I drive until I can’t see anymore, until my vision is so blurry I have no choice but to pull over to the side of the road, and my stomach turns. “I’m going to be sick.” I open my car door and throw up on the side of the road.
“Where are you?” I hear him shut a door in the background, and I hear him turn on his car. “I’m coming to get you. Are you home?”
“Daddy,” I sob out. “My heart. It hurts,” I tell him, sobbing and trying to catch my breath so I can speak. “So much pain.”
“ERIN!” he yells. “Share your location with me.”
I grab my phone and share it with him and then toss the phone on the seat beside me. “It hurts so much,” I tell him. I grab my hand, putting it to my chest, hoping to rub the pain away, except nothing I can do will dull the pain. Nothing he can say can kiss away the pain; nothing that anyone can say can make the pain go away. Nothing, it’s empty. There is nothing left. Nothing of my heart, nothing of my soul. I sit here on the side of the road. I don’t even know if it’s five minutes or one hour. I know nothing but pain.
I see headlights coming at me and then stop on the side, and I know I’m finally safe. He opens my door and grabs me in his arms. “I can’t breathe,” I tell him, my breathing coming in pants now, the pants hurting my chest even more.
“You can breathe,” my father says. “Just look at me.” I look at him, and the breathing gets worse, the pants shorter, harder, more painful. “You are having a panic attack,” he says, and I look at him. “Just look at me, baby girl, and inhale nice and slow.” I focus on his eyes, his warm eyes, the love showing.
“He doesn’t love me,” I tell him, taking a huge deep breath. “He shattered what we had.”
“Oh, baby,” he says, holding me around my waist and walking to his car. “I’m here.”
He puts me in the car and fastens the seat belt over me. I put my hand to my chest. “Hurts right here,” I tell him of the pain that is so deep I feel it in my bones. I feel it straight down to my soul.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Carter
I watched her get in a cab and drive away. Looking at my watch, I was going to give her an hour and then go to her. Walking back into the party, I look around, and Jennifer comes up to me. “Is Erin okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine,” I lied to her. “It’s just been a long week.”
“Don’t I know it, but soon it will all pay off for her,” Jennifer says, drinking her water bottle.
“What is going to pay off for her?” I ask her, my mouth suddenly going dry and my mind racing. This can’t be happening to me again.
“Her big break,” she says. “You know if you stay in line and don’t fuck things up, she gets her dream job in New York.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, it’s really a done deal at this point because you’ve been good for the past three weeks. Only one more week to go for her.”
“Excuse me,” I say, walking away from her. My hands are suddenly clammy, my throat dry, my heart beating so fast I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I get in my car, my mind going into overdrive. I think back to every conversation we had to see if she mentioned something, to see if she said something, anything that could make sense of this. Moving to fucking New York. Is this for real? My hand grips the steering wheel, and I head to her house, but then turn around when I’m almost there.
She is just like everyone else, I tell myself, yet my heart doesn’t get on board, but I ignore the pull of reason. The night going by is a nightmare, the hours making it worse with all the memories that fill them. I sat at the window, looking out into the darkness, and set my plan in motion. When it was finally over, I thought I would feel better, I thought I would be vindicated, but instead, I was in more pain, more agony. More broken. Let her fucking go to New York after riding on my coattails, taking what she could