Page 2 of Abduction
Chapter Two
Amber
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IPUSHED MY STRAW AROUNDmy drink, staring down at the bubbles as they broke the surface and popped. I felt like I was going to burst soon, too, if I didn’t get an answer to all of this.
“Babe, you’re overthinking,” Kimmy told me for at least the dozenth time that night. I knew she was right, but it still wasn’t enough for me to clear the doubt from my mind. I should have been more trusting, less suspicious, but it had been nagging at the back of my mind for long enough now I wasn’t sure how I could fix it up again.
“I know, I know,” I muttered. “But I... Don’t you think it all seems kind of strange?”
Kimmy raised her eyebrows at me as she sipped on the bright yellow cocktail she had been working on since we’d arrived. I was already on my second drink, needing something to take the edge off of my paranoia. What if he was doing it right now, and I had no idea...?
“Okay, look,” she told me, leaning forward and hitting me with a serious stare. “You can’t spend your whole life worrying about what he’s doing when you’re not around, can you? If you’re going to marry him, you need to be able to trust him...”
I chewed my lip. I knew she was right. Aaron and I had been together for years now, and when he’d proposed the year before, I had been certain this was it, the answer to all of my questions. Yeah, I’d wondered if his eye had ever wandered before, but it had never been enough for me to push for answers. I was sure it was just my own nerves, nothing he had done ever giving me reason enough to think he was cheating for real.
But now I was coming up for my end-of-year exams in law school, I had noticed him spending more and more time away from our shared apartment. Staying out at work later and later and coming home smelling of cheap perfume and wine.
I had managed to brush it off the first few times, when he’d told me he was just staying late at work functions to ensure he was on his boss’s good side, but the more time that passed, the more I wondered if it was just a cover for what was really going on. He wanted me to believe I was crazy for worrying about it, but I knew something had to be up. Why would he have changed so suddenly? Why would he be acting like this, when he had been a devoted partner until the last few months?
“He’s probably just nervous about the wedding,” Kimmy told me. She had been my best friend since I had started law school, and she’d been there through pretty much my entire relationship with Aaron. If anyone was qualified to comment on it, it was her.
She had always told me he was pretty much the perfect boyfriend, and for a long time, I had believed her. I mean, in a lot of ways, he was. He was smart, he had a good job, he was good-looking, he was romantic; he would always remember our anniversary and had planned this amazing night when he proposed, a total surprise to me. I didn’t think I would meet the one so soon, but he had made it impossible to ignore how good we were together, and I appreciated it.
Right? Yeah, I did. I liked him. I loved him. It was just...he had always been the one in control of how the relationship went, the speed we did things at, and sometimes I found myself wondering if I would have been better off taking it a little slower. I had my studies to think about, after all, and trying to plan a wedding on top of them was nigh-on impossible. I’d straight-up put everything on hold now my exams were coming up, and I knew I was going to be too exhausted afterward to get back to it so soon.
Maybe he was just sensing how tired I was getting with all of it and didn’t want to put more pressure on me. Yeah, that had to be it, right? He had always been attuned to how I was doing, and he probably didn’t want me to feel like I had to keep up with whatever we had committed to before.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Kimmy sighed, and I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be an asshole,” I apologized. “I know, you’ve done enough to convince me already, but I just... Something’s telling me he’s messing around on me, you know?”
“You don’t have any actual evidence for that, though,” she pointed out. She was right, but it wasn’t for lack of looking. I had avoided going through his phone, knowing I would have overstepped a serious line if I did something like that, but it was hard to keep myself from getting paranoid.
“I just feel like something’s wrong,” I replied, sipping on my drink again and glancing around the bar. There were a handful of couples hanging out together, a bunch of guys at the bar with women hanging on their arms. Did they have women at home? Partners they were messing around on, who had no idea they were out here acting this way? I didn’t have a clue, but my over-paranoid brain was telling me to look at everyone with suspicion right now.
“I know you do, but you can’t go the rest of your life wondering if something’s up every time he stays late at work,” Kimmy reminded me. She had been putting up with my worry and paranoia for so long now, she was probably getting as sick and tired of it as I was. I had been tossing and turning late into the night, next to him, wondering what was on his mind—if he was thinking of some other woman, all hung up on whoever he was having this affair with.
“I wouldn’t be, but he’s been acting so strange,” I replied, shaking my head. “Like he’s been trying to avoid me or something. I don’t know how to get to the bottom of it. I can’t just ask him outright...”
“Why not?” she asked. I knew she was right. Truthfully, I could have put all this to bed a long time ago if I’d had the nerve to just outright ask him what he had been doing with his time that had taken him away from me, but the words always seemed to turn to cotton wool on my tongue before I could get them out. I wanted to be confident and capable and sure of myself, but it just got too hard for me to come out with.
Besides, I knew he would have beenpissedif I asked him something like that. Whenever I even hinted at thinking something along those lines, whether or not I had any actual weight behind it, he would always turn it around on me—demand to know what was going through my mind for me to think of him like that.Haven’t I done enough to earn your trust? Don’t you think I’m honest with you?He had reason to be pissed, sure, but it always put me off asking for more.
