Cursive - By Phoebe Lane Page 0,92

phone and dialed Aislynn's number, all the while screaming at Chloe to get dressed and out of his house. He waited for the first ring, hoping Aislynn would pick up and not let it go to voicemail.

But before it could ring a second time, Jace realized there was a phone ringing inside his house that shouldn't have been there. Worse off, the ringing matched the one in his ear.

"What’s that?" Jace asked, searching the room for the sound. He walked over to the sofa and immediately saw it. Aislynn's phone was sticking out from in between the cushions.

And right next to it laid a second phone that didn't belong there—Chloe's.

"What did you do?" he said, turning around to watch a now nervous Chloe get up from her stool and back away from him.

It all became clear to him at that point.

Aislynn's cell phone had been in his house all along, and she had never gotten his text the night before. She had no idea he was back in town, or that Chloe had shown up at his house. It had been Chloe, not Aislynn, who had replied to his message.

This is not good.

Aislynn was seriously regretting going through the exercise of writing about her past. It had really messed with her head in a way she hadn't anticipated. Her argument with Christopher obviously hadn't helped out one bit and only drove her to stay up for a second night in a row.

After realizing she had never gotten a call back from Jace, and that she hadn't heard from Ellie since she had left for Chicago, Aislynn went searching for her phone. It took her a few minutes to figure out she had mistakenly left it back at Jace's house earlier that day.

Aislynn felt a sense of relief come over her when she drove to the house and saw his car parked in the driveway. She really needed to talk to him about the things she had been struggling with, and maybe finally tell him about what had happened with Christopher. But then she noticed there was second car parked in front of the house, and a series of disturbing thoughts and theories ran through her head in a matter or milliseconds.

Oh, please, God. No.

Walking into that house to find Chloe making herself comfortable in his kitchen had been heartbreaking. But seeing Jace walk out of his room, freshly showered just like Chloe appeared to be had almost brought her down to her knees. Her psychiatric training kicked in right away, and she forced herself to remain calm, at least on the outside. On the inside, she felt like her heart and lungs were being shoved down into her abdomen to make room for the unsurpassable amount of pain that was aggressively invading and taking control of her body.

Back in her car, Aislynn's chest started aching and her breaths became rapid and shallow. A cold sweat dripped down the back of her neck, and she realized she was having a panic attack.

So this is what it feels like. Yeah, this is horrible.

She stopped her car by the side of the road just a few blocks away from Jace's house, in an area of the coast that didn't have any homes built yet. She got out of her car, crossed the street, and sat down on the sand out of visible range from passing cars. The first rays of sunlight tried to rise in the horizon, but the heavy clouds stubbornly covered them, almost like they were trying to push the sun back down into the surface of the water. The air smelled heavy of ozone, like it did just before a rainstorm.

She concentrated on her breathing, doing the things she had taught her patients how to do while going through a panic attack, and tried to regain control of her body. After ten minutes or so, the peak of her attack passed and she was able to fight off the waves of nausea, grateful that the ringing in her ears had stopped.

"You really didn't see this coming, love?"

Ugh. Somebody kill me, please.

Aislynn turned her head slightly and saw Christopher approach her, his steps measured and confident.

"This really isn't the right time for this, Christopher. Please…Just, please, leave me alone."

"So the guy is cheating on you, huh? And with his ex? With the girl that broke him?" he taunted her, and chuckled. "I guess he did say that at one point he was convinced Chloe would be the woman he would marry.