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With nowhere else to go, I call a cab and head to the beauty salon. A stylist named Esme seems to have been expecting me.
She does an expert job of bleaching my hair blonde, straightening and layering it so I look nothing like myself. She offers me green contact lenses.
Sure. Why not? Green eyes, purple, silver—who gives a damn?
I’m like a robot, moving and answering mechanically, with no feelings behind my words or actions. Feeling hurts too much.
I spend the night in a hostel, then use my money to buy a bus ticket to Illinois. New York has too many memories for me. I can’t stand to be here anymore.
Once I’m there, it’s not hard for me to get an off-the-books job waitressing, and I rent a room in a weekly motel. I work night and day. I save every cent that I earn.
I call Astrid and Sarah the first week I’m there, but I refuse to tell them where I am. I just tell them I’m okay and I hang up when they try to ask questions.
I used to be Tam with a plan. I knew what I was going to do with my life. I would live a life of meaning and service. I’d shield the people who were most vulnerable. I knew that was why I’d been put here on this Earth.
And then I met Joshua.
Joshua swooped down on me and carried me off and forced me to live for him, only for him, every minute of the day. He invaded my body and my mind, demanding I give up all my secrets to him. I was deprived of companionship and any sense of purpose except that of pleasing him.
I fought and I fought, but on a level far deeper than I realized, I surrendered completely. I believed him when he said I belonged to him. I came to depend on his strength and his possessiveness and the way he made me know that I was precious to him.
He was my higher purpose.
Without that now, I feel like nothing. I feel like I was a fool to believe he ever loved me.
Days drift by, and I keep thinking he’ll change his mind and come for me, but he never does. Days melt into weeks. I spend Christmas and the New Year alone. I spend Valentine’s Day in my room, staring at a phone that doesn’t ring and hating myself for my weakness.
I get to know some shady characters. I buy a gun without serial numbers and pay Z, the sleazeball who sold it to me, to give me lessons out in the woods where nobody will spot us.
As time drags on, I start to understand why I decided on Springfield, Illinois as my new location. It was subconscious on my part, but now I remember why this particular location appealed to me.
Joshua stripped everything away from me, and I don’t have the will to go back to school, but there’s still one thing I can do with my life.
One way I can make the world a better place, just like I used to dream of.
One thing that will make Joshua remember the girl he crumpled up and threw away like trash.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
JOSHUA
“Que mierda, what is that smell?”
I sit up and look at Sergeant Carter, my eyes bleary. I rub sleep-crusted eyes and try to orient myself. I’m on the couch in the living room of my Manhattan penthouse. Daylight streams through the windows.
Maybe Sergeant Carter is just a nightmare. I have them all the time now, and I can rarely tell whether I’m asleep or awake when they’re happening. I’ve seen my father stalk through my living room, dragging Tamara’s dead body by the ankle. Her eyes were vacant, staring at the ceiling, and she left a long trail of blood behind her. I ran over and grabbed at her, but she melted away, and I was standing in the middle of the room alone.
Charlemagne has hacked my limbs off while I lay helpless on the kitchen table. Elizabeth—poor, stunted girl who lived her life for me and died when I couldn’t love her—howled wordlessly and clawed at him, but he didn’t even see her. My mother…she just stays curled up in the corner of the room, hugging her knees, sobbing wordlessly.
I open my eyes again. Sergeant Carter is still standing there, looking down at me impatiently. Except he was fired, so now he’s just Geoff Carter.
The answer to his question is, I don’t know. That smell might be me, or it might be the piles of trash lying around me.
I’ve disabled all my security systems and fired my entire security team. Garrett remains on retainer, in case Tamara ever needs anything. That’s it.
I’ve got all the money in the world. I could have anything I want—any woman, any toy, with the snap of my fingers.
It doesn’t matter.
