“Bess, he’s fine. You told me yourself, he’s in rehab. That’s a good thing, right?”
I nodded.
“Now, come here,” he said and pulled me into bed, tucking me in next to him. Shifting our bodies, he molded me to his form, barely giving me room to breathe.
I woke to shouting, kicking, screaming.
“No! Jake! Look what you did ... Jake!”
Lane grabbed my wrists and shook me, hard. My head was banging against the mattress, my neck feeling like it was going to snap.
“Lane!” I yelled. When that didn’t bring him to his senses, I slammed my knee up into his abdomen. It was my only defense.
“Oh, you’re fighting back, Jake? This is all your fault! Take it.”
“Lane! It’s me! Bess,” I shouted, my voice hoarse from trying to be heard over his.
Another knee to his gut, more yelling of his name, and finally his eyes popped open and focused on me.
“Bess?”
Realization of what happened flooded him, his face growing pale in the faint moonlight streaming through the window. “Oh shit! No!” he said as he slumped back and moved all the way to the edge of the bed.
“It’s okay,” I said.
But I wasn’t. My wrists burned from his fingers, my heart ached from the stress, and I had a headache—either from the banging or the screaming.
Lane threw his arm over his face and said, “You have to go.”
“What?” When I turned to him, he rolled the other way, giving me his back.
“You have to go,” he said. “Now.” Then he felt along his nightstand until the glow of his phone filled the room.
He was on the phone, apparently with an assistant, and the details of the one-sided conversation washed over me.
I was leaving.
Now.
There was a car coming.
A flight was arranged.
So I packed my bags silently, determined not to argue with him. But when we made it down to the driveway, I wasn’t able to keep quiet anymore.
Standing in the muggy, bug-infested Florida night, I turned and faced the man I’d traveled to help. “You know what, Lane? I’ll leave. I’ll run like you want me to, so you can blame me or whoever else you want to blame. But you and I both knowyouneed help.”
Throwing my hands out, I said tersely, “Get it! Not for me, but for your own peace of mind. You’re eating yourself alive, and that’s something I know all about. The end is never pretty, and I would hate to see you go out like that, but it’s happening. You’re going to end up empty and soulless.”
Lane didn’t say a word. He just stood there, expressionless, staring at me with his arms crossed over his chest, removed from any responsibility.
When the car pulled up, he said, “There’s no other way. You’re right. I’m not going down a pretty path, Bess. So just go. You don’t deserve this. Run, and do it fast.”
I saw a lone teardrop slide down his cheek before I got in the back of the car, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the headlights shining on his brooding figure as we pulled away. Alone in the back of the town car, I cried. For him, not for me.
Lane had two choices now. Find a better, stronger drug than me to wipe away the pain. Or face the truth.
I hoped he picked the second.
