Chapter Eighty-Eight: Never

Adrian M Knox

"How is she?”

He asked as he closed the door to the hospital’s roof garden.

Leon liked it there; he liked all things peaceful and ‘crisp’, the perfect definition of a man who would say their ideal first date would be a walk in a park. He was a romantic, a threat to him when it came to Ruby because he could treat her with a gentleness he couldn’t muster.

He was leaning over the railing, completely disregarding the wooden bench decorated with bamboo on both sides.

"Normal, good. Is there a reason she can't smell you?"

Leon responded, and he stiffened.

Adrian wasn’t much of a smoker, but that question made him want to press one of Ruby’s drugs of choice between his fingers and inhale so that, for at least one second, he could feel how she does when she runs away through the smoke.

That is how she copes—coped. Cigarettes, right?

Was she smoking now—where she had run away to?

She was…afraid of him; she was crying as he fell asleep.

“Weird.”

He muttered, but again, Leon did no