The voicemail icon on my phone flashes, taunting me. Finally finding the courage, I tap the icon and put it on speaker. The robot voice informs me there’s six new messages.
Echo’s southern drawl pours through my phone. “Livvy, where the fuck are you? You ran. You fucking promised you wouldn’t run anymore. I love you. I fucking love you, Livvy. It’s not safe for you to be out there on your own, so get your ass back home. Just fucking call me and tell me where you are. I love you, Livvy. Come home to me.”
Tears start to track down my cheeks. The pain in my chest that I’d been ignoring burst to life the moment I heard his voice. My breathing becomes erratic. The sound of his voice makes me ache to be near him. The pull to him is so overwhelming I start to rise from my seat.
Forcing myself onto the sofa again, I select the next message and brace myself for his words. “I need you. Our bed’s empty, and I don’t want to be in it without you. I’m broken, Livvy. You broke me, and I need you. Where are you? I need you.” Even through his drunken slur, I can hear the pain and hurt in his voice.
I pause the messages, drop my phone, and quickly edge away from it. Loud, anguished sobs rack me, and tears run in torrents down my cheeks. Glaring at my phone, I contemplate stamping on it to save myself from the rest of the messages, but my desperation to feel close to him, even if it’s only listening to his voice, wins.
Cautiously, I gather my phone and select the next message. “Livvy, you can run, but we both know that I own you heart and soul. Come back to me now before I have to start looking for you. You own me too, sugar, and you left me behind. I need to find you, Livvy. I don’t want to be without you. You’re my home. I have to find you.” His voice is full of command. My body responds instantly, and I shudder with arousal.
Moments later, I contemplate the implication of his words. “I need to find you, Livvy. I don’t want to be without you.” The message was left the day after I left, four days ago. Excited nerves flutter to life in my stomach.
He’s looking for me.
I quickly select the next message, desperate for more of his words. “I miss you. I know things haven’t been good the last few weeks, but I love you. And you love me. I know you do. So I don’t understand why you’re doing this. You woke me up, sugar, and made me want more. Then you took it all away. I don’t know what to do without you. I love you, Livvy, and I want you with me.”
Frantically, I move to the next message. “Where the fuck are you? You’re mine and you better not forget it. Get ready, sugar, ’cause I’m gonna spank your ass so hard when I find you, you won’t sit down for a week. But I tell you what, you’ll never forget who you belong to again. Call me right fucking now, Livvy. I’m not fucking joking.” I’m tingling all over, my lips twitching into a smile at his threats.
The anger and frustration in his voice seems to escalate with each message and each day that passes. “You don’t get to walk away without talking to me. You want to end things, then stop being a fucking coward and answer your phone.”
I reluctantly select the last message. “It’s been four days, sugar. Four days since I held you in my arms. Four days since I talked to you. Four days since I slept with you wrapped around my body. I don’t know where your head’s at. I don’t fucking understand why you left. I refuse to think I’ll never see you again. You’re my happy fucking ever after. ”
Shell-shocked, I let my phone fall from my hand and drop to the floor. He loves me. Three words with such a big meaning, and he says them again and again. I thought his love had changed, that it had become an obligation out of guilt. But the passion in his voice removes all of the doubt from my mind.
He loves me, and he’s looking for me.
He’s coming for me.
Fuck.
In the last twenty-four hours, I must have picked up my phone a thousand times. I want to call him. I’m so desperate to hear his voice and beg him to come get me.
But that won’t solve anything. My visa will still run out, and I’ll have to leave him all over again. I want to go to him, but if the pain of leaving him when I thought he didn’t love me is hard, leaving him knowing that he should be my future would be devastating.
There’ve been no new messages, but like an addict, I listen to his voicemails obsessively again and again.
“Liv, if you don’t call him soon, I’m going to,” Dan shouts from across the room.
“Dan, I can’t.”
Shaking his head, he settles onto the love seat opposite me. “You’re an idiot. You love him and he loves you.”
“But my visa!”
Raising his hand in front of my face, he silences me. “Liv, they’re just excuses. Apply for a permanent immigration visa. You still have a month left on your tourist visa, go back and figure it out when you get there. There are options, but you’re just running away. So stop being a coward and figure out how to get back to your man.”
Slowly, I lift my eyes until they lock with Dan’s. “I’m scared,” I whisper.
Dan nods and smiles. “Love is scary, Liv. That’s how you know it’s right. If you weren’t scared, I’d be worried, but use the fear, don’t let it overwhelm you.”