Page 38 of On Your Life

“I promise I’m done,” she whispers. “I won’t do it again. Please, take me home.” She looks behind her again. “They’re coming. I can’t be here.”

“No one’s coming after you!” My voice raises despite my best effort. I’m beginning to get irritated. “You did this, somehow you fucking got here. Find your own way home.” I stare at her through the narrow opening in the window. “I’m done.”

She opens her mouth but I don’t give her the chance to spout out another bullshit promise. The window closes with a soft thud. The truck rolls forward, carrying me away from the woman who spent my entire life showing me that love sometimes feels a hell of a lot like dying over and over again.

I glance into the review mirror. She’s still standing in the middle of the road, alone and defeated. As much as it hurts, I force myself to look away.

Chapter 21

Kira

The walls are starting to move. It has either been twelve hours or twelve days since I was thrown into this fucking shithole.

There’s no window, no clock, nothing that tells me whether the sun is up or buried beneath the horizon. The lights haven’t turned off once and I’ve managed to stomach a few meals that are somehow worse than whatever they were serving in the pod.

No one will let me make a phone call. I’ve tried every time I hear footsteps in the hallway. I’ve called out, asked, hell I even begged once which I’m pretending never happened. They just keep walking by.

My back aches from the position that I’ve chosen to pass the time. I’m stretched out across the bed with my legs propped up against the wall, staring at the ceiling. It’s pretty comfortable aside from the fact that I’m laying on literal concrete.

The only benefit to being trapped in this box is that I have plenty of time to think. My lawyer hasn’t contacted me yet, there’s no way to know if he’s even tried since I’ve been stuck in here without a phone. But legally they can’t keep me from my lawyer, right? He hasn’t tried contacting me since I was convicted anyways. I doubt anything has changed.

The trial plays over and over in my mind. The only truly damning piece of evidence they had against me was the fact that the victim followed me out of the bar that night and the tire tracks they found on his body matched the ones on my car.

That doesn’t seem like enough to put someone away for the rest of their life. Everything else seemed so circumstantial. My apartment is close to his house but so is literally everything else in this town. Of course my fucking cellphone would ping in the area. I fucking live there.

What did they expect? Nothing makes sense. There were no other suspects. At least none that I saw mentioned in the news. No one else was dragged through the mud. No one else was aggressively interrogated on camera.

It feels like they saw an easy way out and took it. Pick the person that required the least amount of investigating. Case closed.

My lawyer swore I had nothing to worry about. I spoke freely with detectives because I had nothing to hide. I can still remember those interviews. The friendly introductions. Coffee and casual questions that suddenly shifted. The smiles disappeared and the questions got sharper. Every answer I gave became another thing they twisted around and shoved back in my face.

My interviews were played back in the courtroom, botched all to hell until I sounded like some cold heartless bitch who didn’t give a shit that a man was dead.

I didn’t even know the guy so of course I looked aggravated on the bar’s CCTV footage because I didn’t want to be bothered that night. Apparently, that made me a murderer.

Once I’m out of this mess, I’m moving literally anywhere else. Fuck this fucking town and everyone in it.

I need to talk to my lawyer. Surely he’s figured out a way to overturn this case. There has to be something.

There’s no pen or paper in here for me to write anything down so I’ll just have to hope my brain can hold onto the information until I get the chance to talk to him.

I realize I’ve been squeezing my hands into fists this entire time. I slowly force my fingers open. Half-moon marks are carved into my palms from my finger nails. I drag my thumb over the tiny grooves, watching them fade.

He left marks like that on my arms. I have never in my life been so turned on and so pissed off in the same five minutes. It should be impossible. And yet, somehow he managed it.

I’m torn between ratting him out and finding out what happens next. That should scare me more than it does.

My stomach warms every time I think about his body against mine. Every attempt at distraction somehow circles back to him. The resentment that consumed me was quickly replaced with something akin to infatuation. I fucking hate myself for it.

Every time I try to think of another way to get back at him, my mind betrays me. I feel him and that goddamn piercing hitting every wall just right and my mind melts. The way my entire body reacted despite every ounce of common sense screaming at me to stop.

I have never in my life wanted an orgasm so bad and that motherfucker denied me. I tried after he left and it wasn’t even half as good as I know it would have been had he just stayed inside of me for a few more minutes.

The desire to spike his drink again is almost overwhelming, but I’m sure he learned his lesson from that.

He will be nursing that hard on for a while. The thought makes a smile tug at the corner of my mouth. I hope he thinks of me every time he wraps his hands around his cock.

***