Love At Last

CAYDEN’S ABSENCE

*LILY’S POV*

My days of blissful living never came to an end thanks to the unwavering love Cayden showered me – from doing little things for me to getting me assorted gift. I was definitely happy with the way I lived with Cayden by my side.

It was a Saturday morning, my doorbell ringing randomly became a custom for a while now and today wasn’t any dissimilar.

On getting the door, it was a delivery guy; thought as much.

“Hello?” I greeted.

“Hello? Miss Lily?”

“Yes that’s me.”

“You have a package miss,” he handed me over the package he was holding.

“Alright. From who is this?” I asked

“It’s written inside. If you may, sign here,” he held out a paper and a pen to me. I signed the paper and sent him on his way.

Unwrapping the gift, I found a card – which I thought to contain the sender’s information – that read:Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

‘From your unwavering love, Cayden.

Just as the water in the sea, oceans and water bodies at large never run dry,

So will my love for you.

Accept this gift as one of the numerous tokens of my love,

I love you.

Your love,

Cayden.’

I held the card to my chest, grinning from ear to ear while staring into empty space. Unwrapping the gifts, I saw that it was a special cooking gloves I had seen in the market one of the times we were together and picked interest in. I never thought he’d get it for me because I didn’t even know he saw me admiring it on display. Cayden’s consideration is one of the qualities in him I admired the most.

Full of energy, I picked up my phone to call him to express my deep gratitude for the gifts he sent. I dialed his line and held the phone to my ear but it was switched off, thinking it may have been network issues, I dialed for the second and third time but still got the same response. I kept the phone down, not really bothered – because it may have been he ran out of battery – and made up my mind to go to his house later in the day.

Later that very day, I packed pastries made with most of my new recipes for Cayden to have a taste of every one of them as a token of my appreciation, and went over to his place.

I hit the doorbell a couple of times and got no reply, I dialed his phone but he still wasn’t reachable; that was when I started to panic a bit, I was worried if anything had happened to him. I never had to hit the doorbell twice but today, I’d hit it a total of six times and still no sign of a living person in or around the house.

I shrugged it off and ushered myself out. While I walked down the street, a black sports car – 2022 Audi R8 – stopped abruptly directly before me. With a bundle of nerves, I fell to the floor which made the bag I held in my hand to spill over, exposing the contents. Angry, I stood up immediately and wanted to give the reckless driver an earful but instead of just any ‘reckless driver’ to come down from the car, Charlotte and Evelyn both alighted from the driver’s seat and passenger’s seat respectively.

“Oops! My bad Lily. You’re small I didn’t see you standing there,” Charlotte jeered with sarcasm in her tone. “Or did you see?” she turned to ask Evelyn.

” Nah, not at all.”

“Why are you doing this? What did I ever do to you girls to deserve these ill treatments from you?!” I posed the question to no one in particular, collectedly.

“The last time I checked, you don’t live here so why have you come to this peaceful neighborhood to disrupt its peace?” Charlotte questioned authoritatively.

“I bet she came to see her boyfriend!” Evelyn cried out.

“Oh! Cayden? The guy who moved?” I tilted my head sharply to face Evelyn who stood farther away from me than Charlotte did.

“Most definitely,” she affirmed.

She turned back to me and said: “I knew that handsome responsible young looking man would never fall for you, Lily. You should really learn your place in life,” she abused me smugly.

“I bet she was planning to get pregnant for the guy since he’s rich, and change her story for good!” Evelyn chipped in and they both laughed.

Charlotte clicked her tongue a couple of times, “too bad, Lily. Looks like your petty little ploy has failed woefully,” she kept jeering at me.

I closed the distance between I and Charlotte to her amazement and staring deep into her eyes, I said: “You can never know what true love is all about until you’ve experienced it yourself, Charlotte.”

“What?!”

“So before you… or you…,” I turned to Evelyn and back to Charlotte, “walk up to me again to speak trash about my relationship and love life, make sure to be able to understand the concept of true love to be able to distinguish it from the child’s play you both are used to,” I completed my statement feeling like the boss, leaving them both speechless for a while.

“Whatever you say, bitch. Just make sure to clear this trash,” she pointed to the spilled over pastries.

“They’re now useless, you can have them,” I froze them instantly and walked out the scene with my bag.

“What insolence!” I heard Evelyn cry out from behind me.

Walking out the scene, out of earshot, deep inside of me, I was worried sick about Cayden. I dialed his number again hoping it went through this time but same as always, it didn’t. It’s been days already!

I went on with normalcy, facing my business but with a little switch.

It’s been days now and lately, going to the market made me feel butterflies in my stomach as I’d seen or heard, a couple of times, people whispering obviously about me. They included people I did and did not know. The whole drama ended up dumping a grave amount of unwanted pressure on my shoulders and had me considering moving places.

Through out the ‘Cayden abandoned her’ fiasco, Cayden didn’t call me for once making me worried and upset at the same time.

*NEW YORK*

*Mr. STEVE’S POV*

I had some people keep tabs on my workers in an in depth manner and Cayden was very well among those I kept tabs on. I managed to get wind of the fact that he indeed had a woman who was already pregnant for him. I just couldn’t sit back and do nothing; I had to act.

I immediately thought of an idea and relinquished someone else’s duties to Mr. Cayden in a bid to get him out of Nedford for the mean time as his presence could hamper my investigation.

I called my secretary to my office that morning to give her daily reports on her findings.

“Anything yet?” I asked Margaret, my secretary.

“Here is a CCTV footage secured from outside his house sir,” she gave me the tablet in her possession.

“CCTV?”

“Yes sir. From the footage, the lady in question went to his house with her luggage and left not so long after.”

“If she came over with her luggage, she intended to stay?” I asked still buried in the footage.

“Probably, sir. But now, she’s no longer in Nedford, she booked flight tickets and left,” she detailed.

“Cayden must have sent her off?” I raised my head to look at her.

“Most likely sir.” I chuckled.

“Okay. Keep up the good work,” I commended.

“No problems, sir.” I excused her.

It felt a little dirty keeping tabs on someone like Mr. Cayden, but a bigger issue was at stake here – the image of my company.

*NEW ORLEANS*

*CAYDEN’S POV*

It’s been five days since I left Nedford on impromptu call from the secretary without informing the love of my life – Lily – of my whereabouts. I missed her so badly that the only thing I thought of that morning was booking the next available flight back to Nedford but I had one more issue.

My phone rung while I was making breakfast that morning and the caller was Eliana – my ‘one more’ issue. There hadn’t been a day since I left Nedford without she calling me and it irked me to my bones.

“Hello?” I picked the call in annoyance to tell her off for good this time.

“Cayden? How are you dear?” she spoke softly.

“Eliana this was no where part of our agreement, you know that?!” I ignored her pleasantry.

“How do you mean?”

“We agreed you’d stay off my back until a paternity test is done on your delivery. So why do you keep calling me so much?”

“Is it bad to call the father of my baby and tell him I miss him?”

“Quite audacious of you to call me the father of your baby. I haven’t accepted your pregnancy yet so please know when to draw the line,” I spoke courteously.

“But…,”

“If you keep breaching our contract, I’d be forced to breach too and stop giving you money!” I warned sternly.

“Fine!” she replied abruptly and hung up.

I set up the zoom meeting with my boss few minutes after I ended the call with Eliana to tell him I was through and that I wanted to head back to Nedford later that same day.

Mr. Steve denied my request out rightly for no good reason but never did I conceive in my head to go through with his order; my mind was already made up. I knew for a fact that I must have left Lily devastated and worried so I just could not bring myself to throw to the wind, an opportunity to go see her.

Following through with my plans, I had my flight tickets back to Nedford booked and in no time, I was already on that plane, heading back to Nedford!