CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Officer Courtney led me away from the camper and out of earshot of Tristan. I glanced at him over my shoulder. His back was pressed against the camper, and his arms were crossed. His eyes were hard on the ground. Not one inch of him moved.
I blinked back tears and looked at the officer. My words felt strangled. “Am I in trouble, Officer?”
I stared at the old man’s face hard, trying to gauge how deep in shit I was. But the officer frowned. “Not necessarily.”
I still didn’t let my fears abate. “What does that mean?”
“Your husband has been searching for you. He’s made some frantic posts online, asking about your whereabouts, detailing your sudden disappearance three months ago.
He said he woke up one morning, and you were gone.
He filed a missing person’s report, and people have been on the lookout for you ever since. ”
I felt dizzy.
He’s alive.
I hadn’t killed him. I thought of all that blood…I should have felt relief, but nothing came. Cold dread sank to the pit of my belly.
The officer watched me for some time. I didn’t offer an explanation. I couldn’t physically get the words out. This whole time he’d been hunting me down, and not the way I ever thought he would. I had to hand it to the bastard. He was good. Really fucking good.
“Are you alright?” Officer Courtney asked.
I cleared my throat, forcing a quiet, “Yeah.”
I saw him look back at Tristan, and this time I didn’t follow his gaze. How the hell was I going to face him? “Did you run away with this man?”
I bit my lower lip and shook my head. “I met him on the road.”
I could feel the old man judging me. “Your husband’s been worried sick about you.”
A flare of annoyance rushed through me. “I left him.”
“Does he know that?”
I narrowed my eyes on the old man. “He knows I’ve been wanting to leave. There was an altercation. I walked out in front of him. He knew I was going.”
But Courtney didn’t look like he believed me. His frown faded as he looked me over slowly, taking in Tristan’s shirt I was wearing, hiding my barely there shorts. “From what I hear, you worried your town to death.”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” I retorted. “He knew I was going.”
The doubt shone in the officer’s eyes. He had already marked me down as a liar. This was exactly what Oliver said would happen.
The idea of the whole town worrying about me was ridiculous.
I swallowed down a scoff. No one had given two shits about me when I had a man as charming and loving as Oliver.
The second I entered that relationship I had entered a losing war.
They would forever take his side no matter what.
The boisterous, funny, charismatic and handsome professor: that was what they saw him to be.
There would be no justice for people like me.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked again, this time pointedly. I didn’t have to answer to this man. Even though my heart was thudding hard as ever, I had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.
Courtney sighed. “This is a welfare check.”
“I’m perfectly safe.”
Now his eyes darted back to Tristan. “So, this young man was a stranger when you met him?”
“Does it matter?”
“You’re a thirty-two-year-old woman who was quite respected in your community.” He paused now, as though wanting to let that sink in. “You’re not a teenage runaway. Mixing with strange vagabonds is a line you might not be able to come back from.”
Except this “strange vagabond” had breathed life into my dead bones, and now he wouldn’t want me anymore. That was what Oliver Black did; he destroyed everything I touched, reminding me that his poison would follow me wherever I went.
I should never have allowed myself to hope. I could endure Oliver finding me; I could not endure him finding Tristan.
“Do you know what it was like for your husband to find your wedding ring in the hands of a homeless woman?” he continued, vehemently. “She walked straight into a pawn shop trying to sell the damn thing.”
It had been five in the morning when I marched up to that homeless woman in the street.
I’d been wandering the streets for hours, aimless, terrified, hiding in alleyways, trying to figure out my next step.
Wanting to avoid the cameras, she bought me my ferry ticket in exchange for that giant rock. I thought it a fair trade.
“I gave it to her,” I simply said. “It’s hers.”
The officer looked gobsmacked by my response. “Is no part of you understanding the depth of pain you’ve left your husband in?”
My eyes felt raw as I hissed, “He’s only in pain because men like him only feel something when they lose control!”
The officer narrowed his eyes at me. “Your husband is worried. That’s all I’m saying. You’re upset, but lashing out doesn’t change the fact he’s been searching for you.”
Hunting me down, more like.
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through,” he carried on. “What you’re jeopardizing…”
He carried on like this for a few minutes, warnings about my “future,” about “ruining my life,” about “throwing everything away.” In his eyes, I was irrational, ungrateful, reckless.
To him, I had traded in my respectable, pillar of a husband for a man that lived out of a car, and I would come to regret that.
This reaction wasn’t surprising. I let him talk, and when he stopped, the silence filled the space in a way that made him itch uncomfortably.
“Women leave their husbands every day,” I calmly spoke. “They don’t need permission to leave.”
“But your situation…” He paused, looking conflicted. “This is an unusual situation, Mrs. Black.”
The name hit me like a slap. Mrs. Black. As if I still belonged to him.
“Don’t tell him where I am,” I said, and I couldn’t stop the vulnerability in my tone as I implored the officer. “Please. You don’t know what he’s like. Please.”
“I won’t tell him where you are,” he returned, his voice gentling only a fraction before he added, “But I can’t promise others will be as discreet.”
Who knew how many people had reported my whereabouts?
This entire time people had been on the lookout.
I started to think about the lingering looks from pedestrians.
It wasn’t in my head, after all. The thought made me ill enough to puke.
I didn’t think Oliver would do this. Hunt me down himself?
Sure. That was why I’d tried so hard to be off grid.
But use others to help him? No, and I didn’t know why that surprised me.
He’d always been singular when he was cruel.
Our battles had always been behind closed doors, but now he had invited the whole world in.
The cold prick. How confident he must be right now, absolutely no concern over what I might say to the law if they caught up to me.
And he was right.
My eyes fell to the ground, the defeat evident in the slump of my shoulders.
“I’ll close the file,” Courtney said. “But I would consider going down the legal route. Seek advice to end your marriage legally, and then you’re free to disappear with… whomever you want.”
I didn’t want to argue with the man. I’d learned for so many years to keep my mouth sealed. Why start talking now? He wasn’t the man I needed to convince about being married to a monster.
We said little more before we parted ways.
Despondent, I was trembling when I finally returned to Tristan. He had not moved. He was processing the situation. His jaw was locked with anger. As I approached, he didn’t look up at me, but his voice cut through the air like a knife. “Why, Daisy?”
He said my name so impersonally. It immediately drove tears to my eyes that I held back. “I ran. I was going to tell you.”
He pushed off the van and walked a few steps, burying his hands in his pockets. He kept his large back to me even as I followed. “You had a lot of fucking time to tell me about it.”
“I’m sorry, Tristan—”
“Don’t apologize after the fucking fact, Daisy,” he growled. “You had a lot of time to come clean. I brought you into my whole fucking world—made you my whole fucking world!”
“Tristan—”
He spun around to look down at me, his pain and anger entwined as he gritted out, “You could have told me I was fucking a married woman!”
I stopped cold in my tracks and nodded. “I could have.”
“Why, Daisy?” he demanded, sharply.
I didn’t answer straight away, and he turned his back once more and shouted, “Fuck!” into the air, punching at it with his fist.
“I didn’t know when I met you that it would turn into this,” I tried to explain, feeling panicked. “I…I put it all behind me and ran. I—I didn’t want to tell you and ruin everything—”
“You ruined it by saying nothing!” he growled, slicing me with his glare. He stepped to me, his anger billowing out of him. “You never fucking talked about anything! Just kept it buried the fuck away, and like an idiot, I kept chipping at your walls—”
“You were getting so close—”
“It doesn’t lessen the fucking blow, Daisy!”
“I know,” I said quickly, nodding my understanding. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear it.”
“Have you been playing me?”
“No!”
“Using me until you’re ready to go back to your husband! Your professor.” He scoffed at the last word like it tasted bitter to him.
My eyes widened. “Never.”
His eyes narrowed on mine. “I don’t know if I believe you.”
“Tristan, please.”
“I need a minute.”
“I’m sorry—”
He cut me off by storming away. I felt onlookers glance our way, and I didn’t care. I wanted to run to him, but I knew it wouldn’t help the situation. I went to the camper and climbed in. I sat down for some time, trying to think of what to do as my heart raced and my panic rose.
I didn’t let the tears fall, but I felt so fucking sad.
For many years I wanted to run when I felt my emotions spiralling.
It was my fight or flight mode. I daydreamed about it all the time.
My escape from hell. It was what I finally did when everything came to a head with Oliver, and yet now I wondered whether I should have stayed instead and continued with the void instead of all this new grief.