Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
“Aaron?” Tori struggles to speak my name. It’s like a siren's song, singing me home. I jump out of my chair and reach for her hand.
“I’m right here.” I bring our hands to my lips. Kissing her knuckles one by one. “I’m right here.” Tears escape the well as my body relaxes with pure relief.
“Water.” She whispers and I push the nurse button to alert them.
“Of course, baby.” I grab the water the nurses had brought in for Tori. She sips the water, her beautiful brown eyes meeting my own. Fuck… I missed looking into them.
The nurses rush in followed by Evelyn who immediately works through her examination.
I call my mother-in-law while Evelyn asks Tori questions and discusses every test done and her findings from the moment we arrived at the hospital.
It feels like hours have passed by the time I’m left alone with Tori again.
“How long was I out?” Tori asks me. I take my seat beside her bed, my eyes never leave hers. My hand never leaves hers.
“Just the night. Seven hours or so. The sun’s rising soon.” I brush my check with her hands. “I love you so much. I don’t know if I tell you enough.”
“You do,” she smiles. Lifting her free hand, her fingers trace my features. “I love you, too.”
I let out a deep breath, the one I’ve been holding since she smiled and her beautiful hazel-brown eyes met mine. “So… baby number three.”
“I had planned to make a big elaborate thing out of it,” her eyes tear up. “I was so excited to tell you.”
“Well, I’d say this is a big elaborate thing,” I chuckle in hope that it’ll make her feel better. Still, she wipes the tear trailing down her cheek. She scoffs with a shake of her head, but more tears continue to fall. “Baby, I’m so damn happy you’re alive and that we’re having another baby.”
“It’s just,” she breathes once and then twice, swallowing the ache surely growing in her throat.
“Fuck.” She rolls her eyes. “Maribel fuckin’ sucks.
” She closes her eyes and leans her head back as she rubs her temple right over her darkening bruise…
the spot where Maribel hit her… she winces at its tenderness.
“Fuckin’ sucks. That’s what you're gonna go with.” I raise my brow at her. I stand and lean over her to brush my lips against her forehead.
“What am I supposed to say?”
“How about she’s fuckin’ crazy?” I say as I head to the bathroom to get her a wet cloth towel for her headache. When I return, folded towel in hand, she’s crying. “Here. Put it over your eyes and head. I know they can’t give you much for pain” I lay it on her head. “I’ll dim the lights.”
She adjusts the towel and thanks me for taking care of her. “I should’ve seen it sooner.”
“It’s not your fault.” I play with the lights, getting them just right. It’s still early enough this stormy morning, that I don’t lower the blinds. “She kept that side of her well-hidden… I doubt Cal knew.” I sit back down.
“Cal… I’m so sorry.” She lifts her head too quickly, dropping the towel and making her groan in the process. Cal’s name clearly triggered something from last night. I haven’t wanted to push her, but now… I can’t stop myself.
“Tell me what happened.” I lean back in my chair, watching her as she places the towel over her head. She’s quiet. All I can see is the tears falling from her cheeks and I wait.
“I got home and found her in our closet, wearing nothing but my shirt. She had a journal in her hand, writing in it.” She fidgets with the towel, using it to wipe her face.
“I jumped her shit and told her we… you and me… needed space. That it would be best for all of us if she went home. She started crying, saying that she can’t go home.
” She yanks the towel off her head and throws it to the foot of the bed.
There’s not stopping her whimpers as she recalls the events from last night.
I watch her as her breaths grow heavy and short.
So much hatred with every single one she takes.
I move to her, sliding my arms under her neck; pulling her into my arms as I lie down next to her.
I comfort her, letting her take her time.
“She left the room and I thought that was that… until I picked up the journal and started reading it. Pictures of me. Pictures taken with her phone from our… video,” she says.
She lifts her head from my chest and meets my eyes.
“The one from the night Cal died. She wrote down each scene. But the details… they were all about me. About my beauty, my hair… the way my face contorts this way and that. How lucky I was to have this life. It wasn’t coming out of jealousy…
At least, I don’t think so. This was an obsession.
” A sickening feeling settles between us.
My stomach turns with each word. “Then I read… I’m glad I killed him because now I can be with Tori all the time.
I can be her.’ I flipped through it and found she wrote everything about me…
about how we role play, she was so obsessed with my stories about them, she wrote them down.
” Tori stares at me, eyes shifting as she tries to read my face.
What she reads on my face, I don’t know but she pauses.
My mind focuses on that one detail. To know there’s a journal with proof.
Proof that she murdered Cal. It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Like I can truly put Cal’s memory to rest. However, that journal holds all her secrets, all her sick and twisted thoughts.
Images of Tori and I being so incredibly intimate… vulnerable.
“If she left, what happened next?” I place my forehead on hers.
“I walked out of the room with the journal in my hand. There was a noise coming from the office, so I go to check it out. Maribel was sitting at my desk, on my computer… She was closing out videos and photos.” Tori’s nose flares, her brow lifts just the slightest. She has that look on her face…
the one I work so hard to avoid. Tori’s fuckin’ angry.
“Videos?”
“All of our videos.” She bites her bottom lip. “She had them all open. I kicked her out of the room and scanned through all the open windows.”
I process the information, taking a deep breath to calm the anger brewing with me. “How’d you end up at her house?”
“She ran out of the house. So I followed her in my truck. We got to her house and I ran after her before she could close the door. That’s when I confronted her about the journal…
that’s when she hit me.” She rubs her temple.
The sight of it makes my heart ache. Red closes in on my vision, forcing me to breathe… deeply.
“Where’s the journal?” I ask.
“I took it with me to her house. I don’t know where it’s at now.”
“Fuck.” I tug her into my chest, my chin atop her head. We lie here, in each other’s arms. Her touch, the sound of her breathing, the smell of her hair… everything that makes her my Tori, brings a bit of peace between us.
“Aaron, what happened after?”
“She burned her own house down.” I whisper, closing my eyes. The image of the house burning… forming a familiar ache over my soul.
I sit up and grab the wet towel from the foot of the bed and place it back on her head.
We get comfortable again and I tell her everything that happened from the moment I got home last night until we arrived at the hospital.
Each sentence, more terrifying than the last. The sun rises outside and daylight shines in.
I keep her tucked to my chest, letting her listen to the thing in my chest, beating faster and faster with each memory.
“You need to kill her… Today,” Tori whispers. “She cannot live… I cannot live, knowing that our precious life together, yours and mine, can be taken away so quickly if she were to ever escape.”
“I know.”
“Addy and Vinny… and our baby. I don’t want them to know what life is like without you and I in it. Do you understand me?” her voice breaks. Her tears shining in her glassy eyes.
“I don’t want to live in a world without you in it,” I whisper back.
“Then, kill. Her.”