I ignored Sarah and the 4 guards at the house. Yeah, he’d left me here but doubled the security. Twice a day, at least, Sarah asked me if I’d checked my phone and I’d always say that it was charging. It was plugged in on the nightstand but turned off. I didn’t want to turn it on because I didn’t want to know whether or not he’d messaged me. If he had, I didn’t want to read them. If he hadn’t, I didn’t want to know either because that’d make me consider the fact that he hadn’t bothered to message me. Stupid girl.
Yesterday Sarah had said that Tessa and Lisa showed up to visit me but I feigned a headache and made her get rid of them. I missed Luc’s baby shower. I knew Sarah went. She came up to tell me she was going but didn’t invite me. I suspected Tommy didn’t want me leaving the house, anyway. And what good would it do for Tommy’s family and friends and everyone related to the Ferranos that I hadn’t met yet meeting Tommy’s fiancé, a member of the walking dead.
After five days, he came back. The door swung open and there he was. I was in bed with my laptop playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker online with fake money, a lot of fake money as apparently I was some sort of poker savant (ever since losing my shirt, literally, at strip poker to him). My hand was inside a box of Sugar Crisp. It was 11:30 at night. I was in sweats, a messy bun in my hair. I’d had a shower that morning but I didn’t even brush my hair, just shoved it up.
The door had opened and he dropped his suitcase on the floor and threw his jacket on the chair in the corner by the window. He folded his arms and stared at me. I glanced in his direction and ignored him and looked back to my screen. I unceremoniously shoved another handful of the sticky cereal into my mouth and pressed the button to fold from the game on the screen and licked my fingers. The tension level in the room shot up to near nuclear as he spoke, no roared,
“Where the FUCK is your engagement ring?”
My blood ran cold.
Suddenly he was in my face, the cereal and the laptop swept off the bed onto the floor.
I looked at the nightstand where the ring sat and then up to him. His eyes landed on it and then he picked it up and shoved it on my sticky finger. I made a painful squeal and swallowed hard. My heart thumped painfully in my chest and in my ears. His face was distorted into a snarl.
“That never comes off your fucking finger,” he glared at me, “It has a GPS in it. If anyone tries to take you again, it’s how I’ll fucking find you. I see that ring off your finger for any reason that tells me you’re planning to run. You planning to run?”
I shook my head No.
“No?” Heat and rage were all I could see in his eyes.
I shook my head again.
“Why was it off?” he demanded.
My head dropped to the pillow and I covered my head with the blanket. He ripped it right off me and tossed the blanket behind him so that it fell on the floor with the cereal and the laptop. I shrieked and pulled a pillow against myself and backed up against the headboard.
“What is your fucking problem?” he shouted. He picked up my phone and turned it on and it made a whole bunch of bleeps. Obviously he’d been messaging me, lots, “Done feeling sorry for yourself yet?”
“You’re the one who left!” I yelled, my voice hoarse. It might’ve been days since I’d spoken.
“You’ve been fucking catatonic. Obviously you didn’t care,” he retorted.
“I don’t fucking care!” I said, “I’m tired of fucking caring. Everything I care about means nothing. My father, my mother, you. Nothing.”
“Why am I nothing?”
“You’re not nothing. I’m nothing. I’m just…” I dropped back down to the pillow and put my hands over my face.
He sat on the bed and leaned forward and took my hands off my face and weaved his fingers through mine. His face was seriously pissed off-looking but his touch was gentle.
“I told you that you’re everything.”
“What do you want from me? You want to hit me? Go ahead and hit me. You want to fuck me? Go ahead---”
He let go of me and got up, “Fuck,” he stared at me a beat and then said, “I’m taking a shower.”
I laid there for a second and then lifted the phone, which he’d tossed on the bed, and s
crolled through the texts sent throughout the time he was gone.
“Come down to the office, baby.”
“Tia?”
“I’m flying to Italy with my brother for a few days. Tell no one. Just that I’m away on business. I’ll text when I land. Love you.”
“P.s Delete my texts after you read them.”