THE BILLIONAIRE’S PERFECT MATE

She was just a 17-year-old girl, shuffling between three part-time jobs and, at the same time, working as a sketch artist for a designer. She was doing all this to fend for herself and gather money to further her education. She was about to enter college when her mother died. She witnessed her mother burn to death in a blazing fire while trying to save her. Since the death of her mother, she had been on the run, fleeing her hometown to a place where she knew nobody, just to escape the people who had killed her mother.

She didn’t allow her mother’s sudden death to hinder her from achieving her goals, so she worked tirelessly, jumping from one part-time job to another. Her life hadn’t been perfect since her mother died, but she was still managing to pull through. Her daily routine involved leaving home as early as 7 a. m., heading to the designer’s store to make sketches in exchange for money, then heading to the coffee shop for her shift. Afterward, she would go to the local kitchen to help wash dishes. Lastly, she would work at the convenience store before heading home after her night shift. This cycle repeated every day, and she had become used to it.

One night, while heading back home, she encountered the man who made her a shadow of herself and turned her life into turmoil. She was walking home along the dark valley that night, thinking about how her day went, with her mind trailing back to her deceased mother. She missed her mother a lot, and whenever she did, she ended up curling herself up in a corner of her mini room and crying herself to sleep. That night, as she remembered her while walking back home, she tried to compose herself and not shed tears, but she couldn’t hold them back. She kept blaming herself for her mother’s death, thinking that if her mother hadn’t tried to save her that day, she wouldn’t have died in the fire. As she walked alone along the dark valley, her legs felt too heavy to carry as memories of the night her mother died kept rushing to her. She could remember the pain in her mother’s eyes and the last words she said to her: “Run. Run away as fast as you can and never look back.” These were her last words before she got engulfed in the fire.

Ellie looked around and found a corner where she hid herself, crying as much as she could. She didn’t want to cry in front of her grandmother as it always made her feel sad. The grandmother was the one who took her in and cared for her when she arrived in the city and was wandering around. Although they were not blood-related, they treated each other as family. They relied on each other as the grandmother, too, had no family. Her son, daughter-in-law, and their child had died in a car accident, leaving her without any family.

The moaning sound of someone crying in pain made Ellie wipe her tears and wonder where the sound was coming from. The sound seemed to be coming from a place close to her, and with the remnants of countless tears staining her cheeks, she set out in search of the person groaning in pain. After taking a few steps away from where she was standing, she saw a guy who seemed to be older than her lying on the floor, gasping for breath. His chest heaved violently with each attempt to draw in air, but the effort only seemed to make it harder. His eyes were wide with panic, and his lips were turning a frightening shade of blue. She was scared of the sight in front of her and decided to take to her heels, but the pleading voice of the guy made her halt.

“Ple… Plea… Please… help… me,” he managed to say, finding it difficult to breathe. His pleading voice and the devastating state he was in made Ellie change her mind and decide to help the guy in desperate need.

“What happened to you? Are you fine?” Ellie asked, kneeling close to him, trying to find out what was wrong. She noticed his lips moving, showing that he was trying to pass a message to Ellie, but she could barely hear him. She decided to lean in and move her ear close to his mouth.

“In… ha… ler,” she heard him say, and after piecing the scattered letters together, she realized what he meant.

“Hang in there. I will be back soon. Just think about the people you love the most and never give up. I will be right back,” Ellie said, letting go of his hand she was holding and hurriedly ran as fast as she could to a nearby pharmacy to buy what he needed to save his life. As she ran back to him with the inhaler in her hand, all she could think about was saving him. Although he was just a stranger and someone she hadn’t come across before, she didn’t want him to die. She didn’t want another person to die on her as she hadn’t gotten over the guilt of her mother’s death.

She got back to him just in time and hurriedly knelt beside him.

“Can you hear me?” she asked, her voice steady and reassuring. The guy slowly nodded his head weakly, his eyes locking onto hers as if she were his lifeline.

“Okay, just trust me. We are going to get through this,” Ellie said reassuringly.Content bel0ngs to Nôvel(D)r/a/ma.Org.

“I am going to help you use your inhaler now,” Ellie said, positioning the inhaler properly in his mouth.

“On the count of three, I want you to take a deep breath. Is that understood?” Ellie asked, wanting to confirm if the guy was still with her. He nodded his head in confirmation. As the medication was administered, he tried to inhale deeply, his body trembling with the effort. This process was repeated several times until Ellie noticed that the color had begun to return to his lips and his breathing, though still labored, became less frantic. He was lying weakly on the floor and couldn’t move his fingers.

Just when Ellie thought the storm was over and he had escaped the danger stage, his breathing became rough and rapid. He was breathing heavily as if trying to make each breath escape with force. This scared Ellie, who held him and tapped him to ensure he was safe.

“Hello, are you fine? Are you sure you are okay? You are scaring me,” Ellie asked in distress, not minding whether he actually heard her or not. In the process of making sure he was okay and trying to save him, he took a long heavy breath and then stopped breathing, which made Ellie fret.

“Excuse me? Are you still with me?” Ellie asked, shaking him in fear, but she got no response nor reaction from him. Ellie became tense and unsettled. She thought he might have fallen into a deep sleep, but when she placed her hand on his nose and didn’t feel any breath, her fear began to haunt her.

“Please, don’t do this to me. Do not die on me. Please…” Ellie kept saying while she shook him with tears rolling down her face, finding it hard to believe that another person had died on her!