50. Chloe
I somehow wake up hangover-free. Shocker, since I started with wine, drank some vodka, and then finished with several different minibar bottles back in my hotel room.
My period has arrived and thankfully, I’ve got two tampons in my purse.
I leave the hotel two minutes before check-out time, get a cab to my car at the airport, unlock and then get into it and start it up. Five minutes later at a stoplight, I see the familiar blue SUV behind me at the stoplight.
Bile rises at the back of my throat.
Ken follows me all the way to Dublin, to my dream house. The sight of it right now makes me so, so sad. I press the app on my phone and get the gate opened, then tap the app and close it behind myself. The SUV parks directly outside the gate. Blocking it, in fact.
I press the app command to open the garage. Not only is the driveway empty, the garage is also empty. Derek isn’t here.
And I don’t know if I’m relieved or not because although I don’t want to see him or talk to him, waiting to see him for however long it takes for him to come back is going to fry my nerves to a crisp. I stayed gone all night, leaving him to worry and wonder.
Waiting, worrying, and wondering must be part of my punishment. Because it’s midnight when I hear the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.
I’m in bed, the television on, the bedside lamp on.
He stops in the doorway and stares at me.
I stare at him, frozen.
Our eyes lock. Like they always do.
And my blood suddenly runs cold.
His mouth is in a tight line, and it twitches, looking like he’s about to erupt into pure rage.
My heart is racing now and I’m feeling very, very afraid.
He warned me the night he broke in and fucked me in my and Adam’s bed not to push him. But I finally broke and did that. I’ve pushed him pretty hard judging by the look on his face.
He takes purposeful strides toward me and then he puts a knee to the bed and climbs up and hovers over me, caging me in with one knee between my parted thighs, his palms propped on the bed on either side of my shoulders as he stares, nostrils flaring, fire burning in his dark gaze.
I’m frozen in pure terror.
“Did you?” he demands.
I must not answer fast enough, because he moves in even closer, eyes burning into mine.
“Did. You?” he repeats through his teeth.
And before I get a chance to answer, to tell him that no, I didn’t, he knifes off me and leaves, slamming the door behind himself.
And I immediately spring into action. Because if he thinks I did that, he’s going to hunt down poor, innocent Aaron and kill him. I don’t doubt he has the resources to find out who I had two drinks with.
I run down the hall after him.
“Derek!” I shout as he gets to the stairs. He looks over his shoulder at me and he’s clenching and unclenching just his right hand.
“I didn’t,” I say. I shake my head fiercely. “I didn’t.”
He stares at me like a raging bull, nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling, hand clenching and unclenching, and I’m sure he’s about to charge at me.
But he doesn’t. He shoots ice from his gaze at me and then he goes down the stairs, disappearing from my view.
My knees give out or something, because I’m now sinking to the carpet, holding onto the banister, feeling like my heart is breaking. Why does it feel like that? He did me wrong. He pushed me. He did all the bad things that drove me to almost doing something in retaliation and here I am feeling like… like I’m the one that fucked up royally.
I wake up alone. I didn’t sleep much. I think it was the not knowing what might happen that kept me up. Or maybe I would’ve slept if he’d come back in, taken me into his arms and held me. Not because that’s what I want; because that’s the norm for Derek. To try in his warped way to look after me.
I hear noise, so I peek into the hallway and it’s just as he’s coming out of the bedroom at the other end of the hall, the farthest away from the master. He’s in just a towel. His hair is wet. His eyes burn into me as he approaches so I back up into the room, but not fast enough because suddenly he’s directly in front of me.
He stops. He stares. I look down at my bare feet and bite my lip.
He passes me, which shocks me, so I stare at his back as he goes into the walk-in closet and rifles through his suits.
He shoots a glare over his shoulder at me and it kind of burns, so I quickly slip into the ensuite bathroom and lock the door, then put my back against it. My heart is racing. My stomach hurts. My head hurts.
After too long of standing like a deer in the headlights, I decide to wash my face, brush my teeth, use the facilities, and when I cautiously come out to an empty bedroom, I shakily make the bed before tiptoeing down the hall to investigate. The door to the room he came out of is open. The bed is unmade, there’s an empty bottle of bourbon on the bedside table.
Downstairs, there’s no sign of him. I go back up, put on my pink robe and slippers, slip my phone into my robe pocket, and walk outside. His car isn’t in the driveway. I use the app to open the garage and his car isn’t there either. He left.
I hear something though. I look and see the blue SUV inch up closer to block the gate.
Not that I had plans to go anywhere. But still. I resist the urge to give Ken the finger.
I spent time looking through the boxes in the spare room today. I wondered if Adam might have tucked a note into a box or something. Something, anything. But he didn’t. He’s done. And that’s not the only reason I looked in the boxes. I guess I took a little journey through my time with him, my time before him, too.
And I’m not sure why I even considered that he might have something to say to the woman he said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. I don’t know where things go for me from here and I’ve been pondering it all day.
Since Steeles don’t divorce, maybe I won’t ever get free of Derek. But maybe Derek also won’t get over what happened yesterday. Maybe he doesn’t believe me. Maybe he’s trying to find out if I’m telling the truth or not. Maybe he’s punishing Aaron anyway. That thought makes me ill, so I can only hope that my walking away from him directly after hanging up on Derek means that Aaron is safe and sound if he’s still in the city and preferably, that he’s already gone back to Kansas City.
The day drags on with being alone with my thoughts. Or maybe feeling like I’m alone is an illusion because maybe I’m under surveillance. I don’t bother to unpack anything other than some more clothes.
I send a text to Alannah at five o’clock.
Proof of Life Request?
She immediately responds
Alive.
I send a heart. She sends one back. And I’m glad it ends with that because I don’t know that I want to talk about my train of thought with anybody.
At midnight, I’m in the kitchen getting a glass of juice when I hear footsteps.
He comes in. His eyes give me a dark sweep that generates a feeling of static in the air. He walks to the pantry and pulls out another bottle of bourbon, then walks down the hall away from me.
When I go up, I notice the door is closed to the room he stayed in last night.
I toss and turn in bed alone, still wondering if there’s been any fallout from my outing the other night beyond my “husband” giving me what is evidently the silent treatment.