Snow Kissed

Chapter 19

If there was one person for everyone in this world, I would have been able to give it all up for him, but I knew that wasn't true. That couldn't be the truth because we had been so different. I had seen so many people around me find new love, I only hoped he would.

He deserved better, he deserved someone perfect and I wished him that with all my heart because he had in many ways stolen my heart. I didn't want it back, either, I wanted it to belong to him forever.

“Amy.”

I opened my eyes as Beth's soft voice shook me from my deep sleep. My extreme tiredness had begun to plague me the last days of our holiday, which I had agreed to stay at for longer than I would have normally. I was happy to be home to my normal life.

The car stopped outside my apartment building, and my eyes squinted into the streets of the city beyond.

“Hun?” Elizabeth called, taking me out of my daze.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, wiping the sleep from my heavy eyes. Undoing my seat belt, Beth and Steve exited the car to say goodbye.

I pushed the door shut, walking on the sidewalk out front my city dwelling. My purse on my hip and my luggage bag now in Steve's hand. The only things that had been recovered from my beloved Beamer.

Elizabeth pulled me in for a hug for what seemed like the twenty-zillionth time. “Alright, see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” I yawned, rubbing my tender side.

She stepped back and put her hands on my cheeks. “Jeez, Amy, you look tired. Get some rest. Remember, you have that big meeting tomorrow morning.”

I nodded, I remembered, but just now because of her.

She hugged me once more as Steve passed me the battered suitcase

“Thanks, Steve.”

“Bye, Amy,” he said as they got back in their sleek hatchback of tinted windows.

I looked up at the secure front doors of the sky-rise and walked to them, fumbling to find the keys in my purse. The door opened and the doorman greeted me.

“Happy New Year, Miss Black!”

“Thank you, you too,” I breathed as I stepped inside, the smell of cleaners and janitorial scrubs hitting me.

I wrinkled my nose and strode towards the elevator doors, led by marble floors.

“Oh, Miss Black!” The doorman appeared behind me. “There's a package for you.”

I stopped. “What?”

“Yes, right here.” He held out a cardboard box.

Looking it over in my hands, I mumbled a thank you.

The elevator doors dinged and my usual city-routine began to return. I was happy once I was alone and near my apartment door.

Swiping the key on the eleventh floor, I became overwhelmed by the smell of cleaners.

“What the heck is up with that!” I said aloud, annoyed with the pungent smells and the headache it was giving me.

I started to strip my jacket and moved to the bedroom, package in hand. I closed the bedroom door and looked around my minimalist room, expecting it bring me comfort, but nothing came.

I headed to my bed and sat, stripping my socks. The light from the floor to ceiling windows adding to my migraine.

Looking to the box beside me, it had no to or from address, but it did say Ms. Amy Black on the top.

I picked it up, bringing it in my lap and peeling back the tape with my ragged fingernail.

A soft smell of wood that reminded me of him took my senses and I pulled back the newspaper packaging, to reveal his box. My box.

Staring at the deer carving on the top, my hands lifted it free of the cardboard container. With no return address or contact information, it made me wonder if he'd personally delivered it.

Either way, I was happy to have it.

I put the packaging to the ground, taking it to my straight lined dresser and placing it down in a safe place. I ran my fingertips over it, remembering him. Looking up, I stared at myself in the mirror, I didn't look like the same person I had leaving the apartment weeks prior. I would never be the same either because of one person; Ean Hunter.