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“I have no fucking idea.”
But I knew things would never be the same.
CHAPTER 29
QUINN
Icouldn’t believe how easily I’d lost Jason. When I realized he wasn’t behind me, I slowed my pace, expecting to see the red smudge of his sports car in my rear-view mirror at any minute. When it didn’t appear, I did a loop around town and then headed to Waterford Village.
Callum wasn’t home when I pulled into the garage–the bay where the minivan parked was empty. I hurried inside and threw my things into a bag. I moved as quickly as I had when I left LA a month ago, but this time, my heart was a hundred times heavier. It lodged in my throat, a rock I couldn’t swallow or spit out. I kept an ear cocked for the sound of the garage door opening again, indicating his arrival, but the house stayed silent except for the sound of the rain on the roof. It drummed down, a backbeat for my misery.
It took fifteen minutes for the Uber I called to arrive, leaving me almost a full ten minutes to wander around the house. I was ostensibly making sure I hadn’t left anything behind, but I already knew I hadn’t. What I was really doing was saying goodbye. Goodbye to the library where I’d kissed Callum forthe first time. Goodbye to the bed where we’d spent so many unforgettable nights. Goodbye to the kitchen where Callum had made us pancakes on Saturday mornings and the table where I helped Noah with his homework.
Then the Uber pulled up, and I walked out the front door for what I knew might be the last time.Come on, you’ve done this before, I lectured myself as the tears began to slip down over my cheeks.You have to do it. You can’t stay here.
I knew it was true. Either I’d bring the wolf to the door, or I’d switch out my golden cages. The memory of Callum’s blank stare, the way he’d tried to control me, galvanized me enough to run across the lawn and slide into the Uber.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” the driver asked, eyeing me. The backseat was lined with plastic sheets–he’d expected a sodden passenger, but a crying one was something he hadn’t prepared for. He rustled through the glove compartment until he found a small pack of tissues to hand back.
“I’m okay,” I said in a choked voice that gave me away. I tried swiping at my face with my shirt sleeve, but it was too wet. I gave up and took the tissues, blowing my nose noisily and leaning my head back against the plastic. As the Uber U-turned and headed for the main road that would lead to the bus station, I closed my eyes tightly and pressed my fist to my mouth, trying to keep the sobs rising in my throat from heaving themselves out through my clenched teeth.
I went to my place when I got back to LA because I didn’t know what else to do. I was going to have to face Jasoneventually, and he’d find me wherever I went. It might as well be in my bungalow in the hills. I loved the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house that was built in the 1920s and had hardly been modernized. I’d bought it when I was twenty, after my first album went platinum, and I thought I’d die in it.
Now though, even its familiar cozy rooms and the breathtaking view couldn’t ease the ache in my heart. By the time I walked through the front door, my clothes had more or less dried stiffly to me. I crawled into the tiled shower even before the water had completely heated up, and then stayed under the burning spray until it cooled again. Only then did I get out and dry off for the first time in hours.
I pulled on my most comfortable sweatpants, an oversized sweatshirt of Callum’s that I’d swiped, and swaddled myself in blankets on the couch. It felt good to be warm and dry, but everything else felt bad. A halo of misery surrounded me, pressing in, making it hard to breathe. Without even realizing I was crying, tears slipped down over my cheeks. I stayed like that, unable to move, as the sun sank into the canyon over the edge of my infinity pool and pulled darkness down after it. Within an hour, the sunset was replaced with infinite black. I waited for the fear to set in–the paranoia that even now, Jason was pulling into my drive, ready to finish what I’d run away from.
I couldn’t seem to feel anything through the haze of pain, sadness, and loss though.
Sluggishly, I got up and, with the blankets still bundled around me, checked all the locks. It was just something to do. I finally stopped being afraid. Let Jason come. I was done running and hiding. I wanted my life back. After my sweep of the house, I sank back into the couch cushions and waited for so long that I fell asleep there.
When I woke up, the sunshine was beaming in through the sliding glass door, seemingly brighter than ever. The birds were trilling their high, sharp song that never failed to wake me up at dawn, and my doorbell was ringing.
This is it. I untangled myself from the blankets and walked to the front door, fully expecting to see Jason leering at me through the peephole. To my surprise, I saw Renee instead.
I opened the door, feeling disoriented, like I’d walked out of a movie theater to use the bathroom and walked back into the wrong one. I wasn’t supposed to see the face of my best friend. I was supposed to have the final showdown with my asshole manager.
“Isn’t it a school day?” I asked when I finally got it open.
Renee looked at me with pity. “No, it’s a Sunday.” She walked in, knowing she didn’t need an invitation. She’d been here plenty of times, though not often enough in the last few years.
“Right, Sunday.” I pushed my hair off my face as I processed that. The party had been on Saturday, which was only yesterday but felt like another life.
Renee crossed her arms and studied me, her mouth pursed.
“What?” I asked self-consciously. “Do I look like hell?”
“Yeah, but that’s not what this look–” she drew a circle in the air around her face “–is about.”
“It’s because I didn’t brush my hair after I–”
“Quinn fucking Collins,” she interrupted. “I did not come here to talk about your hair.”
I dropped my hands back to my side, giving up on finger combing the tangles from it. “Then why are you here?” I asked quietly.
“Why am I here?” she repeated. “Well, QC, there are a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to check on you. You ran off in the middle of a fuckingmonsoonand haven’t returned a call or a text since you peeled out of the parking lot going twice the speed limit.”
“My phone died.” I wrapped my arms around myself and wished I hadn’t left the blankets behind. I wasn’t proud of how I’d left. I had taken unnecessary risks, going as fast I did.
