Chapter 33 Monroe #2
Is this the end? I wonder. The end of my college experience?
The end of my relationship Kieren? Will I come back?
My sole focus was to escape, but I hadn’t thought through the last two months of the academic year.
Now I worry I’ve been too dramatic. Did I really need to go to such great lengths to get out of that bedroom?
I remind myself of all my reasons. He locks me inside his bedroom, he doesn’t let me go anywhere on my own, he’s spiraling into a version of himself I don’t recognize and don’t want to be around, he has forced me into a dog cage at gunpoint…
You made the right decision, I reassure myself.
But that stupid voice in the back of my mind asks, Will you miss him?
And… I will.
I will miss the man I thought he could be.
I choke on my heartbreak, coughing into my hands as the weight of where I am drags me under. Because it didn’t have to be like this, but the Universe had a different plan for him, and for us.
The bus swings a wide turn into the Greyhound station.
A line has already formed outside a bus idling in the parking lot.
The exterior flap for the lower luggage compartment is open.
People wheel their suitcases to the driver as he loads them into the cavity, now halfway full.
I make my way to the end of the line and take out my phone so I can pull up the digital copy of the ticket I purchased last night.
Fourteen missed calls from Kieren. Shit.
He must know. I didn’t feel my phone ring, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have answered.
Harrison must have complained that I was taking too long.
I assumed this would happen eventually, but thank God, I’m already here, ten feet away from boarding the charter bus to Manhattan.
I watch in a daze as the line inches closer to the door with my ticket pulled up on my phone. Someone already on the bus is getting off. It registers, but it doesn’t. Because this can’t be happening. I’m seeing things.
His expression isn’t one of anger or exaltation.
He looks at me with grave concern, like he’s been fraught with worry, searching for ages.
Those in the line step aside as Kieren descends the charter bus steps.
His clothes are different from last night.
He looks human, albeit pale in the light of day.
Each stride toward me happens in slow motion. Sounds around me stop. His eyes don’t deviate from mine as he closes the final few inches between us and wraps his arms around me in an embrace that feels unexpectedly tender.
“You’re here,” he sighs with relief against the crown of my head. “I thought I was too late.”
I don’t understand the emotions I feel. I don’t understand why I, too, feel relieved. I feel so inexplicably relieved that he found me.
My body is flush with his, cocooned by his warmth, as he holds me tight.
And then I start to cry.
He cares.
He didn’t want to lose me.
But I need to stay strong, I remind myself.
The war between my brain and heart rages like two beasts in battle.
“How did you find me?” I manage.
“You share your location with me, don’t you remember?”
I… No, I don’t remember. I don’t recall ever sharing my location with him, but clearly, I must have done it at some point for him to find me so easily.
“Let’s go home,” he says, tilting my tear-streaked face up toward his. Kieren reaches for my hand, and I accept my fate, following him to his car.
I don’t object or put up a fight.
I don’t even try.
Because right now, the part of me who hates him can’t remember why, and the part of me who loves him feels like my lost prince has come to rescue me at last.
Walking back into Kieren’s bedroom, I sense a profound shift. At a glance, nothing has changed. My computer and the few things I keep here are as I’ve left them, but the air is different.
I am different.
I’m stepping back in time to a place where I no longer belong.
I sit down on the bed, lost in my emotional awakening.
I love him. I have loved him.
But this time, I need to let him go. Oh God, why didn’t I feel like this at the Greyhound center, when we were in public and surrounded by other people?
Kieren lowers to his knees, pressing my thighs apart to slot himself between my legs.
“Why are you crying, Monroe?”
At first, I shake my head, knowing once I say the words aloud, I’ll never be able to take them back.
His thumb gently grazes my cheek to wipe away the fallen tears.
“This is over for you, isn’t it?” he asks. His question is laced with sadness, enough so that I force myself to look at him.
Years of longing for this man, of hoping, of wishing.
Years of thinking how perfect he could be, we could be, if only a few things were different.
If only he would accept me for who I am, and my lack of stature, maybe then, he would love me.
If only he could figure out a way to control his demons and his drug use, maybe then, he would love me.
But maybe then has come and gone.
He’ll never accept me, and he’ll never change.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He nods, and an unbearable tightness clamps around my throat, one that is as freeing as it is devastating.
A long silence hovers between us, and I can’t bear to look at him.
“See, the thing is Monroe, this isn’t over for me.”
I don’t think I heard correctly.
“What?” I mumble, confusion halting my tears.
He stands, looking down at me with terrifying vitriol.
“You think,” he begins, his nostrils flaring, “you can just end this? With me? You think you can just fucking walk away? From me? From this?!”
He spits out each rhetorical question like I am an ungrateful harlot who should be burned at the stake.
“No,” he says with a deranged laugh. I gawk at him, blinking, convinced I’m dreaming. He’s an apparition. This isn’t real. This is not his true reaction; it can’t be.
This is… This is…
He slides open the small top drawer of his desk.
“Get in the fucking cage,” he commands.
My mouth twitches with unsaid words, but I can’t find my voice. The barrel of the Glock is feet from my face.
“Get in the fucking cage!” he screams, shaking the gun at me.
I scramble off the bed, jumping up to the wall. “Kieren stop!” I cry. “Don’t do this, please!”
He stalks over to the cage and kicks it with a force so violent that it causes the door to fly open.
“In!” he screams at me.
But I don’t move. I recoil against the wall, frozen with terror.
“No, please!” I plead, holding my hands in front of my face as I brace myself.
Cold steel presses against my temple. “I said get the fuck in,” he says in slow, deliberate snarls.
I start to hyperventilate as I cross the room and crouch in front of the metal door. The wires on the bottom of the cage bite into my palms as I crawl inside. The cage door slams shut, followed by the click-clack of the padlock.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Kieren announces as he places the gun back into the top drawer of his desk. “Don’t bother screaming. No one can hear you anyway. And even if they could, no one here fucking cares.”
I’ve been curled in the fetal position, sobbing, for hours.
The sharp pain of the metal cage digging into each pressure point resting against it – my hip, my shoulder, the side of my head – somehow is dull compared to the unforgiving pain inside my mind.
I haven’t even gotten to the point of my own failure.
I’m stuck in a loop of despair, wondering how another human being, someone who I thought cared for me, could treat me so horribly.
What did I do to deserve treatment this vile?
Why am I condemned to a life of suffering?
Keys jingle in the many locks, snapping me from my spiral. I push myself up to see Kieren clamor into his bedroom with at least half a dozen shopping bags from the local supermarket. He drops them to the floor without acknowledging me, heads into his bathroom, and slams the door.
I peer through the crisscrossed metal wires, my eyes swollen and puffy, but am unable to discern the contents inside the bags.
Kieren reemerges from the bathroom with a toiletries bag and tosses it onto his bed.
“What are you doing?” I squeak.
“Packing.”
“Am I coming?” I ask timidly.
“What do you think?” he deadpans.
Cold terror races through my veins.
“Let me out of here,” I demand.
Bile rises in my throat at Kieren’s mocking laugh.
“You can’t keep me in here!” I shout. “I’ll die, Kieren!”
“Then maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to get on that fucking bus! You’re lucky I’m a nice person, Monroe. I got you all this food,” he shouts, motioning to the grocery bags.
“You can’t keep me locked in your room all week!” I shout back, trying to mask my breakdown. “I’ll call the police!”
“With what phone?” he asks with bitter sarcasm. “This phone?” he jeers as he holds my phone up for me to see before tossing it into his backpack. “Yeah, I don’t think so. This phone is coming with me. Oh, and don’t think I forgot about email. I’ve also disconnected the Internet router.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t hold me prisoner. People will come looking for me, Kieren!”
“Who?!” he asks with a mocking laugh as he tosses clothes into a weekender duffle bag.
“Who’s going to come looking for you, Monroe?
Your friends don’t give a fuck about you.
You’ve been here every night and not once have I heard you talk to any of them.
None of your sorority friends. Not even Gabi.
Your mom’s fucking incarcerated, and your dad left your ass when you were three.
So, guess what, Monroe? I’m all you’ve fucking got. ”
He zips the bag closed and unhooks his laptop from the charging cable running behind his desk.
“If you do this to me, consider me dead to you! We are done! And I promise, I will hate you for the rest of my life,” I scream with shaky breath. Hot tears of panic stream down my face.
Kieren shakes his head, chuckling to himself as he stuffs his laptop into his backpack. “You’re worth more to me dead than alive, you know?”
“What is wrong with you?” I cry. “You’re a psychopath!”
“Yeah, well old habits die hard, I guess,” he says, unbothered, as he squats in front of the cage to twist the combination of the padlock. The metal hook pops open, and Kieren rises to his feet, pocketing the lock.
“I don’t care if you hate me,” Kieren admits, sliding open the top drawer of his desk.
I remain in the cage, motionless, as he unloads the magazine of bullets, including the remaining bullet in the chamber.
“In fact, I always knew we would end up here. I guess we just arrived earlier than I predicted.”
“If I’m worth more to you dead than alive, then why don’t you just fucking kill me?” I grit out.
“Because, like I said, this isn’t over for me. But I can’t bring you to Connecticut, I think you know why, and you’re too much of a liability to have running around. You’ve proven as much.”
“We aren’t over until I say we’re over, and spoiler alert Monroe, that’s never going to happen,” Kieren says in a deranged sing-song voice.
“The only way you get to leave me is in a fucking body bag, so I suggest you take some time this week to reflect on how you’re going to be better.
Hopefully, a week of solitude will help you remember how much I’ve fucking done for you, and how you would be nothing, have nothing, if it weren’t for me.
When I return, I better find you sitting naked on my bed, legs splayed wide, begging for my forgiveness.
When I slide my dick into your tight cunt after nine days away, I want you to moan my name loud enough to raise the dead.
I want you to tell me how sorry you are for trying to leave me, and how you’ll never, ever try to run again. ”
I suck down jagged breaths amid tears of anguish.
“You may hate me, Monroe, but you’ll never hate me enough to make me stop. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
He bends down to nestle the unloaded Glock and magazine into his backpack, grabs the strap, and tosses it over his shoulder. In two strides, he picks up the weekender bag from his bed and looks down at me, his dark, soulless eyes are devoid of any remorse or humanity.
And it’s in this moment when I truly know.
No one is coming to save me.
Just like before.
Just like Kieren said.
I’m all alone.
“Food should last you until next Sunday. The windows have been sealed shut by paint, kind of a fire hazard, they’re bulletproof glass.
So don’t bother trying to break them or the door.
I don’t even think an axe could chop through this wood,” he says, looking at the door to his bedroom with sick admiration.
“Remember what I said.”
His last words to me ring hollow because all I hear is the deafening sound of three deadlocks sealing the bedroom, and me within, shut.