AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Woah, is that normal?”
“Yeah, they’ve got a major morality clause in their contract, and they do a background check that makes the secret service one look tame. If this wasn’t my dream job, the one I’ve been working for since I was old enough to remember, I’d tell them to eat shit.”
I laugh because I know he means it.
“Hey, gotta go. No more what ifs. Only up from here, Venus. I love you.” His voice is dark with promise, and he hangs up before I can respond.
I stare at the phone in shock, when I blink to clear my vision, a tear rolls down my cheek. All the seeds he planted with those letters and that book explode into beautiful blooms of joy, gratitude, relief, impatience, and excitement. Oh my God. This is happening.
“I love you, too,” I say to the dial tone.
I crawl into bed with my son, and he rolls over and throws one of his little legs across my hip and nestles his head on my shoulder and all is right in my world.
Finally.
Present Day
HOUSTON, TX
One More Day
Regan
My alarm’s trill sounds like a starting gun in my brain. I spring up, grab my marker, draw the nineteenth red x on my small calendar and my heart leaps in my throat. One more day. Just one more and I will be free. And when Stone gets back, I’ll go pick him up from the airport and welcome him home with open arms.
I glance at the picture I teased him with. I love having it all to myself. I don’t even know who took it. It was the last night on the island, and we were dancing. I hate that it looks like I’m bottomless – but I guess that’s better than being able to see the wedgie his arm is hiding.
But this is how I remember us…how I want us to be again.
Just one more day…and I’ve got a lot to do before I’m finally a single woman again.
2 Weeks Later
HOUSTON, TX
Fuck The High Road
Regan
“I think I’m going to be sick. Can you press pause?” I breathe through the sudden grip of nausea in my gut. Throwing up in the waiting room of my husband’s lawyer’s office is not going to happen.
My racing pulse moves like an untamed herd of horses and echoes like thunder in my ears as I gaze with dismay at the screen of Remi’s iPad where we’re watching security footage from my house.
When he doesn’t respond, I press pause myself.
“What?” Remi pulls his ear buds out and turns his concerned gaze on me.
I wince as I take in the “me” captured in the freeze frame of the video.
My hair, that was almost completely dry and no longer weighed down by water, had contracted into a dark, unruly mane, so full, it obscured most of my face in the first few minutes of the video, when I was facing Marcel and in profile to the camera.
From that point of view, the bold swell of my cheekbone, the slope and slight, but noticeable, upward-tilt of my nose and the deeply downturned corner of my mouth are visible.
As I watch it, with no volume, you’d think I was on the receiving end of something mildly upsetting. But in the freeze frame, with my eyes looking directly into the camera, the stark terror I was feeling at the nuclear bomb that was being dropped on me is clear as day.
Watching a replay of the morning Marcel came in to confront me about the photo is harder than I thought it would be. It’s like having an out of body experience. All of the feelings that coursed through me that day surge up, creating a ripple layer of anxiety, right below the surface of my skin. It feels tight and hot. Just the way it had the morning everything that kept my life anchored fell away.
It happened in an instant. I should have seen it coming, but I wasn’t looking because I was so wrapped up in Stone.
