed what you wanted to believe. He was never happy after you left him – never.”

And exactly as had happened this morning when she had found Dale in bed with Olivia, finally the fog that had clouded her judgement five months ago lifted, and she realised that whilst she had made the most difficult decision of her life, it had also been the worst decision of her life.

How could she have ever thought that going back to Dale was the best thing for all of them? She had been unbelievably stupid. So what if Dale thought he had something on Vaughn and Cole? So fucking what? Her love for the two men knew no bounds and instead of trusting that between them they could deal with anything, she had chosen the easy way out, the coward’s way out. Going back to the life she had always known, however unhappy it was, and living that instead of listening to her heart and dealing with the consequences. Had she really considered the full impact of what she had done on the man that she had only ever been trying to protect?

Sadly, and clearly obviously now, she feared that maybe she had not.

And now he was paying for her stupidity. Paying for her endless mistakes, terrible decisions, her sham of a life and paying in possibly the most final and devastating way of them all.

She couldn’t look at Stephen, she couldn’t do anything. She was numb, and as the ever-present tears started to fall, she knew that the only person she could blame and would ever blame was herself. There was no one else in the picture.

They sat like that for what seemed like hours when in fact it was probably only minutes. Silent, both of them lost in their thoughts. From time to time, Stephen imparted bits of information as and when he was able to. The doctors were only allowing visitors for a short while as Vaughn was being closely monitored. He was still unconscious and as yet had not responded to stimulation. Stephen had called both Vaughn’s parents and his sister and they were on their way here too. Elise realised