7. Marie
MARIE
I stir at the sound of the door opening, lifting my head from the couch blearily to see Gavin entering. I have been sleeping a lot since I got here, almost as if my body has finally found time to unwind after the stress of everything that happened and give in to the relief of the quiet and safety.
But as soon as I see the look on his face, as he taps the snow off his boots, my brow furrows.
He looks worried. But why? Is the storm coming in again?
I haven’t seen this expression on his face since I came through the door of this cabin in the first place, and a cold hand of dread squeezes around my chest as I look at him.
“Gavin?”
“Do you know who this is?”
He strides towards me, holding something out in my direction as he approaches. I frown, rubbing my face to try to bring myself to wakefulness, and take it, peering down at the small piece of paper before me.
And my stomach drops when I realize what I'm looking at. My head snaps back up to his, my voice taut when I speak again.
“Where did you get this?”
It’s Ryan’s card. I recognize it at once.
I remember when he got them, he was flaunting them around like crazy, as if he did anything with his life that he actually needed a card for.
They had been stacked up on a small table next to the front door of our apartment, and he had handed them out to everyone who’d visited, like he was so important they couldn’t go anywhere without knowing who he was.
For a moment, Gavin just looks at me, a slight furrow in his brow. I rise to my feet, voice growing louder before I can stop it.
“Gavin.”
“I ran into someone while I was checking on your car,” he explains. “He was driving past and he pulled over and asked if I’d seen anyone. Told me that he had a friend who’d come through here and he was worried about her, and gave me his card to tell me if I saw anyone around here.”
I sink back into the seat, gripping the pillows desperately for support. I can’t believe this. He found me? How the hell did he find me? I thought I had finally done it, finally gotten away from him, only for him to turn up out of nowhere like this when I least expected it.
Just when I had started to unwind, the tension in me finally uncoiling. The thought of him being so close, just a few hundred yards from the cabin, makes my blood run cold.
“Did you tell him?” I whisper. “Does he know that I’m here?”
He shakes his head, and I squeeze my eyes shut with relief.
Thank God.
“I told him I hadn’t seen anyone and I was looking to sell the car for scrap,” he replies, his gaze fixed on me, like he is studying my reaction. “Didn’t like the look of the guy, anyway.”
“I don’t know how he found me,” I breathe, staring down at the card for so long that my vision begins to blur. “I thought… I thought I was out.”
“He has no idea you’re here,” he assures me, and he moves to the side of the couch, sinking down beside me and taking my hand in his. “And I’m sure as hell not going to call him up and tell him. It’s okay, alright? You’re safe.”
My shoulders slump and the tears start to fall as he reaches out to wrap his arms around me, and I bury my face in his chest, trying to ground myself.
It’s so hard to believe that I'm safe, after everything that has happened, all that he put me through, the weight of it hanging so heavy on my shoulders.
I want to believe it, God, I want to believe it more than anything.
But even the idea of Ryan being somewhere nearby is enough to bring it all flooding back, the walking on eggshells, the fear of putting a foot out of line and making him angry, all the shit that I put up with because I truly didn’t think I was worthy of anything better.
And then, all of a sudden, something sounds at the door of the cabin. Three loud thuds in a row. My heart leaps into my throat, and I turn to Gavin, my eyes wide.
“Is that...?”
He rises to his feet.
“Someones at the door.”
He moves towards it slowly, like he is not sure he is prepared for what is on the other side. He glances back towards me, and I bite my lip, half-wishing I could tell him not to answer it. But it’s not like someone has stumbled across it by mistake, no.
It has to be him.
Gavin steps to the door, and I almost want to rush to his side and tell him to ignore it, beg him not to listen to whoever is there or whatever they have to say.
But I'm frozen to the spot, feet rooted to the ground, and I watch as, almost in slow-motion, Gavin reaches for the door and pulls it open.
And there, on the other side, is the last man on earth I want to see.
Ryan.
For a moment, silence fills the room, nobody daring to say a damn word. Gavin shifts so that he is standing between us, but Ryan tries to barge past him and make his way over to the couch where I'm sitting.
“There you are,” he snarls, and I cower away from him, hands twisting painfully around themselves on my lap, just like they used to when he would come home from a heavy night of drinking with a bad attitude, looking for someone to take it out on.
He tries to barge past Gavin, but Gavin moves in front of him, stopping him from getting any closer to me. His gaze snaps to the other man, and he glowers at him furiously.
“Who the fuck are you?” he demands. “Why did you lie to me? You move on already, Marie? Didn’t take you for the type to?—”
“Get out of my fucking house.”
Gavin speaks with a low, almost calm voice, but it is laced with enough warning that I know Ryan cannot ignore it. He stops in his tracks, locking eyes on him, and squares up.
“I could buy and fucking sell you,” he snarls. “I don’t know what she’s told you about me, but you don’t know who the hell you’re dealing with.”
“She told me that you hurt her,” Gavin replies, and I notice one hand closed into a fist at his side. “And that you controlled her. That you made her drop everything so she could be in that home alone with you all the time.”
Ryan’s lip peeled back into a derisive smirk.
“Oh, she did, did she?” he snaps back, as he looks at me again. I'm on my feet now, hardly aware of my own movements, just need a way out of this, a way not to fall back into the trap I was in before.
“So she’s managed to fool you, too,” he mutters, shaking his head slowly. “What did she do, blow you to let her stay here? And then you let her spin all those stories about me because you didn’t want to be part of her cheating.”
“Ryan, I’m not cheating on you,” I blurt out, finally finding my voice again. “We’re not together. And we’re never going to be together again, so you need to get the hell out of this place and stop looking for me.”
Ryan stalks toward me. I glance at Gavin, letting him know I can handle this.
“You’re telling me what to do now?” he replies, eyes shining with rage. “After everything I’ve done for you? All the ways I’ve provided for you?—”
“You took so much from me, Ryan,” I reply, voice shaking, but my tone as clear as I can make it. “If I had known that accepting any of that from you would come with a price, I never would have done it, you understand?”
“The price of what, being loyal to me?” he spits. “I should have known you would never be grateful the way you should have been. My mother warned me that you would turn on me, but I didn’t expect you to find you in another man’s house after you ghosted me with no warning.”
I take a step toward him. I'm trembling, but I do not hold back.
I look him in the eyes, and all the memories come flooding back.
All the fear, all the doubt, all the certainty that this would be it for the rest of my life.
But now, they seem almost like something that happened to someone else, impossible to conceive as my own experience.
“I’m telling you now,” I reply, squeezing my fists so tight that I can feel nails digging into my flesh. “We’re over, Ryan. Keep it. Keep everything you ever gave to me. I don’t want it. Not if it means having to lay eyes on you again, as long as I fucking live.”
Something in him shifts when he hears that, as though he can’t stand to imagine me walking away from him. The confirmation of my lack of feelings for him finally proven, beyond any reasonable doubt.
“You fucking bitch?—”
He lunges for me, and I stagger backwards. But before he can reach me, Gavin is on him, catching his arm and twisting it painfully up his back. Ryan cries out in pain, and Gavin grabs him by the hair, yanking him back and bringing him close enough to hear him.
“I’ve already been to prison once,” he grunts to him. “But if you don’t walk out of here right now, I have no problem going back there just for the satisfaction of beating your ass. Understand?”
“Get off of me!”
“I said, do you understand?”
He jerks his head back sharply, and Ryan groans in pain.
“I get it! Just let me go!”
Gavin guides him towards the door, kicking it open and tossing him out into the snow. He grabs the card from where I dropped it, and crumples it up, tossing it after him.
“I’m calling the cops,” he warns him. “If you don’t want your daddy to have to bail you out, you should get out of here. Now.”
Ryan’s face pales. He has always been afraid of his father, whether he would admit it or not, no doubt because of the trust fund that he has access to.
He scrambles to his feet and rushes off into the woods, and Gavin watches till he’s out of sight before he slams the door on him, and then turns to me.
“Marie...”
As soon as he says my name, I dissolve into tears again. Not tears of fear, like the ones when I saw his card again, but tears of relief.
Because, finally, it seems like this man is out of my life for good.
And I can’t believe it has finally happened.