Page 45 of Wreck Me

Bye. Love you!

See. It just comes out so naturally.

If it came out so naturally, why hadn’t he slipped and said it before?

Standing, I lunged through my bedroom door to go to him, wanting to look him in the eyes and find out if he meant it, but as my feet touched the carpet, the door’s lock clicked into place as it shut behind him.

Dropping back onto my bed, I climbed back under my covers, my heart racing. I was trying to fight against the smile tugging on my lips, not wanting to get my hopes up, but the butterflies in my stomach wouldn’t settle. I felt like a giddy little girl, so hopeful of what could be.

* * *

For the secondtime that morning, I denied my mother’s call.

The only time she ever called me was when she knew I was upset, and this time, upsetbarelycovered what I was feeling. Having no interest in hearing what she had to say, I couldn’t see the point in wasting time with a one-sided conversation where my mother made excuses and downplayed what had happened. The bottom line was my father treated me about as well as he treated the dirt on the bottom of his shoe—like it was merely a necessity to get to where he was going. That’s how it had always been with him. The concept of ‘daddy’s little girl’ was something I had never experienced, because where most fathers fell madly in love with their daughters once they were born, mine took one look at me at birth, confirmed I was in fact a female, and tossed me aside like yesterday's newspaper in the driveway.

I wasn’t still angry—sure I had a lot of pent-up rage and internal trauma associated with the role of being Isla Donohue, daughter of tech-titan Andrew Donohue—it’s that I had lost all interest in keeping up the charade of being their perfect, moldable daughter. It was like the last thread connecting the part of me harboring the need to please them had completely snapped.

Being forced into a career path I didn’t want and taking over a company I had no interest in was one thing, but being forced into an arranged marriage? Ha! Absolutely not.

The last several days had given me time to think and plan. I was still applying for jobs, sending out follow up emails, and had even resorted to cold-calling businesses to ask if they were hiring. So far all I had heard was a bunch of no’s, and a few ‘the hiring manager is out of the office but let me take your name and number…’. It was exasperating, and even though I was trying my darnedest to not let it, the feeling of rejection was taking a toll on my confidence.

I began to dread December as it approached, even though it was my favorite month of the year. Only a few weeks remained until I finished my business degree and graduated—an exciting time I should have been looking forward to celebrating was proving to be more of a death sentence for my short-lived independence. The clock was ticking, but I did everything I could to hold on to my freedom—my saving grace being my apartment lease not ending until March.

That gave me three additional months to get my act together and find a job. Then I’d either have to follow my father’s path for me or cut ties completely.

As nauseating as the thought of losing absolutelyeverythingwas, it was my only option. Not the slightest part of me wanted to run a tech company or be even more connected to my father. And I certainly wouldn’t marry someone for the sake of business.

I wasn’t a transaction. I was a person.

And I was done being a pawn in my father’s game.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

Something wasn’t sitting right.

It was four o’clock—my final hour at work—and I was the last one here for the day, sorting packages into their respective bins for carriers to pick up tomorrow morning. The task was mundane—hell, the whole job was mundane—but it was necessary for my paycheck.

Unfortunately, with mundane came less focusing on my job and more time to let my thoughts linger on every other aspect of my life.

It had been a week since I’d been back to my house and had last seen my dad, and I couldn’t get his words out of my head. The hostility in his tone was haunting me, and the way he had said‘she deserved everything she got’.

The longer I mulled over his words, the more nauseous I felt. Missing pieces and discrepancies from my childhood had me questioning everything about my mother leaving us. Why, after so many years, had she never come back? Was she so fearful of being face to face with my dad again, keeping her from even trying? And if she was fearful of my father, why would she leave me with him? She swore we’d be together, but then she left me behind. I was her son. Was I really so insignificant to her she wouldn’t even wonder about me after so much time had passed?

The entire interaction with my dad and my spiraling questions left a pit in my stomach I couldn’t shake no matter what I tried.

And then there was Isla. My starlight. The girl I didn’t deserve yet still had agreed to be mine.

Telling Isla I loved her as I was on my way out the door the morning after Thanksgiving had been a complete fuck up on my part. It wasn’t that the statement wasn’t true, it’s that it should have never fallen out of my mouth like it had. The slip up had been so natural, I almost hadn’t realized I said it. But Isla had heard it, I was sure of it. The way the apartment fell silent and neither of us said anything before I finally turned and bolted out of the front door. Not so fast that I hadn’t locked the bottom lock, securing her safely inside, but either way, I ran away fast as hell, like a dog with its tail between its legs.

It had been almost a week since I uttered the words I wasn’t ready for her to hear yet, but ironically, it was like I had never said them at all. I had expected Isla to ask questions the moment I got back to her place that night, but she hadn’t, and like the coward I apparently was, I never brought it up.

So all week long, my mind had been a battlefield, hyper fixating on one explosion to another.

Despite the chaos in my head, Isla and I fell into an easy routine full of sex, studying for finals, and work. Well, I had work.

Unfortunately, Isla hadn’t had any luck with nailing down an interview. She was determined—I’d give her that. The fire inside of her to make it on her own and get away from her father was inspiring. She made me want to be a better man, and I was working on it every single day. Watching her apply to so many… It killed me to watch the hope filter out of her eyes every time I asked if she had heard back from anyone yet, and she had to say no. By the fourth day, I stopped asking.

When the Pack N Mail was closed up for the night, I walked toward the bus stop nearby, ready to see my girl, eat something, and chill. I was off tomorrow and they canceled my first class thanks to the professor getting hit with the flu, which meant I could sleep in and enjoy a morning in bed with Isla. Preferably naked.

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