Chapter Eighteen

 

Tamara

Tamara, I used to think I was brave, but what I’m doing now is pure cowardice. I know you’ll never forgive me, and I do not deserve your forgiveness. Please know that I love you, and please know that I am doing this for you. I am breaking apart. I cannot control myself any longer. I cannot keep you safe from me. I haven’t slept in days, and I cannot tell the difference between nightmares and reality. There is a real risk of me killing you even in broad daylight.

I have to send you away.

You do not need my protection anymore. Micah has been captured. He was found hiding out in a state forest in Nebraska. After he made fools of the prison system last time, they will be watching him 24/7. I also have men on the inside, and they will be watching him around the clock as well. You’re safe. You’re free—from him, from me, from the evils of our past.

I won’t send my men to watch you again. I no longer have that right. If you ever need help, I will send it, and if anyone ever tries to hurt you, tell Garrett, and my employees will take care of it.

The district attorney will want you to testify against my brother during his trial. Say whatever you want to. I accept all consequences for my actions. Stay safe, be well, and always remember I live only for you now. And living only for you means I must make the ultimate sacrifice. I must give up the only thing in the world that matters to me, to keep from breaking it beyond repair.

I stare down at the note, and it doesn’t make me cry anymore. It makes me very, very angry.

There’s a card stapled to the note with Garrett’s phone number on it.

I’m sitting in the very fancy hospital suite in New York City where I woke up five days ago. The skin on parts of my chest and my butt are achy and tight. Those are the areas where the plastic surgeons performed a full-thickness skin graft to cover the places where Micah carved and burned his name into my body. There are also two stitched-up areas on my abdomen where the doctors removed the skin for the grafts.

I very carefully tear up the note from Joshua into tiny little pieces and let them drift into the trash bin next to my bed. They fall like snow. They fall like the tears I shed when I first read it and realized that Joshua had abandoned me.

I’ve read the note so many times I have it memorized. It’s branded onto my heart. I will never forget a word of it.

He won’t let me stay with him and help him heal.

He won’t try to get better for me. I’m not worth fighting for.

I cried all day the first time I read the note. I haven’t cried since.

Inside me, there’s a hollow, aching void. I don’t know what to do now. I feel no purpose.

I miss him every second of the day. I miss him when I eat and have nobody to talk to. I miss him when I sleep and Micah chases me through my dreams. I miss him when I slowly, awkwardly give myself sponge baths while sitting up in the hospital bed. The nurse offered to help me, but I waved her away. I can’t bear the thought of anyone else’s hands on me. Ever.

I saw on the news today that Micah has already announced he will plead guilty to the charges of kidnapping Astrid and her children, of murdering Dr. Barnard, whose body has not yet been found, and of kidnapping and torturing me. He is refusing to speak to a lawyer.

He doesn’t feel remorse, I know. I’m sure that he plans to try to escape again at some point.

And Joshua is selling his company. I saw that on the news too.

What will he do with the rest of his life?

Will he dedicate himself to hunting?

Will he find another woman? Or a lot of women? Throw himself back into fucking high-end escorts who don’t make any emotional demands on him?

Thinking of that hurts me so much I can’t breathe, so I force it out of my head. I stand up, and I find I’m pacing the room aimlessly.

I asked my nurse how long I have the room booked for, and she told me that I could have it for as long as I want it. Like a fancy, overpriced hotel room. Even the food here is excellent.

I look at the torn-up pieces of paper in the trash.

“I’m going to leave today,” I tell her.

When I woke up in the hospital room five days ago, I found my suitcases full of clothes—my old, battered suitcases and the thrift store clothes that I bought myself before I met Joshua. There’s also the cash I had saved up before I met him.

He knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t accept anything at all from him—not money, not new clothes, not a fucking bus pass. I could ask him for everything he owned, and he’d give it to me. I know that with a dull, aching certainty. But he won’t give me the one thing I want.

He won’t let me stay.

There’s one thing that he left me that I will use—a fake ID, and a card with an appointment at a beauty salon.

I know what he’s doing. He’s giving me a way to change my appearance, and a new name, because my face has been all over the news and it will be hard for me to start over as Tamara Bennett. The fake ID identifies me as Jennifer Dawson

Whatever. I’ll use the name for now.

I check out of the hospital that day and stand on the street with my suitcases at my feet and a yawning sense of emptiness ballooning inside me.

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.