DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 11, AUTHOR'S NOTE - 2/13/15, 3:39pm

I guess it's pretty clear that my only option, right now, is to start working on Part 11 as soon as I've posted this last update.

I'm really worried about Kyle. I don't think he was badly hurt, but I can't even imagine what it would be like to be dragged across a room by a fishing line. I have to remember how much he's gone through. He's been handcuffed to a pipe for days. And now he's down there, all alone, after only just learning that I'm going to be gone soon. I've had years to get used to the idea. He's only had a few minutes so far.

And now that the cop has involved Megan, everything's changed. I can't really give him any excuse to do anything to her. It's hard to imagine how much research he must have done into my life to know not only that Megan was my best friend, but also that she and Kyle had dated. I don't know if he'd heard Kyle and me talking about her, but somehow he knew that threatening to lock her up with Kyle would motivate me. And I hate myself for this, but, if I'm being totally honest, it isn't just that I don't want get Megan involved in this whole nightmare. I think I'd go crazy if the cop locked her up alone with Kyle. What if something did rekindle between them? Now that Kyle knows I'll be gone soon, what if he saw Megan in a new light? After all, she's going to live as long he is, years after I'm gone. I know I'm being paranoid and petty. But the only thing I want more than to finish my book before I die is not to lose Kyle.

After things quieted down earlier, I tapped on the radiator to make sure he was okay. While he tapped back that he wasn't hurt, and while he tried to explain how his heart was breaking that he would have to lose me, I stared out the window.

My eyes fixed on the little cottage across the way. I started tapping, cutting him off. I started playing my little mental game where I imagine me and Kyle in the cottage, this time, though, I tapped out our imaginary life together in the cottage. We'd sleep in, I tapped. We'd build a fire and make each other breakfast. We'd talk and laugh all afternoon in each other's arms. Then, when the firelight would die down, he would kiss me like he wasn't able to do today, and we'd go to bed. Then we'd sleep in again, and have another perfect day all over again.

Kyle didn't tap back right away, but I knew he was listening. After everything that had just happened, he was reluctant to just drift off into a fantasy like that. But he indulged me, eventually, and started tapping back about how, in the spring, we'd take walks in the woods, hand in hand, and watch the sunset from the porch. And I think it made him feel a little better, or at least just slightly a little less terrified of everything that our lives had in store for us, whatever was going to happen.

I told him that if heaven were real, and if I got to choose my own heaven, that would be what I'd choose: just the two of us in a tiny cottage, day after day, night after night. No one telling us what to do or keeping us away from each other. The perfect existence. I promised him that when I died, that's what I would die thinking about.

For now, though, I have to cling to the hope that before I die I'll actually get to be with him again someplace far from this tiny room, where he doesn't have to wear a fishing line around his neck, and where we can be together, completely freely, for more than a half an hour at a time.

So I'd better finish this book. Which means I'd better get writing.

See you on the other side of Part 11.