Break Me

“I’m gone for good!” she screeches.

I move to step outside of the office.

“Thank fuck for that. What do you want, Missy?”

“I just wanted you to know I’m out of the condo.”

“Yeah, I got a visit from my father. You’re a dumb bitch. Don’t come back. Don’t ever come back. You got involved with the wrong Stanley man now.”

I don’t listen to what she says next; I simply disconnect the call.

I gave her time to get her closure. If she called thinking I would beg her to come back, she was wrong. After involving my father in our business, she is dead to me. That’s the one button she knew never to push, and her running to him makes me realize she wasn’t the one, because through all of our fucked-up relationship that was an understood, accepted, and never-to-cross line.

Her call only drives me harder to keep the distance between us. I’m not usually the kind of guy to give up on anything. We had three years to get it right, and with every passing day, it seemed to get worse. My mind moves from the struggles and fights of trying to make something work that was doomed long ago to the ease of having Lorraine in my space.

Closing my eyes, I lean back in my office chair and picture her hair spread out over my pillow like it was this morning. I think back to the fear she has in her home. I think about her taking on her sister’s identity to follow people, people I know. I just don’t know why she is following them specifically.

I also wonder if she’s had help, psychiatric sort of help—shit, good ol’ Dr. Sam would’ve noticed the need, right? I keep coming up with more questions; the why’s are bombarding me.

I’m glad she has a good job she loves, and it suits her. Only, her life in every other aspect stopped that night in April and I feel compelled to help her figure out why.

Chapter Seventeen

Today is a seven-to-seven shift. Three on, three off, but I always pick up extra shifts. Normally, I want to run to the comfort of the hospital. Today, I don’t want to leave the comfort of this place. His place.

I sit down, and Boots jumps on my lap. He is already accustomed to Jason’s condo. Socks shows trepidation, though. I feel a twinge of guilt for having given him anxiety—my anxiety.

My first week home after graduating college, he ran outside in the dark. I was terrified, but I couldn’t leave him outside. I ran around the backyard, calling for him. Panicking, my heart raced so hard I thought it would come out of my chest. When I found him, I was so angry. I held him to me and cried. This was after boarding up the damn stairs so he wouldn’t go up there. It was not my finest hour. It was the first night I slept in the basement room—my father’s old home office—and it was the last day the stairway to hell was opened.

My hysterics and the sounds of me using my father’s tools probably caused him to seek comfort in the same place I did—the basement. From then on, I fed him there and tried to protect him from my demons, ones I gave him.

I pet Boots, holding him as I stand and walk to the bedroom where Socks is hidden under the covers. I sit down and pet them both until they purr almost in sync before standing up.

“You’re safe. Go soak up the sun.” I pet them again and look at Boots. “Take care of him.”

As I ride the elevator down to the ground floor, I watch as the numbers light up. With each passing floor, the fear of the box I am in eases, yet the thought of someone coming in becomes no less terrifying.

Reaching the ground floor, I let out a deep breath as the door opens. I walk out, looking both left and right.

“Good morning, Miss Bosch,” a dark man says with a nod. “Mr. Stanley asked that I let you know your car is parked in front and that he was the last in it.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, looking away.

I pull my sunglasses over my eyes and walk outside to my car sitting right up front as promised.

I don’t understand why he insists he isn’t good, why he says he is bad. Everything he does shows me the total opposite. He is considerate of my feelings, and he doesn’t judge or run from the knowledge of who I am or the piece of craziness that lives inside of me.

The way he touches me isn’t monstrous—not to me, anyway. The way he wants me as much as I want him is not wrong, even though it sometimes feels a bit possessive. It’s also protective, and to a girl like me, that protective and possessive manner coming from a man who wants me is the best type of feeling I have ever felt.