8. DANGEROUS SURVIVOR or A BRINGER OF DEATH

JELA

I opened my eyes with a gasp. I felt the sweat dripping from my forehead. As my heart pounded in my chest, my breath hitched.

Think of something, anything other than Sean.

I tried to concentrate on the white ceiling. It didn't help, and somehow I ended up seeing someone's bluish-grey eyes in my mind. And slowly, I had my breathing under control. I hate to admit that the color of his eyes made me calm.

This is it. My time for sleep is up. I couldn't go back to it no matter how much I tried. It has always been like that ever since I followed him to his house.

In my room, I had no television. I was too lazy, too exhausted, and mostly terrified to go to the living room. So, for the first time, I started to explore the room I am dwelling at.

The walls are grey. There is a black bedside table, and my bed is white with a fluffy duvet. There is a grey-colored chaise lounge overlooking the window. And a closet which has a safe. That's it. Nothing interesting. No painting, no photograph, and not even a vase. And I liked this. It was everything most people consider a boring bedroom. I liked it for that. I opened the table drawers and indeed, I found something interesting.

There are white charts rolled and tied into a bundle. I opened them with zeal and all I found are pencil sketches. Whoever drew this was an awful artist. I don't know if I could call him an artist. (or her)

But I observed one thing. All the sketches are similar. The person tried to draw a room in the background, and the highlighted man with guns. Then there is a boy with blue eyes and a woman with grey hair. I am curious now. Who would draw this and keep it here? There is only one person living in this house. I chuckled at the thought of Sebastian, the great, sitting before a canvas and drawing these. That smile quickly vanished when I heard a knock.

I turned around.

Knife, where are you dear?

*

Violet was right. He has abs, not eight but six. She was so right. He is all ripped, and he has that hardest part of the abs to sculpt- the V. The V, Ridge was trying hard to attain. I raise my head to look at his chiseled face. It was usually blank, giving me no hint to get inside his head.

Let's not go to the peak directly. I could finally see that tattoo on his left upper chest region- the pulmonary area. It was weird. There are two crescent moons facing each other, adjoined by a straight line, and then another line across that line, with two circles at the two ends. I wonder what's it meaning was. Never did I see that symbol before.

"For what do I owe this pleasure?" I asked him, raising my eyebrow.

He looked down at himself and sighed as if he wasn't aware of how he came to my room. Then his gaze shifted to me again, and a nasty smirk invaded his face.

"I have seen better," I told him.

He shook his head slowly, "I am sorry," He said.

"I can't hear you, what?"

He scoffed at my words.

"My ears aren't working properly since this morning. Repeat what you said."

"Jela," He spoke impatiently.

I don't know why but whenever he called me by my name, I get nervous, I get a weird sensation, and a familiar feeling yet so unfamiliar.

"I forgot something in this room. I came to take it." He explained.

"In the middle of the night?" I questioned him.

His right hand reached for his left wrist as a habit. I saw him fidgeting with his watch a lot. Since he doesn't have a watch now, he ran his hand along the wrist, gripping it tightly.

"You are awake."

Because I had nightmares. I wonder what he had got to come down here at this hour to fetch things. Is he awake too? Is he working? Or does he have nightmares too? I don't think so. He seems powerful enough to scare those nightmares away. But what kind of man can remember something to fetch in the middle of sleep and comes running for it?

"I promise, I will take a minute." He said, bringing me back from my thoughts.

"No, tell me, Where are they? I will fetch it for you. Ten feet distance, remember?"

"That was not something you..." He paused, looking at my bed.

I turned around to look at what he was staring at and there they are the sketches.

His jaw tightened, and he walked past me. He took all the sketches, rolled them, and tied them into a bundle.

"You can't just go through my things," He says while still tying them into a bundle. He doesn't have to raise his voice to say that he is pissed. His eyes are speaking enough.

"Things which are in my room?"

"This is my house, so technically, it is still my room." He said immediately.

And he reminded me again, how pathetic I have been. "I have my home. If it's not for your stupid ass deal, I would have happily gone there."

He didn't say anything even though he looked like he wants to say something.

"Please take away, if there were any other pathetic paintings you drew and hid. Don't disturb me in the middle of the night." I told him when he was leaving.

His grip on the bundle in his chart tightened when I called his sketches pathetic. Seriously! Did he get offended?

"They are not that good. You can't do it even if it's your passion," I stated just to make him realize the facts here. He seemed serious about the sketches. He shook his head slowly and then walked out as I made out his ass.

Did this guy come into a girl's room in nothing but a track and left doing nothing? Oh, Bash, you must have really hated me.

*

Nora and Ridge are looking at the picture I drew on a tissue. We are all in scrubs. Today was too long to spare some time to change. So we came out to a nearby canteen in our blue scrubs. Ridge hasn't even removed his stethoscope from his neck.

In the time I completed my burger, Nora has come up with an explanation for my sketch, "It's Stygal." She said.

"Stygal?" Ridge and I asked in unison.

"It means the bringer of death. I couldn't find much about it on the internet. The symbol you showed is of Stygal."

Ridge and I widened our eyes at her words, "Bringer of death? But why would a businessman have a tattoo like that?" I asked. It seems like some dreadful monster who eats children in a fairytale."

"Enough of the fairytales, both of you." Ridge snapped, taking the tab from Nora's hands. He beckoned her to eat and switched off the tab. "Tattoos are common. Even a fifteen years kid had 'my life my rules, vultures, wolfs, even tiger's claws, and skeletons' tattoos. No big deal."

"It is a big deal. I need to know what kind of man I am living with."

Nora tapped my shoulders, "I agree." She said.

We nodded our heads in unison.

Ridge's lips twitched as he fold his arms across his chest. "You guys are pathetic. Deep down, you want him to be some vampire or werewolf in exile from his family, right?"

"I think it would be really fun if he is not human." Nora smiled with dreamy eyes.

No, no, no. I seriously don't want him to be anyone but a human being.

Ridge shook his head, looking at Nora. "We need to admit her to hospital. Those novels are getting into her every nerve," He whispers in my ears.

"Enough of the novels. Let's figure out about this contact-le..." I bite my inner cheek to prevent myself from speaking those words. As much as I hate to admit it, his eyes were real.

"As I said, it's no big deal. Even fifteen years boys have...."

"I heard you for the first time," I cut him off.

But that's the thing. Bash is not a boy. He is the man. I can't decide that for three meetings. But he never shouts, he always looks calm, serious, and calm, even though he is an asshole, he is gentle, and with all these things, his aura screams something else.

Ridge snapped his fingers in front of my face, "Where were you?" He asked me. "I know your concerns. But he won't kill you, will he?" He says.

Yes, he won't. But he can do something else. Men are capable of dreadful things other than killing when they had women within their reach. I keep telling myself that not everyone will be like Sean. Still, the broken trust was too enormous to mend it back.

I remember the sketches he drew. I wouldn't have convinced myself that he drew it until I saw the tattoo. The sketches contained guns, large ones, small ones, and armed men, then the tattoo he had, a room full of toys, a little boy, and a woman with grey hair. I wonder what they are.

Something about him is different. The tattoo, the guns, the death, and a boy. Now, I really became curious. So I opened the wiki to know about them and the content there shocked me.

He is an orphan. An old man took him in his care. That man died in a fire accident along with his friends and only, Bash was the survivor. Everything he own was built by him. It wasn't inherited. He aced in all his degrees. Now, he is rich, powerful, talented, and smart.

But they didn't mention one thing. No one did. Even I don't know. But those sketches, his tattoo, the way he ran to my room in the middle of the night, and the boy in the drawings made me think that he is a survivor at the same time, he is dangerous.

Probably, he is a dangerous survivor or a bringer of death.