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“We both saw her in the parking lot when we left. She didn’t get off scot-free.”
The image was seared on my brain: Fiona kneeling in the gravel, hunched over, sobbing uncontrollably, her face contorted in agony. As much as I hated to admit it, that memory hurt like hell. I wanted to feel righteously angry, like You made your bed, you fucking bitch, but I couldn’t. No matter what she’d done to me, I couldn’t think about her like that and still hold onto my rage.
But there wasn’t any law that said I had to keep thinking about it.
I turned back to the wall. “I don’t want to hear another fucking thing about her. You got that?”
“Okay.”
He was as good as his word. We both drank in silence until we passed out – or at least I drank until I passed out. A whole bottle of scotch before the darkness finally descended and blotted out my pain.
6
Fiona
The next morning I lay in my hotel bed pondering the wreckage of my life. Metaphorically, at least, since all of my stuff – including my car – was still at Jack’s.
I wasn’t about to go get it. Not yet. I’d have to eventually, but I wasn’t anywhere close to being able to handle the fallout yet.
I’d made it out of the Roadhouse parking lot in one piece. Picked myself up and stumbled out onto the highway, then called an Uber on my phone.
As soon as the driver saw my tear-streaked face and disheveled hair, he’d asked me, “Jesus, lady, you need me to call the cops or somethin’?”
Considering it was the Richards Police Department who had abducted and delivered me into Lou’s hands last night, I assured the driver emphatically that no, I absolutely did NOT want him to call the cops.
But I didn’t know where to go.
I didn’t have any reason to return to the crappy motel where I’d lived the past week, and I had a huge reason not to: Lou owned it. He probably had no designs on my life now – after all, he could have easily killed me at the Roadhouse if he’d wanted me dead. But I figured there wasn’t any need to make it easy on him if he changed his mind, so I went to the nearest Holiday Inn instead.
For a while I wondered what the hell I was going to do about all my stuff over at Jack’s. Would he have dumped it on the lawn by now? Put it in the trash? Set it on fire?
In the end, I figured I’d have plenty of time to worry about all that tomorrow. So instead I just lay there crying most of the night, turning events over and over in my head.
If I’d told Jack the truth when he’d asked, would he have been able to stop Lou’s plot?
If I’d been honest from the beginning, would he have helped me find Ali’s killer?
If I’d told him, would he still hate me now?
If, if, if. Such a completely and utterly useless word. I’d done what I’d done, and there was no taking it back.
There was one ‘if,’ though, that I knew the answer to.
If I’d had the choice to not meet Jack, period… would I give up everything I’d felt for him, just so I didn’t have to feel this pain?
That answer I knew.
No.
I would never trade the memory of kissing him, the feeling of him making love to me, no matter how much pain I had to endure.
But there was a flip side to that question, too.
If I could go back in time… would I have walked away from him that first morning in the diner and never seen him again, if I could have spared him all that pain?
The answer to that was yes.
I’d hurt him so badly… he’d lost so much on account of me… that no matter what he’d gotten from our time together, it could never balance the scales.
