This small room starts to suffocate me, and I feel like the walls are closing in. Denham comforts Dana, and Lottie curls up in a ball on one of the chairs in the corner.
“I need air,” I whisper. Denham gives me a curt nod, and I don’t waste time in getting out of there. Am I using my old defense mechanism of running from the problem?
The corridors echo with the sound of bleeps, whirrs, and the sobs of loved ones. It’s a place full of emotion, yet so clinical and cold.
I step through the heavy double doors and drop back against the wall, filling my lungs with the night air. I don’t know what time it is, too late, or too early depending on the way you look at it, but I don’t care. The time of day doesn’t change a single thing. In this instance, the daylight wouldn’t make tonight’s events any more bearable. The more air I breathe in, the more clarity my head gains. My past has tainted more lives than just my own. Ignorance made me pass off the coincidences. Tara. Spike. Even the trouble with Amy. It all comes back to one person, and his obsession to possess me.
There are no coincidences, Arianna. I’ve controlled every situation you’ve been in, even the ones you can’t quite remember yet. I always have done. Always will do…
Why me? What is it about me that makes Jonny so determined to ruin not only my future, but risk other people’s lives and destroy them in the process?
I barely register the black sedan that pulls up in front of me through the mascara-streaked tears I’m crying. The tinted window slides down, and the engine keeps running.
When my blackened tears slow, and my eyes clear enough for me to see, I know what I have to do.
The handle clicks under my fingers, and the door opens easily. I hesitate for half a beat, but the vision burned into my brain of Spike lying on the sidewalk covered in blood makes me more determined to do what I’m about to do.
I slide onto the passenger seat without looking at the driver. I know who it is.
“It’s about time, beautiful girl,” he says, sliding his hand across my thigh.
“Fuck you,” I spit, knocking his hand away.
He laughs and then pulls away.
We drive out of the city. I don’t know where we are going and I don’t care.
My life is over.
When I left Jonny and started again, I thought it would be okay. I had never judged the depth of his obsession for me, and if I did have an inkling, I ignored it.
Stupid Girl.
He was right all along.
HowdidI think I could be free?
I was never free; he just gave me that illusion for a while, so the pain would be greater when I eventually came back.
He was right. Physically, he nevermademe come back to him. I came of my own free will. I walked to his car. I opened the door. And I got in without a second thought.
But mentally, he backed me into a corner and dragged me kicking and screaming. At every turn, I am tied. I am bound, gagged and helpless against the invisible ties he has imposed. Silently blackmailed into giving myself to him, with no way out. I would rather die than relive a life with him. But I won’t be the cause of someone else’s family being torn apart. I don’t want to be the reason that Spike is lying in that hospital bed fighting for his life. But it’s all because of me. And I won’t let anything else happen.
I know Jonny was the cause of this. I know he has been behind every underhanded situation that Denham has found himself in since he met me. The whole mystery with Tara was probably his doing too. And it stops here.
The thought of Denham’s worry when he realizes I’m gone chokes me.
But the thought of the hurt and pain I could cause, the damage I’ve already caused, threatens to suffocate me.
His family is everything to him. And I’m just a crazy girl he met just weeks ago, who flipped his world upside down and put them all in danger.
Classical music plays quietly in the background, and the bright city lights fade, flashing past as we drive away from the only happiness I’ve ever had.
Chapter 18
Arianna
Jonny takes me to a condo outside of the city. It’s fairly non-descript, just a house. A shelter to lay my head. Jonny has given me the spare room, which is the one thing I’m grateful for. But how long it will stay like this, I don’t know.
