Bought For A Baby, Kept For A Lifetime-Chapter 250: Guilt

His breath felt closer, but then farther again, when she glanced up his face was no longer so close, nor was he leaning towards her. Slowly he pulled away and she felt him settle back in his seat behind her.

Anne was suddenly broken out of the romantic allure the moment had entrapped her in.

The flight lasted for a while, Anne didn’t keep track but it felt like an hour or two had passed by. The helicopter finally descended in a strange place that looked like the top of a mountain.

Looking outside Anne saw a huge river below the mountain and cascading water far away, it took her looking again to realize that it was a waterfall. The water thundered down from the distant waterfall into a misty river below, the water seemed to cascade over rocks creating a display of white foam over the river surface.

The air was extremely chilly that it blew over her puffy coat making her shiver immediately she stepped down from the helicopter.

Andrew suddenly wrapped something around her neck, tying it at the front, when she looked down she found a thick scarf which protected her from the cold weather.

Far in the distance behind there was a mansion sat at the very top of the mountain, a paved road that seemed to start from down below led upwards to the mansion, there was a black Mercedes Benz Maybach parked on the paved road and a man one could tell was it’s driver waiting outside the car.

"Does this make the cold better?" Andrew asked peering into her eyes questioningly.

Anne nodded and only then did he lead her towards the car where the expectant driver opened the doors greeting Andrew in a foreign language that sounded somewhat German but not quite exactly German.

The interior of the car was a reprieve from the cold outside. The car began to drive up the road smoothly until it arrived in a very vast yard within the mansion.

Along the entrance hallway there was a long line of waiting staff dressed in a light red and white uniform attires. They bowed in greeting upon their entrance.

Anne glanced around the tall ceilings, abundant chandeliers that brightened up everywhere, the swirling long staircase.

When Andrew reached a room situated at the end of a certain hallway whose paths were decorated with smooth carpets that gave the entire place a majestic feel, Anne felt her heart thud nervously.

Was he in that room?

Was Kristen in there?

Several times after she had come to find out that Andrew had moved him, Anne had asked him how her brother was doing, he had probably sensed her need to see her brother and brought her here.

Yes she had wanted to come, but now thinking about seeing him in that state made her scared and nervous. Maybe she had used the past few weeks she hadn’t seen him as an escape from the pain of seeing her loved one so helplessly sick.

Andrew’s conversation with a man outside the door of the room was just a faded blur when her attention wasn’t with them, she kept staring at the white and gold colored door in front of her as fear made her heart race.

Later, the man Andrew was talking to nodded several times to something Andrew had said and left.

Anne looked up because she felt Andrew’s gaze on her.

"You can go in and see him now."

Despite receiving this permission, her legs didn’t move. When Andrew began to make a move to leave, she realized he was giving her privacy to see her brother and be with him.

"Are you leaving?" She found herself calling after him and he stopped, looking back at her to gauge her expression before replying with a shake of his head then adding,

"I just need to see to some things. There’ll be someone outside this door in a while and you can ask her if you need anything."

Even as she watched his tall figure walk away, Anne felt the urge to ask him to stay, to go in with her. He was giving her privacy, but somehow she thought the presence of someone else would keep her sane and would force her to keep her emotions in.

Taking in a long breath when she was alone, Anne grabbed the door knob, twisted it and pushed the door open a crack but stopped momentarily.

She was assaulted with a clean medical scent at first, it almost fooled her into thinking she was in a hospital but this was a residence which she didn’t know who owned or who lived there or if it even belonged to Andrew himself, she just knew that her brother was behind this door.

Anne hesitated a bit before walking in, she was welcomed into a vast, clean white room.

Anne expected a lot of things, she expected her heart to break once she walked in and saw her brother again, she expected to cry, to feel guilty all over again for being unable to keep her brother safe.

It was a responsibility that belonged to her from the very start but she had failed and that was why Kristen was currently bed bound. From the very moment he had gotten hurt she had not once visited her parents graves.

How could she show her face to them when she had failed in fulfilling her responsibility?

How could she go to her parents when her brother was hanging between life and death. She had done everything in her power to bring him back, she had sold herself, her own body which had been her last resort just to bring Kristen back.

And as she walked in, the guilt was already burning and choking her chest until what she saw made her feet freeze in the same spot not moving as if glued to the floor.

The sound of wind hitting the glass windows filled the room, there wasn’t any beeping sounds like she would always hear whenever she was in Kristen’s room, nor was the young man sitting on the only bed in the huge room attached to any device that gave him breath or kept him alive, that was because he was breathing on his own, living and...awake!

Anne’s heart completely stopped beating for a second then became heavy like a drum pounding against her ribs.

The first thought that came to mind was that she was dreaming, it had to be. Because for the first time in a very long time she was seeing those light brown eyes that looked like her own staring back at her, she was seeing that youth, who looked very different from how he was a year ago smiling at her with a face very similar to their father’s.

She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe...

"Kristen..." Her lips struggled to move and the voice that came out of her was shaky. "Kris..." She tried to say his name again but a rush of tears clogged her throat drizzling warmly over her face.

"Anne." The voice that said her name was manly, it sounded like her brother and at the same time didn’t sound like him, deeply hoarse.

"I thought they were lying when they said I would see you tonight." As he said this single sentence, he was breathing heavily as if the words had been difficult to form, but he laughed regardless of the way he spoke, the short sound of his laughter awakening her from her stupor.

She wasn’t dreaming, her brother... Kristen was awake!

He was... finally...

Uncontrollably, her legs moved sprinting towards the bed, immediately pulling Kristen into her embrace. He felt fragile but real, but he was back.

He was back!

Soft, body shaking sobs came out of her mouth, there were so many things she wanted to say, so many questions she wanted to ask but none of it came out, only tears that kept coming over and over again.

After all this time, after everything she had sacrificed, Kristen came back to her!