Page 20 of Abduction
“Yeah, because that’s my future,” I pointed out. “I need to stay focused, or else it’ll all be for nothing.”
“Yeah, and if you spend all your time focusing on him instead, it’s not going to do you any good,” she replied. I chewed my lip. I hated this, hated feeling this crazy and jealous. Truth was, I had never been the kind of woman who spent her time chasing a man around because I’d never felt the need to. Aaron was the one who had done all the chasing, but ever since we had gotten engaged, it was like he had grown a little bored of realizing he had me right where he needed me.
Maybe it was that simple. Maybe he wanted someone he had to chase, someone he had to make an effort to win. I didn’t know. I couldn’t ask him. Hell, I had hardly seen him over the last couple of weeks, though we were supposed to be going to stay with my parents this weekend, so perhaps I could grill him on it then.
I had reminded him of it a couple of days ago, and the way he had reacted, I was pretty sure it had gone right out of his head. Maybe he had been hoping I would drop it. I knew he wasn’t the biggest fan of my parents, but he would have to start getting along with them if we were going to be family.
“It’s going to be okay, Ambs,” Kimmy told me, as though she could tell where my mind was and wanted to pull me back out of the stress I was in. I sighed heavily. I felt as though all I had been doing was take, take, take, and she had just been doing her best to keep up with me, keep my mind busy so I didn’t lose it entirely.
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I grabbed it. I hoped it was Aaron. We’d been planning to meet for dinner, and I was starting to worry he would find another way out of it, a way to brush me off and make me feel crazy for even asking for it.
“I have to get this,” I told Kimmy, and I ducked outside to take the call. Sure enough, there he was—Aaron on the other end of the line.
“Hey, Amber,” he greeted me, sounding distracted.
“You okay? Is everything all right?” I asked him hurriedly. I hated how paranoid I sounded, honestly, but I needed to know he was where he said he would be.
“Yeah, I’m just at work,” he replied. “So about this weekend—”
“What about it?” I demanded, already feeling the dread starting to creep up the back of my spine. I couldn’t believe it. He was going to fuck me over. He was going to find a way out.
“I took on some extra shifts to help out with a project we need to finish,” he explained, and I felt my heart drop into my shoes. I couldn’t stand this. It was like me and our relationship were nothing more than an annoyance he had to think about when he was planning the rest of our life, but it was meant to be the center of it.
“So you’re not going to be able to see my parents?” I asked him bluntly. I didn’t want to fuck around and wait for him to wheedle it out. If he had an issue, he needed to tell me about it upfront, and I could handle it from there.
“Yeah, I wanted to let you know,” he replied. He sounded hardly bothered by it, as though he didn’t feel like he had done a thing wrong.
“You’ve been promising to meet up with my family for weeks now,” I reminded him, through gritted teeth. “You’re really just going to flake on me like this...?”
“I’m sorry, they need me,” he replied as though it was as simple as that. I clenched my hand by my side, doing everything I could to contain myself and keep from freaking out. I didn’t want to make him think I was trying to manipulate him by getting him to go along with what I wanted, something he’d been quick to accuse me of before when he felt like I’d been asking too much of him.
“Yeah, well, you made a promise to me—”
“I’ll see them some other time,” he replied, cutting me off. I felt another flare of anger hit me. I hated this. I hated feeling as though I didn’t even matter to him. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and demand to know just what it was he was making excuses for. Was it work? Or was it some woman he had on the side he didn’t want me to know about?
“Aaron, this is...”
“Think about when we’re going to be in Bali together,” he reminded me. He had been saying a whole lot of that lately, as though he knew it was all he had to hold over me at this point. I sighed.
“I—I know,” I replied. I was being ungrateful, but I just wanted to spend some time with my fiancé before we got married. Was it really so much to ask? I was starting to feel like I was crazy for wanting it, even though I knew it was utterly normal.
“I’ll speak to you back home, okay?” he told me, and I could tell there was going to be no more arguing with him. I wanted to ask him when exactly he thought he was going to be home, but I was sure he would have taken it as another attack and just brushed me off. Shit, if only I had the nerve to just look him in the eye and demand to know what was going on there...I wished I could get through to him, make him see I was just doing this because I loved him and I wanted to see him.
“Speak soon,” I muttered, but he had hung up the phone before I could get the words out. He didn’t even care to hear them, not anymore, not from me. I squeezed my eyes shut as I stood there in the street, promising myself I wasn’t going to cry. I had never been someone who gave in to her emotions like that, but I didn’t know how to hold myself together in the face of what he had done, what he was doing.
“Amber?”
I opened my eyes once more—and there he was again, the man I couldn’t seem to get rid of.
“Josh?” I replied, furrowing my brow. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just taking a walk around my neighborhood,” he replied with a shrug. So this was his neighborhood, huh? If he lived here, then he had some serious money. I wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t surprise me. A man with his confidence, calm, and collection usually came from cash. It was how they got their sureness in themselves, knowing they could buy their way out of anything that came their direction.
“Oh, okay,” I replied, pushing my phone away quickly. I didn’t want him to work out what was going on here, though I was sure he would put the pieces together soon enough when he saw the look on my face.
“What’s going on?” he asked, lifting his chin and looking me up and down. “You look...upset.”
“Nothing,” I replied quickly. I had already spilled too much of myself to him as it was, and I didn’t want to do anything else to pull him in closer. I wasn’t sure what it was, but the relief of being able to tell someone the truth, someone outside of this whole mess, had made me spill more than I had intended to.
