Chapter Eleven

Isabelle

It was the longest twenty-four hours of my life. I heard Jameson ride off after muttering something into the door. So much for being my knight in shining armor. I was hungry as hell and bored out of my skull. I turned on the TV and got a screen full of static. I took a risk and called Jerry about amenities that came with the room.

“Somethin’ wrong with the sheets? They were supposed to be clean.”

I wanted to throw the phone at the wall. When I asked about food and entertainment he said he had videos in the office and a vending machine. I had enough change for a couple of candy bars and a soft drink. The videos were complimentary but I passed on his selection. All porn as far as I could tell, so I walked back to my room with my sugar-fueled dinner, unprepared for the last insult of the day. As I crossed over to the row of motel rooms I tripped on a chunk of torn up asphalt and fell forward. I managed to catch myself before I faceplanted. But as I straightened up I heard an alarming snap that sent a current of nausea coursing through my innards. I had ripped one of the straps on my sandal and my shoe now swung freely from my foot.

I pitched a stream of curses across the parking lot that would turn Jameson red and tore the sandal from my foot. Crap I yelled across the desert as the sole of my foot hit the blazing roadway. I slapped the sandal back on and limped back to my room, cursing Milling, the motel, Scott, and everything else under that hot, fucking sun I could think of.

***

I was going bat shit crazy without my phone. No Instagram. No Facebook. No email. I might as well be living in the dark ages. I had a longing to talk to my parents. Could I risk it? What would I tell them? How could I explain about Scott? I’d lied all these months and told them we were the perfect couple. I’d been too ashamed to give them an inside look at my real life.

What would Daddy say now? I’d made my bed? Would he disown me? Come after Scott? Oh, not physically. He’d never do something like that. But my father had connections and could probably do some serious damage to Scott’s chances to take his company public. That was something he talked a lot about lately. Getting venture capital. Daddy just had to put the word out and doors would close in Scott’s face. Did he realize that? Who he was dealing with? Would I let Daddy hurt him?

Right then I just wanted out of this motel. This town. Hell, I’d settle for a good meal and a chick flick to put myself to sleep.

Hours went by and nothing from Jameson. Typical. He’d gotten tired of sitting on my doorstep and went looking for more promising prey. I tried to sleep but I fought with the sheets until the moon was high over the parking lot. I dozed a bit, but when tinges of pink hit the horizon I gave it up and took a shower, a fast one, washing my hair with a tube of smelly shampoo I found on the sink. I dried myself on a towel that was thinner than one of my mother’s linen hankies and watched the clock.

The repair shop opened at seven and I was on the phone to Dave at five after. Please, I prayed. I need good news.

But he’d already had an email that the parts were held up in Nebraska.

“Give me till Friday,” he said. “I’ll have your car put together by then.”

If I haven’t killed myself first, thought but didn’t say.

I hung up and crossed the room to open the window. Maybe it would be better than the air conditioning. The room went sideways and I almost did, too, catching myself on the window ledge. Whoa. This was what, Tuesday? I’d had my last solid meal at breakfast on Sunday. Hunger was taking its toll and I was on the verge of fainting. Where was Jameson when I needed him?

And then, as if he were reading my mind, I heard, “Open up, Isabelle, I know you gotta be hungry.”

Everything inside of me froze. I was naked underneath the paper thin robe I found hanging behind the bathroom door, and I had no makeup with me to cover up the bruise around my eye. This morning it looked more like a neon sign advertising battered woman syndrome. Altogether I felt completely exposed and without armor.

Jameson kept me on my guard and I had nothing with which to defend myself, not even my cosmetic bag to paint over the evidence of my vulnerability.

“Isabelle. Give me a break,” he said, more insistent now.

No, I thought, you give me a break. You, world. You give me a break. I was tired of having my back to the wall. A year of it with Scott, and now this nightmare with my car, with Jameson. Time for me to take control of my life. I was tired of hiding, running scared, living a shriveled-up life. So what if I looked like the loser in an MMA fight? So what if my clothes were a wreck, and my designer shoes were coming apart. That was the outside stuff. Show him what was on the inside, Isabelle. Show him what I was made of.

I was tired of being hungry and tired of being alone as well. A loneliness magnified by the fact that I was stuck in a motel out in the middle of the fucking desert, so far from home with no phone, no car, and no one to talk to. Now I had to be real about who I was and what was mine.

Me.

Whether I meant it or not.