Something flickers behind his gaze, but it’s gone before I can interpret it.
My father didn’t kill himself.
Ari killed him.
This man that I’d given my body to. All my thoughts. My fucking dreams were wrapped around him, and he did this to me.
Tears burn my eyes as I lunge from the wall to slam my hands against him again, my fists beating against his chest while he just stands there and takes it without moving away or trying to stop me.
“Get the fuck out!”
Licking his teeth, Ari inclines his head and turns to leave my room. I follow him all the way to the kitchen doors, staring out as he crosses the yard to the tree line, Lincoln stepping out of the shadows to glance back at me once before stepping up next to Ari to leave.
And I sink to the ground when they disappear from my view, my body wracked with violent sobs, my shoulders hunching forward as I scream for them to never come back.
The cool night air blows in to crash against my face, my stomach heaving as the bile climbs faster, my abdomen clenching with the warning that I’m going to puke.
Pushing to my unsteady feet, I slam the doors closed and run to the bathroom, fall to my knees and vomit, my body heaving as my dinner comes up while tears race down my face.
He broke me.
Without concern.
Without guilt.
Without anything.
He’s destroyed my life.
Made me a game.
Stole from me when I didn’t know he was there.
And just like the first night he claimed to have seen me, Ari left me a shattered mess in a house I can’t escape.
Except this time when he walked away, he took my heart with him, just one last thing he needed to steal before vanishing entirely.
Adeline
One Month Post Ari
I’m not okay. I wish I could tell you that I pulled up my big girl panties and only cried for a day or two before picking myself up and moving on. But that’s not what I’ve done.
Instead, I’ve festered. Wallowed. Cried, fought and screamed. My sleep is a never-ending nightmare, my waking hours no different. It’s all blending together until I’m an absolute mess that can’t function.
Poor Little Adeline has become Poor Pathetic Adeline.
A wasted person, a shell of herself that crawls through her days barely eating, dreading sleep, living behind locked doors and drawn curtains, the sunlight too obnoxious because it reminds me of the world beyond my misery.
Grant served me with divorce papers, and I haven’t been able to look at them. I haven’t turned on the television to watch his bullshit interviews to see how he’s dragging me through the mud now.
If I didn’t know better, I would swear Grant and Ari teamed up to ruin me. That this had been their plan all along.
My heart feels like it’s going to shatter every time I let myself think of Ari. The shadow has a face in my dreams, but I can never reach him.
He’s out there. Somewhere. Probably hoping to watch me crumble so he can see the results of everything he’s done.
So, I hide. Refuse to let him look inside my house if he is sneaking around. Refuse to walk outside for fear he’ll be watching.
The Adeline show is over.
He took everything from me.
He stole it all.
And still, I can’t let him walk through my thoughts without the painful desperation I feel to reach out for him.
How fucked up is that?
How fucked up am I for feeling it?
My eyes close when the tears start again. My hair rips when I bury my hands in it to fist my fingers.
Two Months Post Ari
“Who is Harrison Nash?”
I stare across the desk at an older man with dark hair silvering at the temples. Behind thin, wire-framed glasses, he stares back at me, a shrewdness in his eyes that I assume is necessary given his career.
Jerome Warner is supposedly one of the best divorce attorneys in town, a man who didn’t blink an eye at the team Grant had hired to represent him. It made me feel better at first. But, the truth is I couldn’t care less what I get out of the divorce. Jerome keeps insisting I go for what’s owed to me, but I’d rather just give it all up and forget I ever knew Grant Cabot.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, my voice soft and sheepish. “He played me extremely well. Led me to believe I mattered to him while stealing me away from Grant.”