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I made it outside and was about to pull my phone out, when something violently fluorescent caught my eyes. Craning my neck, I saw a neon flyer taped to the wall just by the door.
My heart dropped out of my chest as I stared at it, my mind automatically going back to the last time in my life I had suddenly found a bright piece of paper outside somewhere I had been.
But it couldn’t be. There was no way-
I walked closer and sure enough, there was everything that I was fearing. I couldn’t breathe, and I could hardly read, as shock settled in.
There was my name across the top and a terribly pixelated picture of me in the center. In smaller type below that, it said that I was blackmailing a rich man for the custody of his child, that I was a home wrecker and it listed some married man that I had never heard of, and that I was addicted to drugs.
That was ridiculous! No one would believe that, right?
But I already knew the answer to that. Heart rate shooting up to a hundred, I knew that everyone would eat the drama and gossip up with a spoon. How did that vile woman find out where I worked though? How did she even know I was in St. Louis?
Despite her lapse of judgement with Jason, I knew she would never tell the ex that had worked so hard to ruin me. So that must have meant it was Jason himself who leaked, which seemed purposefully spiteful. While I didn’t think highly of the man, this was a new low.
Quickly, I snatched the piece of paper and shoved it into my purse before quickly walking away. Maybe no one else had a chance to see it yet? Had anyone left early?
I rounded the corner to our employee parking lot and stopped dead in my tracks. Spread out like some sort of hallucinogenic blanket was hundreds upon hundreds of neon flyers, taped along the walls, thrown on the ground, covering cars, it was literal hell.
I gasped, because what other sound was appropriate for what was going on, and ran forward, grabbing as many as I could. Paper after paper, I picked them up and shoved them into my shirt, or my purse, or my pockets. Anything to get them out of public view.
I was in an absolute panic as I hurriedly cleaned up. I noted that some of them said different things, but I couldn’t quite make out the words through the blurring tears in my eyes. Why was she doing this to me? I had just found peace, why was she trying to ruin my life again?! I had told off Jason; I wasn’t looking for any sort of romantic connection or anything like that with him. If anything, I wanted him to disappear from my life entirely.
But that didn’t matter to her, did it? She wanted to make me hurt. She didn’t care about me, or my child, or anything beyond her idiotic fascination with Jason. Just like everybody else, I didn’t matter to her.
My breath was coming in wheezing sort of rasps that didn’t seem to give me the oxygen I needed, but I hadn’t even made a dent in the onslaught of fluorescent papers. My coworkers were going to be out any moment, and I couldn’t handle them seeing this part of my life.
Dammit! This was too much! Why, why, why when I had just found happiness, I hade to have it yanked from me again? I had thought I was finally going to sit back and enjoy the blessings, and now this witch was trying to topple it all over again.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I heard footsteps behind me. No. No! It wasn’t enough time. I didn’t have even a quarter of them picked up!
“Nicole, are you okay?”
I snapped upright from where I was standing, at the same time whirling to see a gaggle of my coworkers looking at me with a mix of confusion and concern. I opened my mouth, trying to think of some sort of excuse, or explanation that wouldn’t make me sound absolutely insane, but suddenly I couldn’t really move my lips to make words.
I looked to them, their forms hazy in my blurred vision, before suddenly the world winked out and I feel into nothingness.
Chapter Thirty-One
~James~
I checked my phone for the third time, waiting for a text from Nicole. Usually she texted me every day when she arrived home from work to tell me that she was safe, but she was running a bit late today.
I knew there was probably no reason to worry, since she had done it a few other times as well. A handful when she’d gotten stuck in traffic, or had gone to get groceries/gas, once when she was stuck in line for the bathroom at work because all of the women had decided to wait until the end of the day to use the facilities, but still, I never liked it when she went off schedule.
