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My forehead pinches as I consider it. It’s thin and looks as if it’s not even carrying anything. But it’s sealed and this is the right address.
All of this for one little envelope.
Slamming the door to the mailbox shut, I walk a few blocks, gripping the envelope in my hand and looking for a bus stop.
I text my brother even though I don’t want to. I don’t want him to know it’s done. That I have what he’s been waiting for.It’s just an envelope.
It’s marked as read almost immediately and he responds just as quickly.
Good. Come back home.
Staring at his text, that pit in my stomach grows. I’m frozen to the cement sidewalk, knowing I have to leave and hating that fact.
I know I need to move and not stay here, lingering when Marcus will be watching. But with the phone staring back at me with no new messages or missed calls, the compulsive habit of calling Addison takes over.
The phone rings and rings and goes to her voicemail.
I haven’t stopped trying and I don’t intend to.
I stayed as long as I could outside her door. I listened to her cry until she had nothing left. I don’t know if I should have tried to talk to her and made her aware that I was still there wanting to comfort her, or if it would have only made her angrier.
A heavy burden weighs on my chest as I slip the envelope into my jacket, careful to fold it down the center and keep moving in the night.
I have no choice but to take this back to Carter. There’s no way I can stay.
For the first time in a long time, I feel trapped. Suffocated by what’s coming.
I can’t leave her again.
I can’t watch her walk away, and I can’t leave her either.
But it was never my choice.
It’s always been hers.
CHAPTER23
Addison
Ican’t count the number of times I swore I was haunted. Not the hotels I stayed in or the places I moved. But me. A Romani woman in New Orleans once told me that it’s not places, it’s people who are haunted.
And since the day Tyler died, I swore up and down that he decided he would haunt me as I ran from place to place, never finding sanctuary.
From the creaks in the floorboards, to small things being misplaced. Every time I tried to find meaning in those moments. Each time I thought it was something Tyler wanted me to know and see.
There were so many nights when I cried out loud, begging him to forgive me. Even when I couldn’t forgive myself.
I wonder if Daniel heard my pleas.
My phone pings on the coffee table and out of a need to know what he has to say this time, I reach for it. I haven’t answered a single call or message from him. I don’t know what to tell him.
It’s fucked up. He’s fucked up.
He hurt me beyond recognition.
I should tell him how I couldn’t move for days on end. But the bastard knows that already.
I truly loved him, but a lie from years ago makes me question everything. He could have helped me heal. He could have shouldered the burden of my pain and I would have done the same for him. But just like when Tyler was alive, he was silent. He gave me nothing.
