First of all, thanks to the lovely people for voting and commenting. I really appreciate you guys. Here's the next chapter and I hope you all will enjoy reading it.

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When morning came, like everyday Evan waited for Ramona to come and visit him in this God awful hospital room. Yes, he had gotten that much irritated staying in this place. It felt like imprisonment.

Oliver had been in his room moaning by the sofa. "My body aches Evan. It hurts everywhere, I believe the doctors are lying. There's something really wrong with my kidneys."

Evan ignored Oliver's rant and paced the room, he was thankful that he hadn't got a broken leg like Oliver from the car crash. But he surely didn't feel so thankful anymore when he would try carrying Julius or hold Ramona. His hand hurt like a fuck!

With a sigh Evan plopped down on the sofa rubbing his broken hand with the good one. Ramona's thoughts were spreading their roots deeper in his mind and he'd by now figured it out that it was useless to do anything about stopping this process.

"...that nurse is a witch, Evan, I'm telling you. Who the hell pushes their patient's wheel chair off like that? She's brutal." Oliver continued.

Evan was in the brink of having a strong headache. He turned to glare at Oliver. "Please be quite in this room or leave, Oliver. I'm not interested in your sob story."

"She pushed my wheel chair so hard. She hurt me!"

"Weren't you at fault?" Evan countered.

Oliver looked like he was betrayed. "I was just trying to get Harry a date and the bitch a good time. And you're accusing me? It's not my fault that the ward boy and janitor got inspired too at the end of my speech and tried to seduce her!"

Evan pressed fingers on his temples. At this rate he would soon lose his mind.

The door creaked making Evan look up, his fingers paused their activities on his temples. To say he was shocked would be an understatement. He blinking profusely at the sight of Ramona, she looked well - beautiful than ever. Her hair a normal brownish color, she had gotten rid of all those eye dazzling colors of her hair.

Oliver had left the room not before winking meaningfully at Evan and smiling approvingly at Ramona, the reason behind her changed hair not unknown to them. It was safe to say that Evan didn't even notice Oliver's gestures, his attention was stuck on Ramona and how different she looked without all those blue and pink color on her hair.

She looked innocent and serene. Her real hair, those beautiful brownish tresses of silky mane looked like made for running his fingers through them. All this time Evan found Ramona slowly growing into him since the moment she crashed into his chest in her garden, the very next day after he came into the town. And now, as she was slowly crawling out of her cocoon of fear... Evan found this woman's real self completely and utterly irresistible.

Evan nodded at her to come closer to him and she complied. She was nervous, he noticed as she tucked a strand of her hair, her brown hair, behind her ear. But despite the nervousness she never looked away from his eyes. She stood right in front of him, gazing up at his eyes like a hypnotized woman.

"You look beautiful, your hair... they feel like made for running my hands through them." He spoke his heart out and he spoke honestly.

When he did just what he said and ran fingers through her hair, Ramona exhaled the breath she was holding all the while he was speaking. "Julius likes them too." She whispered breathlessly.

Evan chuckled, his low baritone vibrated through her body. "He does?"

"Yeah. He was staring awestruck at my hair the whole time he was with me and never stopped pulling it."

Evan nuzzled his nose with hers. "He's just like his daddy."

When Ramona inhaled it was his smell now that filled her lungs, she felt dizzy at the kind of pleasure she never knew could be created only by a mere smell. A very intoxicating smell of some soap, aftershave, cinnamon and what was just Evan in that case.

And his lips softly touched hers. There was no warning, no asking for permission, no dreading anymore this connection... this pull they felt towards each other. Because the both of them were anticipating this inevitable since a while now. There was no point in fighting a war that had already been lost.

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Evan plopped down on the sofa in his living room and sighed in relief. He had just gotten discharged from the hospital. And he couldn't be more pleased. He absolutely hated this whole hospital scenario since he witnessed and went through Zess's death there. Well, this time around it was bearable and ammusingly there weren't those revisitings through the memory lanes of his suffering as he lost his wife. Just this dull ache in his chest every now and then through the lonely nights when he lay awake at nights in that hospital bed and the drugs wore off from his system. Rest of the time, which was mostly the maximum of his days and nights of recovery, Ramona covered his mind and conquered all the bad thoughts.

It was just like a kid praying to the angels of sweet-dreams and the prayer had been listened.

There was his kid, Julius, quite fondly staring at Ramona sitting on her hip. Evan watched her carrying the besotted boy to the kitchen.

A smile played at the corners of his lips, Evan found himself in that state of besottedness too. Well until ugly groans evaded his living room. Evan turned to see Oliver entering the front door with two crutches holding his weight up.

"You could have at least lend me a hand while I was trying to get out of that damned car." Oliver accused.

Evan shrugged. "My hand's broken." He said simply.

"Your other hand isn't." Oliver threw up one hand in disbelief and in the process had almost lost the balance on his crutches. He got himself straight at the last moment though. "But of course you were too busy tucking Ramona's new hair behind her ears. And you say you're not in love! Men!!"

Oliver was a man too, Evan was about to kindly point out just that. But right at that moment the landphone rang, it was on the table right beside the electric fireplace. He was about to go get that but Ramona came out of the kitchen right then.

"I'll get that, you just rest there for a while." She said.

Evan smiled at Ramona yet once again. She was taking care of him like she was... Evan hauled his thinking process. What was she to him?

Oliver limped past Evan and towards the guest bedroom that he was staying in. He mumbled for only Evan to hear, "At this rate there's going to be another wedding right after Brandan and Emma's."

Evan couldn't retort back, Oliver had already left. The moron!

"It's your sister." Ramona's voice got Evan's attention back to her.

Evan slowly stood up wincing at the pain across his ribs and shoulder. He watched Ramona disappear in Julius's nursery.

And when he reached the phone and held it to his ear, he hissed at the loud female voice that greeted his ear drum when he did the mistake of asking who it was.

"Evan Stewart. Give me a good reason why in the hell - I, your only sister, not know that you and the psycho named Oliver have been hospitalized after being in a car crash that almost took your lives?"

Evan sighed at the very commanding tone of his sister, Emma. It wasn't her fault that she was screaming at him considering that if the tables were reversed, he would've done the same. Or worse. Hell, as far he remembered, he had done some worse in the past - like throwing a mad tantrum in Emma's house.

"Well, our phones were destroyed in that crash." Evan said, hoping it would convince her to calm down.

Emma snorted from the other side. "Not good enough, brother. You could have called me from someone else's phone. Besides I heard you're too busy with your girlfriend to talk to your sister. Not that I'm complaining about that, just be sure to bring her to my wedding."

It was really amusing how Emma's tone went from angry to excited. Evan was silent for a long minute.

"Hello! Are you still there... Evan?"

Evan cleared his throat. "Ramona's just a neighbor, nothing else. She's not my girlfriend or anything, Emma!" He made sure to keep his voice firm and steady. He didn't want anyone teasing him anytime soon.

"Well, whatever makes you sleep at night." He could almost see Emma rolling her eyes on the other side.

"Who the hell's giving you all these news?" Evan asked urgently.

"Oliver called me just this morning from some Harry's phone to beg me about telling him Elli's whereabouts. When as usual I refused to tell him anything, he kind of tried to emotionally blackmail me whining about his near brush to death."

"Why don't you already tell him where Elli is?" Evan asked sighing. "The guy is behaving like a love sick fool twenty-four/seven. It's annoying. In fact that's partially the reason why we got into that car-crash."

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Emma slumped back in the sofa. She wished she could do something about Oliver and Elli. "I promised Elli, I promised her that I won't let anyone know where she's. I haven't even told Brandan. You know I can't betray her."

She sighed and then smiled as a thought popped up in her mind. "But you know, I've been pestering Elli to come to my wedding. You know what I mean?" She asked meaningfully and chuckled when Evan got what exactly she was hinting at.

After talking for a couple more minutes with Evan, she hung up. Letting her eyes close she sent a prayer for Evan to get his happiness at last. She hoped for Oliver too to find his way to Elli.

Elli, the girl who had been once for her through thick and thin. Emma would be damned if she let her down and break the promise she made to her.

"Mommy?"

A sweet, worried voice made a slow smile spread on her lips long before she fluttered her eyes open. Sarah was looking up at her with wide eyes. Emma lifted her up on the sofa and kissed the girl's head. Sarah snuggled into her. "Sammy's not good."

Emma frowned, the smile was though still intact. "Why is that? Last time I heard you were very sure about how awesome your brother is."

Sarah pouted cutely. "He kicked Augustin."

Uh! So that was the case. Emma rested her cheek on Sarah's head smiling. "I'll scold Sammy not to do that again. But what did Augustin do that Sammy attacked the little guy?"

If it was possible, Sarah pouted some more. "Augustin did nothing wrong. He just said he'll marry me one day and then kissed my hands. Augustin said he watched the guy in his mother's favorite movie doing the same to his lady friend."

Emma sat up straight now. That pretty much explained everything. Sammy was no different than Brandan and the both of her boys were determined to act like bodyguards around Sarah. And since a while now, they had located a little boy of seven years old to be a potential threat.

Talking about bodyguards and threats, Emma's suspicion about Brandan's frantic attempts to wrap them up in security was getting impossibly suffocating day by day. No matter how much she tried, she was unable to punch any single word out of Brandan's mouth. Emma didn't know how to make her man understand that unknown dangers were triple times more worrisome than the known ones.

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Ramona stood by Julius's nursery door, she didn't mean to eavesdrop on Evan's conversation with her sister but the words just fell on her ears as she was making her way out to the living room.

"Ramona's just a neighbor, nothing else. She's not my girlfriend or anything..."

As she heard Evan said those, she felt like a nail was dig into her heart. She stood frozen at the truth of what Evan said.

Ramona walked out of the house unnoticed. Her stomach churned at the reality. Since when she had said everything about her past with Lucas to Evan in the hospital that day, she was feeling exceptionally comfortable around Evan. She felt safe with him and... happy.

Evan never failed to make her feel giddy with all his toe curling kisses. And they had been kissing quite a lot. Ramona felt herself pushed to a point by his seduction that she was craving for a repeat performance of the night of the storm.

And now Evan saying she was nothing to him... hurt, so much. Who was she to him then actually?

She walked slowly towards the park that was nearby to their houses. It was a little open place behind the suburb, children played here often in the evening. Ramona sat quietly on a bench. She didn't know what to think but one thing was for sure. Her heart was in danger.

Someone sat down next to her and his smell let Ramona know of his identity.

"How did you find me?" Staring at her fingers Ramona asked.

"I guessed you would be here when I found you no where else."

As Evan's breath fanned at the side of her face, Ramona knew he was sitting really close to her and was staring at her. One of his hands, the unbroken one, circled Ramona's shoulder sending pleasurable shivers down her spine as usual. She frowned.

"Why these lines on your forehead?" Evan asked softly.

"Just thinking."

"About... ?"

It took some time for Ramona to speak. "What's going on between us, Evan?" She sighed unsure of what words to actually use to make her confusion understandable to him. "I... I feel like..."

"I feel the same too." Evan said after a while when Ramona paused unable to complete her sentence. He turned to look away from her now and looked at the sky over the lines of trees.

Turning her face just a little bit, Ramona looked at Evan, his gaze as if solving unknown mysteries across the skies.

"And I don't want to..." He continued after pausing for just a second to turn and stare at her intently. "...fight this anymore."

Her heart beats increased to an impossible rate. "Neither do I."

Whatever this was between them - addiction, lust, affection, consequences of a one night mistake or just a phase - this was inevitable they realized. There's only so much someone could bang their head on a smirking, unnamed, unknown freak of a stone that wouldn't care to budge an inch.

Minutes later or it could be an hour, Evan walked inside his house hugging Ramona to his uninjured side. She had his face pressed to his chest, her hand went around his back to rest snug on his hip. And an embarrassing tent was forming pretty quickly in Evan's pants.

Guiding her to his room of course after peeking into Julius's nursery to check on him, Evan made Ramona sit on his bed. Not wasting second he kissed her, first slowly and then firmly. Increasing the speed of the strokes of his experienced tongue Evan smirked against her mouth after being successful of drawing out moans from her throat.

Soon Ramona found herself lying on her back. She gazed up at him through half closed eye lids as he slowly helped her get undressed. Heat pulled in her core at the sight of his eyes darken with primal lust as he took every inch of her naked body. She was amused though when he blinked it away and growled at the sight of her chest and stomach.

The scars! Ramona gasped in terror as she remembered about them. Immediately her hands flew up to cover her body. Evan had only seen the scars on her back and those were just the lighter ones. The most of Lucas's madness were drawn over her front side.

Evan dragged a hand down his face shaking in rage. Growling dangerously yet again he tried controlling his anger. But it was hard while his whole existence just wanted to hunt down that bastard of a man who did this to her. Breathing heavily Evan focused on Ramona, he drew in a sharp breath finding her face wet with tears. She looked dejected and ashamed.

With frantic gentleness Evan removed her trembling hands from over her body.

"Don't hide from me, Ramona." Evan spoke seriously. "You've nothing to be ashamed of. Believe me when I say that you're beautiful."

Getting himself unclothed too, Evan smirked at the awestruck look of Ramona as she still teary eyed was gawking at his whole length. He leaned over her while careful about not crushing her small frame. And then what he did made Ramona sob like a little girl. He kissed all of her scars, every one of them, not a single one of the scars were left untouched from his mouth. It was like he was spreading healing balm not only over the scars on her body but on her wounded soul as well.

And then he made love to her, not to satisfy their bodily needs but to heal a soul that was hurting for what seemed like an eternity.

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Take care. With love,
- Lara.