Crazy in Love (Lovestruck Series) (15 page)

Blair

Lying in bed shaking, staring up at the ceiling, I’m…confused as more tears fall down my cheeks. Part of me is afraid the intruder might come back, while the other part of me is hopeful that he will. How fucked up is that?

Oddly enough, the tears are not from fear of him now, but mostly from the memories of my painful past that still haunt me every day and night, no matter how hard I try to forget them. Tears of guilt and hate. Will they ever stop?

The stranger called me a liar. Yes, that’s all I am.

I’m so damn tired of living this way.

After my mother died, my father carelessly discarded me when I was only eight, so the second half of my childhood was thankfully spent away from him. Despite how lonely and shitty the last decade of my life has been, it definitely could’ve been worse, right? I guess I could’ve been dead like my mother.  

God, I hate that man, and not only for ruining my entire life. He’s a psychopath, who, according to the lovely postcard he sent me, is spending the next two weeks on his honeymoon with the bitch he just remarried. While the burden I’ve been
forced
to carry around with me for the past ten years is heavier than a ton of bricks tethered to my soul, there’s not an ounce of remorse in my father’s entire body.

It feels like a few of those bricks have been lifted away tonight, leaving me lighter just because
someone
knows the truth. I wanted to ask the late night prowler how he found out and beg him to do something about it since I can’t. But instead, I stayed silent like the cowardly lying girl I am.

Unable to sleep in the darkness, I reach over to turn on my bedside lamp. A little light makes everything less scary. I don’t even consider calling the police for a second. Instead, I just lie in bed, which is much more comfortable than the closet, rolling around in my self-pity until I eventually fall back to asleep.

Surprisingly enough, after having a stranger in my room tonight, it’s still a more peaceful sleep than usual. No one else’s cries or moans. No screams of despair, except for those in my head. The only downside is the loneliness here. At least while I was
there
, I was lonely while constantly surrounded by people. Someone was always close by. Now, it’s just me on my own, back in my old house that’s haunted by the memories of my mother. It’s probably best to be alone since I wouldn’t be good company for another person unless they only wanted to have staring contests. 

…

The next morning, I wake up rubbing my eyes when the blinding sun penetrates my window. The reminder of the flashlight burning them makes my heart race as I start to remember bits and pieces from the night before. I could’ve sworn it was all just a crazy dream, but the smothering fear inside me seems too raw and intense for me to have only imagined the unknown man who came into my bedroom last night.

Feeling braver now that it’s daylight, and I’m not as worried about any monsters hiding under my bed, I finally climb out of it. The first thing I do is look over at the post at the head of the bed where my hands were tied just hours ago. Nothing. No evidence it actually transpired. Thinking back, it had felt like he had used a soft scarf to restrain me, but there’s no sign of the scarf or anything else that proved it happened. My fingertips glide over each of my wrists as I turn them over, examining them, looking for marks, but there’s not a single blemish. 

Like a scaredy-cat, I tiptoe quietly down the hallway, as if the intruder I quite possibly concocted in my own messed up mind is still lurking around or sitting down at the kitchen table having breakfast. He’s not. All the other rooms in the two-story house are also clear when I do a walk-through, including the spare room and my father and his new bitch’s bedroom upstairs. The only room that looks like anything could be out of place is my father’s office that sits across from my bedroom. Several desk drawers aren’t pushed closed all the way. I look inside each of them, but they’re still full of pens, paperclips, and other typical office supplies. My dad could’ve left them slightly ajar, and I just didn’t notice yesterday since I didn’t come into his office.

Convinced I must be going crazy, or more accurately, even further off the deep end, I go back to my room and pull out one of the bottles of prescription anxiety pills from my purse and pop a few of them into my mouth.

Who am I kidding? There’s no magical pill that will ever take away the agony, the guilt, or the weight of my past from me. It’s like a fungus that grows and spreads each and every day. Nothing can stop it until it eats away every inch of me.

I’m so…tired. Tired of fighting the demons. Tired of the screaming and the blood. Tired of knowing
I’m
responsible for her death and for ruining an innocent man’s life. I don’t deserve to live while he sits locked away in a prison serving a life sentence with zero chance of parole.

This is the first time in all those years where I’m no longer constantly monitored or on lock down. I can go anywhere and do anything I want.

And what I want to do is escape before they find me and drag me back.

The decision is easy really, and one I’ve thought of many times before but didn’t have the necessary resources to accomplish. If he can’t threaten to end my life because I’m gonna do it myself, then there’s nothing to stop me from coming clean either. Confessing my sins.

Now I just need to figure out how to go about setting things right. Walk into the police station and have them blow me off, or worse, arrest me? Send a letter that could be brushed aside as a forgery?

And then it hits me, the perfect, failsafe method where there’s no doubt about my identity and my spoken words, and there’s no way it can be ignored - this social media mess I’ve heard about. Apparently everyone’s into posting pictures and videos online. It’ll be easy. If I can find a cell phone. Surely I can borrow someone’s and ask them to post it. Good, so that just leaves me to figure out the second part of my plan.

If I slit my wrists, there’s always the chance that I won’t do it right, then it will take forever. No, thank you. I may want to die, but I don’t want it to be agonizing. I want to take the easiest way out, not suffer like my mother did until she stopped screaming and finally took her last gasping breath. In that case, I guess I can cross jumping to my death off the list as well since it’s another way to potentially survive with an immense amount of pain.

Overdosing is too complicated. There has to be a certain type of pill, and the dosing has to be right to take into account my body weight. Also, I don’t know where to get any of the good, hardcore drugs that would definitely do the trick.

Hanging or suffocating myself just seem like the absolute worst and the opposite of what I’m going for. I want to end the suffering, not prolong it.

I guess that only leaves one option.

I need to buy a gun.

Since most legit places have rules about waiting periods or whatever, I’ll have to find one from someplace shady.

Grabbing the phone book from the kitchen drawer where it’s still kept after all these years, I look for pawn shops; and then pick the one in the darkest and most dangerous part of our small town. It’s right on the edge of the county line like it’s barely hanging on before it gets kicked out by law enforcement.

For some reason, I feel it’s important to be clean before I end my life, so I take a nice, hot shower for the first time without anyone watching me. I forego styling my hair or putting on makeup. I wouldn’t know how to do either even if I had the equipment for it. But the point is moot anyway since there won’t be much of my face left in a few hours.

Knowing I’ll need cash, I raid the piggy bank in my old bedroom, the one in the shape of an actual pig, wearing a crown with the words
Little Princess
on the side. I’m pleased to find it’s still full of the ones, fives and tens I got from birthday parties or that my mom gave me as bribes to keep her secrets. In fact, now that I think about it, my entire life has consisted of nothing but people telling me to keep my mouth shut.
Don’t talk. Stay quiet. Shut the fuck up
. The one time I failed to do just that, and it ended in blood and grief so strong I wasn’t sure I would survive. I wish I hadn’t, and today I’ll finally make amends.

First, I need to see her.

Up the stairs and down the hall to the right, I head for the attic cord hanging down and give it a tug. The small, narrow wooden steps unfold, and I take them carefully up into the stifling space above. The air is so thick and dusty it’s hard to breathe, but I’m on a mission. I flick on the light and start tiptoeing around boxes, afraid the creaking floor will give out under my weight.

There’s a long box with a piece of white fabric sticking out. I open it up first, finding her clothes tossed haphazardly into it. I hold up the white sweater, remembering seeing her wear it over her sleeveless dresses to church. Digging through the box, I find a few pairs of jeans and shirts, her dresses too. Since I didn’t have any clothes to bring with me, I shove the whole box down the wooden attic stairs so I can wash the dust from them and wear some…But I guess I won’t need clothes after today, will I? Either way, it’ll be fun to spread the clothes around the house so my father and his new wife see them when they come home. I bet he’ll be so pissed. When I find another box of clothes and shoes, I toss them down the stairs too, absolutely gleeful at the thought of decorating every room with them. It’s the happiest I’ve felt in…well, as long as I can remember. It’s nice to feel
something
other than guilty for a change after being kept on meds that were intended to leave me with nothing but a void of where emotions were supposed to be felt. Although, I guess there was nothing to be happy about while in isolation. 

It takes a little more searching for me to find the box of photo albums. I let out a sigh of relief that he didn’t destroy them. Brushing the dust off the top one, I open the big, navy blue cover, revealing a photo of my parents on their wedding day. My heart clenches at the sight of her face after all these years, so incredibly beautiful with long blonde hair and golden skin. As a child I remember thinking she always looked gorgeous, even first thing in the morning with no makeup on, fixing breakfast in her pajamas. But on her wedding day, she was radiant, although she wasn’t smiling. I keep turning pages, seeing photos of her belly swollen with me and a hint of happiness on her face, my baby pictures, her holding me, feeding me, bathing me. My father is thankfully not in any of the pictures. I guess he was the one taking them, which is surprising. I can’t remember ever seeing him take pictures. Going on to the next album, I open it up and find…nothing. It’s empty. Along with the other two albums, not like photos were removed, but like my mother never got a chance to fill them. Unfortunately, I don’t find any videos, so I decide to go back downstairs into the cool air, taking the navy blue album with me to the garage. 

Finally ready to leave, I hop into the red, Audi A-5 convertible I was able to hide in the garage, sitting the album in the passenger seat. On the drive across town, I try to think of anything I might want to do before the end. Eat some good food, that’s for sure. Have a cupcake or an entire cake to celebrate the ten birthdays that have gone by without a card or notice from another single soul. I miss cake. My mother made the most delicious chocolate, three layer cake every year for my birthday that I can remember, until that day…What else do I want to do on my last day on earth? Oh, I’ve always wanted a tattoo! Maybe I could get the butterflies and flowers I associate with the star-crossed lovers. I’m sure I can find a tattoo parlor around here. 

Saving my mental bucket list for later, I pull up in front of the paint-chipped building with black bars on the outside of all the windows and doors and turn off the ignition. The small neon sign says they’re open, so grabbing my purse, a pink messenger bag decorated with a white kitten wearing pink sunglasses that I found in my childhood bedroom, I square my shoulders and try to look like a confident woman instead of the scared little child that I am.

When the door buzzes, announcing my arrival in the otherwise empty store, an overweight, balding man on the other side of the counter doesn’t even bother looking up from his laptop. That’s right, I’m invisible. Nothing new.

I casually walk around the cluttered racks and shelves of used junk, touching lamps and other random things occasionally, as if I’m just browsing and not intent on buying an illegal gun. I just keep wandering around until, what do you know, the shiny guns in the glass case just so happen to catch my eye. There are three choices, small, medium and large. I’m sure a gun enthusiast would know more about them like make or model, but to me, it’s just eeny, meeny, miny, moe. 

Deciding on the large one so that I do this right the first time, I pull out the wad of cash I grabbed from my childhood piggy bank and start counting out the three hundred dollars required for my purchase based on the handwritten price tag. I lose count when the door buzzes, announcing another customer. Nosy, I glance over to see who it is. 

My blood warms in my veins, sending a scalding blaze of heat from my scalp down to my toes at the mere sight of the tall man. Everything about him screams
dangerous
, from the thick chestnut-colored facial hair to his black leather jacket in summer and the cigarette billowing a cloud of smoke from between his two fingers. When he removes his dark sunglasses, it’s his lowered brow and deep set eyes that are the scariest. His cold gaze undresses me from my V-neck tee down to my open-toed platform sandals before he deems me lacking and quickly moves on to the used guitar display in the corner. But at least he actually
saw
me, if only for a few, brief seconds.