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I sigh. “I would like to say yes. But I think, one day, he will find out. Somehow, someway, I think it’s inevitable.”
We get out of the car and walk into her home. We work our way to her kitchen, and Chloe sets her purse down.
“What do you think he would do if he found you, found us?” She attempts to mask the fear in her voice, but it’s there nonetheless.
With the utmost serious stare, I say, “I don’t have to think, Chloe. I know for a fact what he will do. If I’m lucky, he will kill me for running from him.”
She quietly asks, “That’s your idea of luck?”
I chortle. “My death alone is lucky. Him not killing the people I love is lucky. I can accept my own death. I cannot bear any of yours.”
She sharply inhales. “There is no way he can find you. Nothing exists in your name. You look like a completely different person. He’s looking for Morgan Dove. He would have to look for someone who doesn’t exist to find you. But if you want, I can hire security for each of us to be with us twenty-four/seven.”
“That would draw attention to me, and that is the last thing I want. I have a gun of my own, which is the only protection I need,” I assure her.
Besides, a cop can probably sniff a security detail from a mile away. That would do nothing to stop him. But I don’t need to worry her more than I already have.
“I just wish I knew how my parents were doing,” I sigh.
She holds her finger up and unlocks her phone. She straightens up with a big smile on her face. “Here. Look for yourself on my accounts.”
She leans across the kitchen island and hands me her unlocked phone, and I open up her social media, immediately searching for my mom. I click on her page and scroll down to the most recent post. When Trey’s face appears, my heart drops. I click on his profile that’s tagged in my mom’s post, and I try to prepare myself for what could be there. Maybe he’s found someone new, which would be horrifying in its own way, knowing what someone else might be going through. Maybe he hasn’t moved on at all, and maybe he still cares about his poor dead wife. The latter is what I find.
The most recent post is dated a day ago.
Not a day goes by that I don’t miss you dearly. I love you forever, Honeybee.
I feel sick to my stomach.
I scroll down and find another post very similar to the last. But this one has a photo with it—a photo of us. Sadness washes over me, and I’m confused by the intensity of it. I look so happy in that photo, so overjoyed with love and life. But I remember that night with great detail. He choked me until I passed out. He grabbed me from behind and put me into a headlock.
When someone looks at that photo, they see a loving couple. But what they don’t see is his fingers pinching my back, the bruises on my arms underneath the sleeves of my dress, or the recently healed broken ribs. They don’t see the darkness that haunts the photo.
I scroll to the next photo and feel a sucker punch to the stomach. It’s a photo of my sweet mother and father at a restaurant with Trey. Heavy bags sit beneath my mother’s eyes, and my heart breaks for the pain she’s feeling at my hand. She doesn’t even know that she’s sitting right next to her daughter’s killer. I mean in the sense that my parents think I’m dead. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He did kill me, a part of me at least.
As I read the caption, unadulterated rage floods my veins, spreading through me like wildfire.
Sunday lunch with the Doves is the best part of my weekly routine. We miss her so much.
That should be me at lunch with my parents. Not the imposter of a loved one that Trey is. The phone shakes in my hand as the thought of him with my family becomes too much.
I scroll again and see another photo of them all together. And another. And another.
Do they not see him for the monster he really is? Can they not tell, even now?
Those photos, those moments and memories, should be mine.
“Take a breath, Nikki. It’ll be okay.” Chloe tries to soothe me.
I snap, “Okay?! Okay?! How in the hell will everything be okay? Trey is living my life with my own family! While I’m in hiding! Oh, yay, some days, I get to pretend to be normal and kiss a stranger at a club. Oh, yay, I can start falling for a stranger who will never know who I really am. What if we have sex? Will he be saying my name?! No! He’ll be saying the one I made up! This”—I wave my hand over my face—“is a lie. The person people meet and like and call their friend doesn’t exist! I don’t exist! He took everything from me!”
I collapse to the ground as tears pour down my face, and wet sobs and screams tear through me.
“I might not actually be dead, but he killed the person I was, Chloe. He killed her, and I’m left living in this fake life.” My sobs continue to fill the silence of the room. “I know how lucky I am that I got out and that I found you. You saved me. But this fear that every shadow is him, the fear that he’s walking into my shop when that bell dings, is exhausting. I’m fucking exhausted.”
Forcing deep breaths into my lungs, I stare at the ceiling with my head against the kitchen cabinet. Chloe opens one of them without saying a word and grabs a clean plate.
“Here.” She juts the plate toward me.
