Page 132 of The Billionaire's Virgin

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Taylor

Everything was hazy. Even when I blinked my eyes open and tried to focus, I could only see everything in confused lines and shadows. I tried to speak, but there was something over my mouth and nose. That startled me. Why was I hooked up to so many wires and tubes? Was I dying?

I tried to lie still even in my confused state and think things through logically. What had happened to leave me in this position? And then slowly, piece-by-piece, little snippets of memory started coming back to me. I knew I was not alone in the hospital room; it had to be a hospital room. There were people coming in and out, and they were not always nurses. I might have been able to know who they were, had it not been for the fact that my eyes wouldn’t co-operate with me.

I could never keep them open for long enough to identify anyone and anyway; I couldn’t see very clearly even when I tried. I would stay awake long enough to find one more piece of the puzzle and then I would fall back into a thick slumber. At first, I didn’t dream at all, and then slowly dreams kept coming back to me as though the sleep I fell under became less and less heavy.

My dreams were tinged with people from my past. I saw my mother and my stepfather. I even saw the father I had never known. He was an ordinary man now with an ordinary life. He had never amounted to much. He was a man who lived a mundane life, working a menial job trying to support his working-class family. He had a family now… at least in my dreams.

His wife was short and plain; she worked two jobs and wore those excessive floral prints that made your eyes dizzy. They had one child: a boy who had gotten the worst of their features and lacked the confidence to try and overcome his lack of looks with personality. He thought of me every now and again, my real father… my biological father. At least that was what my dream told me, and even in my state, I was not willing to believe it fully. But it was nice to think that there was a possibility it was real.

He thought of the full-grown woman walking around who had his DNA and possibly some of his features and mannerisms. He wondered how his life might have been different if he had chosen to stay and be her father.

When I dreamt of my mother, I only saw her as she was that day when she had taken me to the woodland park to flirt with her forest ranger. She was wearing the same clothes, and her hair fell the same way over her shoulders in manufactured curls that she had spent an hour perfecting.

When I dreamt of my stepfather, I saw him drinking himself to death in different pubs every night. He had moved on to other women, and those women hadn’t been as helpless or as desperate as his first two wives. He had lost his power to intimidate and to frighten. He was a very old man now, bent over and weak. He had no one in the world, and he knew that that was his doing. He didn’t think of me at all. I was just a character from his past, an insignificant part of his history. But he did think of Reed from time to time. He thought about his only child, his only son, and he felt ashamed… sometimes.

He knew who Reed was and he knew that he had made something of himself. Some small part of him was proud, but he knew that he had cut ties with his son for good. He could never go back. He had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it.

There were other dreams too. Dreams that made less sense and so I could never recall them later, no matter how hard I tried. The most vivid dreams were of Sofia. But I was not scared in them as I had been in reality. We were standing in the warehouse, looking at each other, knowing that this was going to end soon. Jenna was nowhere to be found. It was just Sofia and me. I was calm and confident with the knowledge that she would not be able to win. I would win because I had everything to lose and I knew I had to fight for it.

There was no gun in my dream. So when we lunged for one another, it was in slow motion, our hands grappling towards one another with forceful precision. That dream always faded into another. I was sitting in a quiet little living room with the sunlight shining through. It couldn’t be the penthouse; it had the feel of an altogether different space, but it still felt like home. There was a cozy fireplace surrounded by delicate blue tile, and there were flowers in the corner.

Jenna’s and toys were arranged in one corner of the room, and I could see a number of Reed’s possessions lying around carelessly. I was alone… but they were around, I could feel it. I was not really alone. Every so often I heard little snippets of sound and that startled me because my dreams were always so quiet. I struggled to listen… wanting to know more; greedy about all the things I was missing.

Once in a while, I would hear something.

“… Six months…”

“… That’s a long time…”

“… I want it to be true….” The words sounded like they had come from Reed.

“… Don’t get all sentimental…”

“… Ask Taylor…”

“… I’ll be there…”

It was so hard to follow the conversation, especially because I didn’t always know who was speaking. The voices always spoke in whispers, and my eyes refused to open. It was like my eyelids were so heavy that they refused to be disturbed.

“… She needs quiet…”

“…Jenna….”

“… Taylor….”

“… Worried, Doctor…”

“… Be patient…”

“… Three days…”

“… Make plans… what if… no… no… no…”

Then one day, I just… opened my eyes and I realized I knew where I was. I remembered everything, and after days of lying in an almost comatose state, I had partial control over my body. I looked around the room and realized that Reed was sleeping in a chair next to my bed. He was slumped over in an uncomfortable position, and his head was bent low. He looked exhausted. I tried to reach for him, but the wires prevented me from lifting my hand too far.