When Fates Align by Isabelle Richards

Author:Isabelle Richards [Richards, Isabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance Suspence
Published: 2015-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Lily

I’ve been dozing on and off all afternoon while Gavin went to work. Now that Mrs. Smythe knows I’m alive and relatively out of danger, she’s put on the full-court press for him to at least make an appearance at the office. Gavin fussed about it at first but ultimately gave in. While there are some things only he can do, the day-to-day operations of the company practically run themselves, giving him the flexibility to disappear for weeks on end when his girlfriend gets herself in trouble again. If he worked at a factory or ran a shop, he’d be out of a job. But he takes his responsibility to his employees very seriously, so when Mrs. Smythe said he was needed, off he went.

Gavin returning to work, even for a few hours, is good. We need to resume some sort of normalcy. Our lives may be anything but normal, but maybe if we pretend that they are, I can trick myself into believing it. I need to feel normal again. This emotional merry-go-round is making me crazy. I’m up. I’m down. I’m angry. I’m crying. I want to kill the cartel. I want to put them into therapy so they can be rehabilitated. I’m losing my freaking mind, and I’m fed up with it. I just want to feel like me again.

The worst part about post-traumatic Lily is that when Gavin leaves, I come apart. I jump at every sound. My hair stands on end, and I have this cloud of impending doom hanging over my head. When he comes back, it all fades away. But he can’t mitigate my stress forever. I need to learn to do that on my own. Codependent is a dirty word in my book, and not the kind of dirty word you secretly long to say. It’s the kind that makes me want to wash my mouth out with soap just for thinking it. Despite all that, every time he leaves, my heart races, and I feel as though someone’s squeezing my windpipe.

It’s foolish. I know I’m safe. This place is a fortress. Max is here, and Gavin’s team of army buddies, whom I think I met at the storage unit, is also here. In my head, I know no one can get to me, yet I never thought anyone could get me at the flat. That thought always creeps into brain, spreading doubt and fear like a virus. This old house moans and groans all the time. With every sound, I have an internal debate about whether it was the wind or a team of ninjas coming to shish kebab me. Talking to myself has to be sign that I’ve moved past “going crazy” to “certifiably insane.”

Chills run through me, and I throw another log on the fire, hoping it’ll warm this place up. I don’t know how Gavin’s family lived here. The wretched place is always freezing. I suppose that’s why they drank so damn much. A constant flow of booze is probably the only way to tune out the fact that you can’t feel your toes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.