Chapter 13 #4
It took Lillith a week of pain and grief to make the decision.
It was the hardest one she’d ever made. She hadn’t wanted to see John again, but now that she knew he was living with Isabelle, part-time at least, she wanted to confront him.
He had taken her for a fool. And if Isabelle was building an expensive dressing room for him, clearly he was planning to stay.
So Lillith had meant nothing to him except as a sex toy.
And she didn’t trust herself not to give in to him at some low point.
He had a powerful hold on her, and he was a dangerous man.
She was sure of that now. Or she could give up her life in New York, quit her job, leave now, and never see him again.
It meant giving up her dreams in New York and a job she loved.
It was a high price to pay for her mistake in loving him.
But she was afraid that if she stayed, she would always be waiting for him, hoping that he would show up, change, spend time with her, no longer disappear for weeks at a time, and love her.
She wasn’t sure she was strong enough not to see him, or sleep with him.
His lies were incredibly convincing, and his power of attraction.
The minute he walked in, no matter the lie, she melted and was his.
She hated the thought, but if she left New York and moved to Los Angeles, she could stay with her mom for a while until she found a place of her own, and a job, and start her life again.
It seemed the wisest course. She called her mother to discuss it.
“That would be a lot of fun, you could help me with the twins. They’re so much work,” her mother said when Lillith asked about staying with her.
“We have a night nurse, but I take care of them all day. Our day nannies quit, both of them, and it was too expensive. I’m stuck here anyway since I’m nursing both of them.
I feel like a cow.” Lillith dodged her mother’s questions about why she was leaving New York, saying she was lonely, it was too expensive, and she missed California.
Lillith didn’t want to be a babysitter, and it wouldn’t be ideal, but if she could find a job she’d be out in the daytime, and eventually get her own place.
She was beginning to believe that New York would be dangerous for her when John returned.
“I’ll get my own apartment as soon as I find a job.
” She didn’t like the idea of living with her mother again, it was a backward step and seemed juvenile, but L.A.
would be safer for her. And she knew that if she didn’t leave, she might be trapped in John’s web again.
She felt sorry for Isabelle, since he had cheated on her too, and presumably she didn’t know it yet, and maybe never would.
But secrets like that had a way of getting discovered, just as she had, with an envelope with John’s name on it falling at her feet from Isabelle’s closet.
He was getting his mail at Isabelle’s apartment, so she assumed he was living there part- or full-time.
And Isabelle was building him a new dressing room.
Lillith felt like the joke in the story, the fool.
And she had genuinely loved him. The truth about him was a bitter pill to swallow.
It wasn’t a happy decision, and she cried every day. She gave notice at the design office, and they promised her a good reference and were sad to see her go, especially Jane, and her boss liked her too.
She sold her furniture, which she had bought secondhand when she moved to New York.
All of her clothes fit into four suitcases.
She shipped linens and kitchen equipment to her mother’s address.
It took her a week to pack everything up, and she bought a ticket to L.A.
She told everyone that her mother needed help so she had to go.
All she wanted to do was leave town now, take back control of her life, and forget the insanity of the last four months with John.
The truth about him and Isabelle would have come out anyway sooner or later, and it would have hurt even more in a year, if he could keep up the charade for that long.
She didn’t tell John she was leaving. He didn’t call her, and she didn’t contact him.
She wanted to leave before he got back and showed up at her apartment.
She was afraid of him now, and the power he had over her.
She left the office amid tears and hugs, and flew to Los Angeles on Saturday.
She knew it was cowardly to leave without seeing John one last time, but she knew that if she had, she might have stayed, and waited for his calls again, his visits and his lies.
He was everything that Charlotte had said about him in the article.
He was ruthless. He was a man without a heart or a conscience.
She had truly believed he loved her at first, and she didn’t believe now that he ever had.
He was incapable of it. She’d had a magical week on his boat at Christmas, and had felt like a fairy princess.
But it was all an illusion. She had been in love with a lie.
And all she wanted now was a fresh start and to forget him.
He had never loved her, she was just a toy to him.
The only thing she believed now was that he was a dangerously sick man, and she needed to get away from him as fast as she could.