Page 87 of Estranged Heart
My chest pains, and with my throat clogging up I say, “I have to. I can’t think clearly while I’m here and you need your rest.”
“Will you come back?”
“I don’t know.” I look away from him. “It might be a good idea not to see each other for a while. You know, with all this new information coming to light. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the case, and they may consider some foul play if they know we’ve been seeing each other.”
“Elijah, I didn’t plan to ever meet you. It just happened. Maybe because of Landon but I stayed because of you. Because I wanted you. I still want you. Not just my heart but all of me. I can feel it in my entire being when I look at you.”
“I have to go now. I’m sorry.” Being here is too hard. I keep thinking about how Landon died so he could live. So we would meet and fall in love. How fucking twisted is all of this? I’ve somehow wound up smack in the center of the universe’s idea of a sick joke.
There’s a deep ache seeping into my bones, weighing me down as I drag my heavy feet out of the room. A sense of loss follows me as I walk down the long hall and push my way through the hospital doors. I don’t remember the walk to my car. One minute I was breathing in a rush of the outside warm air and the next I’m pressed against my seat. The small space suddenly feels too big as I slump back, shrinking as the world grows around me, swallowing me whole.
A small voice yells at me to go back and stay with him. To hold his hand and watch that light I’ve grown to love so much shine in his eyes. To caress his smile enough so I could feel it again, if only for a short while. My anger wins, though, a roaring fire in my blood spilling out of my fingertips, and I’d hate to burn him more than I already have. My hurt and anguish wrap around me like a current, shoving me in a direction far away from him and everyone else.
Hands squeezing on the wheel, I blink away the slow-moving tears and drive away, fighting hard not to look back. I’m making the right move. This I know for certain. Why does it feel so wrong? How can I still want him so damn much?Go back,my heart screams. To who exactly? To him, or Landon’s heart? Has it only been the organ beating in his chest that kept bringing me back to him? What would we be if he never had Landon’s heart? Strangers?
Everything is spinning and doesn’t stop when I pull up in my garage.
Silas had to have known. Who keeps a secret this big from their spouse without it ever slipping through the cracks? All her late nights working, and mornings she didn’t make it home. He looked me right in the face, acting as if he had no idea where she was and I believed him.
I think I still do. That other voice is reaching up and tugging at my heart, wanting to be heard.
“What if he really didn’t know?” I say to myself, exiting the car. “What if this time, you’re the reason for losing everything again?”
But was this everything? Was he? Those kisses in the rain yesterday felt like it. So did the way we spun each other around and held hands on the skating rink. The way he curled into me on the couch and chanted my name as we both came undone against each other.
The silence of my house echoes around me as I enter the garage door, and as I’m stepping into the kitchen, the broken glass on the floor catches my attention. I freeze, staring at the broken back door, my gaze shifting to the large kitchen knives on the counter as I hear a shuffling noise.
Someone’s in my house. Heart jumping into my throat, I look around frantically and grab one of the knives. “Who’s here?” I call out, backing out of the kitchen and opening the door to the garage again.
No answer comes and I quicken my steps. As I’m turning around to face my car, a man is waiting for me at the back end of it wearing an evil grin. “He said you’d come home eventually. He was right. You should have stayed at the hospital. And why were you there to begin with? Visiting your boyfriend?”
“Who are you and what do you want?” I hold the knife higher and he laughs, flashing the gun on his hip.
“You were told to back off and didn’t listen. Given way too many chances if you ask me. If it were up to me, I would have taken care of you a long time ago. Right after you survived that boat crash.” He places his hand on the gun holster and I shove the pointed end of the knife at his throat.
“Don’t you dare.”
He backs up and I rush forward, drawing blood.
His face hardens. “You were never supposed to live, you know? For a while, it worked in our favor. It still might, now that you’re fucking the man who paid to have your husband’s heart. How do you think that would look?”
“Fuck you.”
“No. Fuck you.” A gun clicks behind me and I drop the knife. That voice. It shakes me to my very core, and when I turn around with my hands in the air, an angry Stacey slams the end of the gun to my forehead. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I wassupposed to have my husband back. Then you came and took him away from me again.”
“What did you do? Why?”
“Why not?” She breathes out a laugh. “He was dying anyway. Why let a good heart go to waste when it didn’t have to?”
“That wasn’t your fucking choice to make,” I roar, veins bulging through my skin.
“It sure felt like it. He thought he was better than me and made sure I knew it. Kind of hard to feel that way now when you’re buried six feet under the ground.”
“You took an innocent person’s life. You’re a fucking monster.”
“What did you tell Silas?” Her face stills.
“Everything he deserves to know. That his wife is a killer.”
