Page 23 of Love Sick

Looking between Alanna and Joy, I don’t know who I hate more.

“Is that really Jonathan?” Joy asks, appearing hopeful I’m lying.

Alanna shatters that dream, however, when she nods. “Yes, it is. He’s looking well, don’t you think?”

I hysterical laugh spills from me because, what the fuck is going on? I’m ignored by both women, however.

“Did you kill him?” Joy cries, eyes wide.

Alanna simply grins sweetly. I don’t want to be rooting for anyone in this fight, but I’m in Alanna’s corner and I can’t wait for her to dish out what Joy deserves.

“Why?” Joy shouts, her cheeks turning red in anger. “I had the money. Why did you do this?”

Alanna is cool, composed, how you’d expect any sociopath to be, I suppose. “Because he never loved you…he loved me. You were nothing but a two-dollar whore he called when he was desperate. The cheap motels he took you to is proof of that.”

Joy gasps, offended, or surprised Alanna is in on her secret affair, I’m still unsure.

“There never was a heart, was there?”

Alanna looks at her French manicure, bored. “Of course, there was.”

“So you knew it was Misha driving that night and not Luna?”

Alanna’s smirk says it all.

“Why?” Joy screams hysterically.

Misha is also listening. I can feel him closer to me than I ever have before.

“Because I needed a perfect match, and what better match than Jonathan’s own son.”

“You set me up,” Joy sneers, sniffing back her tears.

“You set yourself up the moment you took what was mine.”

“He was never yours!”

Joy is poking an already irate bear, a bear which had no qualms killing the “love of her life” because he was a philandering lowlife.

I now understand Alanna’s hatred toward Luna. Luna was the only woman Jonathan ever loved; she was able to achieve what none of these women could, no matter how hard they tried. No wonder her hatred for Luna was so personal.

She knew who she was this entire time.

“That money, it’s mine. It’sours,” Alanna states without fault. “I am his fiancée, after all.”

“And that’s why you’ve been entertaining Joy this entire time? You kept her on your side with promises that Jonathan was under your care?” I say, knowing the answer but needing to say it out loud. “But once Luna signed everything over to Joy, you were going to…”

I leave the sentence unfinished because Joy can connect the dots.

Joy did all of Alanna’s dirty work. What a true mastermind she is.

Joy is simply a means to an end for Alanna and no doubt, uncovering their affair was motivation for Alanna to enforce her plans of revenge.

I wonder if what she told me about Jonathan was true.

I do believe he was seeing Joy before he ever met Alanna, so in reality, Alanna is the “other woman.” I dare not tell her that, though, because they are both seeing Luna as the one he always wanted.

“Kill her.”

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