Page 42 of Abduction
I pulled my robe around me and went down the stairs, grabbed him a glass of water, and sat down on the far end of the couch, handing it to him.
“Here, have this,” I told him, and he took it, barely even able to look at me.
“I guess you want me to leave,” he muttered, his voice hollow. Did he even really have to ask that, after what had happened?
“Yeah, I want you to leave,” I replied, sighing and shaking my head. “I’m—I’m genuinely sorry you’re dealing with this addiction, I am. But you’re cheating on me with my best friend, and I am not going to look at you for a single second longer than I have to. You need to go.”
I let out a shaky breath. God, it felt good to say that out loud. Fuck him. Fuck him for thinking he could string me along like that, especially after he had realized I noticed something was wrong. He and Kimmy had both fed in to these bullshit lies that I was crazy for thinking there was something up, but I knew now that I was right. I could see through what they had tried to pull on me, and I was never going to let it happen again. Nobody would get one over on me like this again, not anyone. I wouldn’t let them.
He nodded. He looked defeated, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. Maybe I would sometime down the line, but honestly, right now, I wanted him to suffer as much as possible. He should feel fucking bad for what he had done to me. He should feel ashamed. All those nights I had waited at home for him, and he had been what—out there, screwing my best friend? Gambling away all the money he told me was saving for the wedding? I didn’t even want to think how badly he must have been up in it to be dealing with something like what I had seen earlier...
But it also meant I had a better idea of what Josh did for a living, and it didn’t look good. I couldn’t even think about that right now. His father? He had mentioned his father. But who was he? And what was Josh caught up in? It didn’t seem like him, the version of him I had seen this evening, but maybe I was just deluding myself into believing in a version of him that didn’t exist.
I was still wearing his bracelet, a reminder to take what I was owed. I wasn’t going to sit around and listen to Aaron’s sob story. He could have come to me before with so much of this, and I would have done everything I could to listen to him, to make it better, but he hadn’t. He had chosen to bury it under a million layers I would never be able to dig beneath, and now, I felt like I was going to have a hard time keeping my head above water.
“You can keep the house,” he muttered to me, reaching into his pocket to dig out his keys. As he handed them to me, a small piece of paper fell from his hand, and I picked it up before he could put it away, almost on instinct. Like I knew it was important.
“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, and I meant every word of it. If he thought I would give up this place just because he had screwed up beyond all repair, he had another think coming. I wasn’t stupid. No matter how painful it might be to live in the memories of the life we were going to make together, it wasn’t enough to get me to forget the enormity of what he had done.
He rose to his feet, wincing, and I watched as he made his way toward the bedroom. At least he wasn’t fighting me on this. Probably knew I was more likely to keep my mouth shut about what had happened if he gave me everything I was owed, even if it likely killed him to admit it. He never liked being caught out, and this was about the biggest wake-up call he was ever going to get in the course of his life.
Good. Maybe this would finally kick his ass and get him to accept that what he was doing was wrong, was crazy. I was sure there was a decent man under there somewhere, but he was buried so far beneath the bullshit I didn’t know if anyone would be able to get him out. Kimmy was more than welcome to try, though.
And that left me single. Single, and with more knowledge of Josh and his career than I ever would have wanted. What did I do with it now, the knowledge I had? I didn’t have a damn clue. It was like everything had come together in the worst way possible, the universe clearing a way for me to Josh and then daring me to take it.
I had seen the fury in his eyes when he had been dealing with Aaron. I couldn’t believe it was the same man who had come to the aquarium with me, nudged his fingers against mine, and taken my hand as we gazed up at the tank together. That expression, it seemed to belong to someone else entirely, and I didn’t know if I wanted anything to do with him.
No, that wasn’t true. Even now, even here, I could feel the tug in my gut toward him, something telling me I didn’t want to give up on this. We kept seeming to find each other, and while I might not have been a big believer in fate before I met him, perhaps there was something to it. Perhaps there was a reason we seemed to keep falling into each other’s lives.
I knew we had chemistry. The kiss had been enough to tell me that. But was there more? Outside the thrill of pursuing a woman who was already spoken for, would he even be interested in me anymore? He hadn’t hung around to check how I was doing, though honestly, I was glad for that, because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to put up with anyone talking to me right now without losing my mind.
I looked down at the card Aaron had dropped on the couch, and I scanned it quickly. It looked fresh, with a number on it attached to a pawn shop. A pawn shop? I looked at the name of it, and noticed it had Josh’s name. Oh, shit. This must have been where his family worked. I felt a burst of excitement as I thought about seeing him again, how I could just call this number and find him once more.
Okay, I was already acting a little crazy. I needed to rein myself in a little. I had just split with my fiancé, and I was going to need a decent amount of time to process it before I went chasing after another guy. Especially one who might be caught up in something heavier than I’d ever had to deal with before.
Still, I put the card in my pocket and felt a little smile curl the corner of my lips. This might not have been how I intended my life to go, but at least I had outed Aaron before I had gone and done something stupid like settle down with him. God, and to think we could have shared our finances, while he was still dealing with that crazy addiction...I was lucky to get out.
I wondered if Kimmy had any idea what she was getting into. I almost wanted to warn her, but then I reminded myself about what she had done and pushed the urge down again. I wasn’t going to bother. She could deal with whatever it was she seemed to want, and it would be her problem. If she was so into him that she would go behind my back to hook up with him, she must have been pretty dedicated to making it work.
I hoped so. They were going to need all the help they could get.
I listened to Aaron moving around upstairs, still a little too stunned to really feel anything about it yet. I was sure some sadness would hit me tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, but honestly, some part of me predicted it might never arrive. He had been screwing me around for so long, I couldn’t look back on any part of our relationship fondly. No point pretending I could just put it all behind us and hope for the best. He had ruined it, and that gave me a clean slate to move forward on.
A clean slate that might just have come in the form of the seriously hot guy who had scared the shit out of my ex-fiancé.
