Rachel Runs Into The Room
Chapter 03 - Rachel Runs Into The Room
Rachel had imagined seeing Adrian again in every possible way except this one.
In some versions, she was elegant and successful, too powerful to be wounded by his rejection. In others, he was alone and apologetic. Sometimes she slapped him. Sometimes she walked past without speaking. In the cruelest dreams, he looked through her as if they had never loved each other.
She never imagined Oliver in his arms.
The restaurant blurred around her. White tables. Gold chairs. Candlelight. Wealthy diners pretending not to watch. Adrian’s white shirt beneath the child’s blue sleeves. Vivian Cross standing beside the table with outrage already forming into strategy.
Rachel reached Oliver and touched his shoulder.
“Sweetheart, come with me.”
Oliver held Adrian tighter.
“But it’s him.”
Rachel closed her eyes for one second.
Adrian looked at her as though trying to solve a memory that hurt.
“You told him I was dead?”
The accusation in his voice was quiet, but it struck.
Rachel’s fear turned to anger.
“I told him what your family made true.”
Vivian stepped between them. “Adrian, this woman is confused. Security should remove her.”
Rachel looked at Vivian.
Seven years had passed, but she remembered that face. Vivian had been Adrian’s family liaison after the accident. She was the woman who met Rachel outside the private hospital room and said Adrian did not want visitors. The woman who later delivered a legal envelope containing money Rachel never accepted.
“You,” Rachel whispered.
Vivian’s eyes hardened.
Adrian looked from one woman to the other. “You know each other?”
Rachel reached into Oliver’s pocket and removed the faded photograph. She placed it on the table beside the candle.
Adrian stared at his younger face.
A flash moved behind his eyes: rain on a windshield, Rachel laughing, a ring hidden inside a diner sugar bowl.
Then pain closed around the memory.
“I don’t remember this,” he said.
Rachel’s anger faltered.
Vivian answered too quickly. “Because it never happened the way she claims.”
Oliver looked at Adrian, confused.
“You forgot Mom?”
Adrian’s face broke.
Rachel realized then that the man before her was not pretending.
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Someone had stolen more than seven years.
Someone had stolen the truth from all three of them.
