This chapter is dedicated to SensGirl for being an amazing supporter of the story. I love you, man! Really!! ❤❤❤
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You know how people say that sometimes you're witnessing something and it's as if time in itself has come to a standstill around you? Well I was having one of those moments as I stood outside my bedroom door, staring Mathew in the eye as he stared back with so much intensity in his gaze that it was literally impossible to look away.

That was the first time I had to remind myself that my decision was right.

"Hey," breathed out Mathew in a raspy voice as he instinctively reached out a hand for me, almost yearning to touch me to assure himself that I was actually there. I, on the other hand however, hurriedly took a step back and away from his reach.

Gulping, I dreadfully looked up to find evident pain and hurt swimming in his eyes at my actions. His once vibrant blue eyes, so electrically blue that one could get easily trapped in them forever, were now dazed and glossed over; and it took my breath away to realise that I was the reason behind that.

"Hello," I managed to croak out despite of the ball of dread lodged in my throat.

A few minutes of painstakingly awkward silence later, Sandra coughed and gestured towards the living area. "I think we all should sit down and uh... talk."

Right, talk, it would require talking on my behalf in order for me to convey my decision.

While I made my way out of the hallway, into the living area and then proceeded to sit down on the sofa, I could constantly feel Mathew's unmistakable presence hovering just a millimetre behind me. That was the second time I had to convince myself of the rightness of my decision.

Once we were all settled down and I could no longer ignore Matthew's heated gaze on me, I spoke, "Th...thank you for the phone." I coughed and mentally scolded myself for stuttering. Then I placed the phone on the brown coffee table in front of me and pushed it towards him, "You can take it back now."

Chuckling lightly - and his small bout of laughter was more than just damaging to my decisive resolution considering that I was then willing to die to hear that melodious laugh of his - he slid the phone back to me and folded his hands in his lap.

"No. No, keep it. It's yours anyway. The only reason I had it was for safe-keeping. You know..." he averted his gaze and blinked, what I unfortunately realised were a few tears, before continuing, "until I could one day give it back to you."

Clenching my fists, I grumbled under my breath, "Just stop lying already."

"What?" Mathew and Sandra both enquired at the same time.

"I said," with my voice rising with each syllable as I stood up from my seat on the sofa, "stop lying!"

A startled look would be an understatement for how Mathew looked then. "I'm sorry, love, but I don't understand. I...I'm not lying."

"Yes you are!" I suddenly bellowed. "You're lying because you did not have the phone for safe-keeping! You had it so that you could rant in voicemails about how horrible a human being I am and how horrendous your situation was! You used it as your personal diary to catalogue all your days' tiring details regarding your hopeless endeavour to somehow find me!"

"Emma!" Sandra screeched in. "Don't talk to him like th-"

Whipping my head to face her, I shouted, "Sandra, just shut up for once!"

By then, hot angry tears were rapidly flowing down my cheeks, and just as swiftly I was viciously rubbing them away with my palm.

"Love," Mathew carefully rose from his seat and moved towards me with his hand outstretched. "Please don't fight with your sister over this. And yes, you're right," he was standing right in front of me now, "I'm lying. I did use the phone, your phone, as some idiotic means to relieve my frustration, without thinking much of how the messages would affect you when you'd listen to them."

I took in a sharp breath, too intoxicated by his smell and his soft touch on my arm, to be able to remember how to breathe properly.

Then I saw Mathew's saddened eyes and had to, for the third time, remind myself of the pros of my decision.

It was too much to handle, too much to wrap my head around without losing sight of where I was supposed to be heading. And so, I did what any desperate person would've done in a situation such as mine: I flinched away from his touch, promptly ignoring the wave of hurt across his face.

"Ems, love, I'm sorry for everything that's happened." His voice nearing the edge of desperation and begging as well, he continued, "But please don't blame yourself for any of this. None of it was your fault. It was your parents' and mine and... and fate's fault..."

I cut him off then. I had to cut him off or otherwise I would've lost whatever little slivers of resolution and sanity I had left. "I think you should go."

He stopped talking; stopped advancing towards me; stopped breathing altogether. "Wh...what?" he wondered out loud, his voice breaking at the end.

Fourth time's reminder: My decision was for the bigger good; everyone's better future.

"I deserve time to think this all over and you deserve time to actually live your life instead of this mere existence that you have at the moment," I played out my explanation with a slightly shaky voice, placing in as much certainty as I could manage to in my little speech.

His face suddenly hardened, pushing out his jaw-line and making it much more prominent from his otherwise soft features. "No. No I don't," he all but spat out. "Fine, I agree that you deserve some time to think but, I don't..."

It might have been the breaking of my facial expressions or the catch in my voice or may be the fresh batch of tears swimming in my eyes, which had him stop mid-sentence when I said, "Please, Mathew. Just... just leave."

For a few moments he just stood there, the tick in his jaw gone and now replaced with a completely defeated expression that had me breaking and crumbling even more. He stood there and just stared at me, into my round doe eyes, with his glazed over electric blue ones.

Then he lowered his head and mumbled out a weak, "Okay." And that was the last thing he said before walking out the flat's door and closing it after himself.

As soon as he was gone, it was like all the fight left me and I all but collapsed down onto the sofa behind me. In a heartbeat my sister, Sandra, was beside me. She hugged me, saying nonsense soothing words into my ear while I sobbed on her shoulder without any tears left to spill; seemed as if I had finally dried up my reserve of tears for the day.

Sometime later, after I had repeatedly assured Sandra that I would be fine alone and that I just needed a little time to clear my head, she left me alone in the living area and headed to her own bedroom. As soon as she did that, I laid back my head against a pillow and sunk further down into the plump cushions beneath me, replaying the day's ordeals in my head in a vague attempt to sort out all the mess.

It might have been about an hour after that when I woke up to the sound of something ringing. By the time I gained back full consciousness and realised that it was Matthew's, my, phone which was ringing, the call had already been missed.

Looking up to gather my surroundings, I found San leaning against the kitchen counter with a spatula in her hand. Behind her I could make out little puffs of steam rising from a pan while a few random ingredients were laid out on the shelf.

Noticing my confused expressions, Sandra chose to elaborate, "After you fell asleep, I came in here to do a little cooking to..." she cleared her throat before adding, "to clear my head a bit."

"Hm mhm," I mumbled a little something in acknowledgment, still the slightest bit incoherent from my sudden nap. Just then, while I was sitting with my head in my hands to work through my little headache, the phone pinged and its screen lit up with a notification.

I picked up the phone and squinted at the brightly lit screen to read off the notification. My hand froze around the metallic body and I was sure my face looked ghost pale. Confirming my suspicions, San enquired, "What's wrong? What does it say?"

Looking up to face my worried looking sister, I whispered in a shaky voice, "It's a voicemail... from Mathew."

"W...well play it then. And put the phone on speaker too," instructed Sandra as she hurriedly turned off the stove and came to sit in front of me, atop the coffee table.

Gulping down yet another ball of dread down my swollen throat, I pressed play and crossed my fingers in vague prayers for hope.

"Okay so I get where you're coming from.

"I spent the better half of the last hour sitting outside your doorstep, hoping that you would come out and then we may proceed to ride off into the sunset."

I felt a pang of guilt at the bottom of my stomach; just adding a bottle-full to the rest of the ocean of guilt I was barely staying afloat in.

"Of course that didn't happen. So, I've spent the last twenty minutes, walking along your compound, contemplating every bloody thing that went wrong. I mean first of all there was that accident. Then you lost your memories, followed by my evermore increasingly unfortunate coma. Following all this was your parents' death."

I marvelled at his self-control as he talked about all of this, considering his break down in the voicemail when he had found out about mum and dad's passing. Then again, for him that specific incident had taken place almost a year ago – quite a lot of time to grieve and move on.

"So yeah, I agree that we have been fucked over by fate, but that's fine. And you know why that's okay? It's because we, nor me and neither you, can or could've done anything about it. And yes, I also agree on having made a lot of bad choices along the way. One of them would be not telling you everything sooner. But again, all of that's just fine because it's already been done."

He breathed heavily at the end of his rant and I breathed in sharply. Looking up at my sister for some kind of support, I found her patting and squeezing my knee as she nodded in encouragement.

"Now about what isn't fine and will never be: this decision of yours.

"I've lived the last year in the shadows, hoping like a coward for a better future because I was too afraid to do what was required of me - facing you and telling you the truth.

"And now when the truth's finally out, I can not be a coward anymore, Ems. Because you deserve better and yes, I deserve better than that. So I will not stop fighting for us. I won't stop until you realise that your decision is not for the better and that-"

Suddenly he stopped talking and the short silence was soon filled with the noise of a car honking unbelievably loud, followed by a shout of 'Hey, watch out!'. Next the speaker was filled with the sounds of crashing metal and more horns and then more collisions. And then the voicemail beeped to its end.

The only thing my ears could register was the erratically loud beating of my heart as I stood up, the phone falling to the floor from my limp hand with a frighteningly familiar crash.

"Emma," Sandra cautiously reached out a hand to touch my shoulder.

Her touch was all I needed to snap out of my haze. "No," I muttered with a haunted look in my eyes as I flinched away from my sister and ran towards the flat's door.

"Emma, wait!" Sandra's words fell on my deaf ears as I dashed out of the door and down the building's stairs.

All the while my brain replayed the crashing sounds from the voicemail, and with tears blurring my vision, I kept mumbling the mantra, "No, no, no. God, please. No."
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Lyrics of song "Not today" by Imagine Dragons:

There she goes in front of me
Take my life and set me free again
We'll make a memory out of it
Holy road is at my back
Don't look on, take me back again
We'll make a memory out of it

We finally fall apart and we break each other's hearts
If we wanna live young love we better start today

It's gotta get easier, oh easier somehow
Cause I'm falling, I'm falling
Oh easier and easier somehow
Oh I'm calling, I'm calling
And it isn't over unless it is over
I don't wanna wait for that
It's gotta get easier and easier somehow
But not today
Not today

There she goes in front of me
Take my life, set me free again
We'll make a memory out of it
Holy road was at my back
Don't look on, take me back again
We'll make a memory out of it

We finally fall apart and we break each other's hearts
If we wanna live young love we better start today

It's gotta get easier, oh easier somehow
Cause I'm falling, I'm falling
Oh easier and easier somehow
Oh I'm calling, I'm calling
And it isn't over unless it is over
I don't wanna wait for that
It's gotta get easier and easier

So come with me
You'll come with me ey
So come with me
You'll come with me ey
Not today
Not today
Not today
Not today

It's gotta get easier and easier somehow
Cause I'm falling, I'm falling
And easier and easier somehow
Oh I'm calling and calling
And it isn't over unless it is over
I don't wanna wait for that
It's gotta get easier and easier somehow
It's gotta get easier and easier somehow
Not today
Not today
Not today
Not today
Not today
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Hey guys! How are you all???

*smiles sweetly*

...
...

*drops the act*

OKAY! I KNOW that I'm a HORRIBLE person but please stash away your pitchforks and guns and knives and whatever means of torture you've got pulled out, because I'LL UPDATE THE NEXT CHAPTER ON THIS WEDNESDAY!

YES, I'LL UPDATE THE NEXT CHAPTER IN TWO DAYS' TIME!!

*disappears because doesn't want to further try her luck*

Vote, comment and share my beautiful, crying and vengeful friends!!! ^_^

Much love,
-zainab