Take a Breath (Take #1) - Jaimie Roberts Page 0,139

my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. I’m plagued by questions which seem to have no answers.

Why did Jake let her in the house?

Why did he ignore my cries?

And why the hell didn’t he even look at me?

Suddenly, a horrifying possibility hits me. Maybe he doesn’t love me after all. Maybe I was just a placeholder for my mother, and now that she’s back, he doesn’t need me anymore. While my tears fall, all of those “maybes” morph into a single, full-blown assumption. I don’t wonder anymore.

Now I know.

My worst fears have been realized.

I feel the most agonizing tear in my heart as a loud sob escapes me. How could he do this to me? Why is he doing this to me?

The clouds in the sky are getting thicker and darker, almost as if sensing my mood. I’m lost … broken. My mind is teeming with all-things-Jake and everything I thought I meant to him. Do I really mean so little after all?

This is excruciating, and I refuse to stick around long enough to think on it any longer. I pull away as quickly as possible, and as I pull out onto Route 7, I hear a faint rumble of thunder in the distance as the rain begins to pelt heavily on my windshield. The weather is rather appropriate, and that observation manages to evoke an actual laugh. Though brief, I cannot help but appreciate any respite life sees fit to afford me right now.

Despite my best efforts to put those thoughts out of my mind for the time being, my traitorous mind starts racing with images of what I’ve just witnessed. Pictures of them in my head make the nausea in my stomach grow tenfold.

What possible news could my mother and Jake have? Have they gotten back together? Is the marriage back on? Do I really want to know? No, I don’t. The pain of knowing would be too unbearable. It would simply destroy me.

At the red traffic light, I stop and rest my head on the steering wheel as I tightly shut my eyes. I’m desperately trying to erase Jake and my mother from my head, but thoughts of them are only replaced by memories of Jake laughing with me, smiling at me, and most significantly, making love to me.

I’m quickly brought out of my slumber by the sounds of horns blaring behind me. They’re alerting me to the fact that the light above my head has now turned green. I put my car in drive and hit the accelerator. The pain in both my stomach and my chest is becoming so unbearable that I don’t know if I can make the journey. My state of shock is what enables me to continue, heading where I need to go. I’m numb, driving on autopilot to a destination which only my subconscious knows is safe and where I need to be.

As I pull in to Sunnyside Apartments, I switch off the ignition and fall back onto my seat. I take some deep breaths, but no matter how much I try, the tears just keep on falling. The aching fire in my stomach is the worst pain I have ever felt. Of all the bad things that have happened to me in the past, nothing comes close to the pain I’m in now. Not even the feel of Tony’s hands around my neck as they squeezed the life out of me, bringing me close to death, can compare to this.

What am I going to do? How am I going to be able to live life without him?

He’s my heart and my soul—the reflection in the mirror looking back at me. He is my entire world, and nothing else in the universe matters to me except being with him, wrapped up tightly in his protective arms.

I drop my head forward as visions of him holding me, caressing me, and making sweet love to me fill my head. It’s almost as if my memories are taunting me in the most sick, evil, and twisted ways imaginable.

I am flooded by an intense feeling of despair. I am trying to repress a sob, but it’s close to reaching my throat anyway. The sobs that escape me are so harsh that they start to hurt my throat.

Not wanting to stay here all night, I will myself to get out of the car—to place one foot in front of the other. I walk the distance to Jessie’s apartment block, already soaked from the relentless downpour. The