Twisted (Torn Series) Page 0,95

watched until I disappeared around the corner. As soon as they were out of sight, I lost it. I pulled into a parking lot and put the car in park as sobs shook my body.

I had done the right thing, but it killed me. Drake was my life and now he was gone, just like that. I didn’t know where to go from here; since I had been with him, all visions of my future included him in them. I hoped that once he realized that I was serious, he would get help so that he didn’t lose me.

I waited until my sobs quieted to hiccups before pulling back onto the road. It was a long way to Ocean City and I wanted to get there as soon as possible. I knew Danny wouldn’t mind me staying with him again, but I felt horrible for abusing his hospitality. Hopefully I would only stay there for a few days and then head back to Charleston with Amber and Logan. They had decided to spend a couple of weeks in Ocean City to enjoy the beach, and Danny had offered to let them stay at his place while they were there.

I grabbed my phone off the console and dialed Danny’s number.

“Hello?”

“Danny? It’s Chloe, I need a place to stay.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Chloe

Six Months Later

I blew a strand of hair that had fallen loose from my ponytail out of my face as I left my class of the day and walked to my car. After throwing my books in the backseat, I sat behind the wheel and started my brand new car. I had decided to trade my car in for a brand new Kia Sorento at the beginning of the school year, using a small amount of the money my aunt had left me.

Winter in West Virginia could go from warm and sunny to snow-covered roads in a matter of hours. If I wanted to make it from the house I shared with Amber and Logan off campus to my classes when the roads were bad, I knew I needed something four-wheel drive.

The three of us decided that we were over the whole sharing a bathroom with other students and started looking for a house to rent as soon as we got back from Ocean City. We found one just a couple of miles away from the main campus for a reasonable price. As soon as the ink was dry on the paper, we had picked up my stuff from Drake’s house and took it to our new home. When everything was packed and loaded into my car, I sat my key on the kitchen counter and walked away from the house and from Drake.

That was almost three weeks after my break up with Drake and I hadn’t heard a word from him. With every day that passed with no word from him, my hope had dwindled. He knew by then that I was serious, but had obviously decided that the drugs meant more to him than I did.

A week before school started, Jade had called me with some news. The band had been contacted by a studio in Los Angeles that wanted them to come out and record a few tracks to see how they sounded. While I was glad that things were starting to look up for them, I was also disappointed. Jade said they had all accepted the offer, which meant Drake would be in Los Angeles working on his music instead of returning to school. I had hoped that if Drake came home, maybe he would see reason and seek the help he desperately needed.

Jade and I had kept in touch through the first month of school, but with both of our schedules full we had quickly lost contact. I hadn’t heard from her since September and the last time she called, she said Drake seemed to be using more instead of trying to get better. The band had been pushing him to stop, but with the potential of a recording contract hanging over all of them, they didn’t want to push him away and ruin all of their dreams.

I pulled into my driveway and parked my car. One of the things that had drawn us to this house was the fact that it had private off-street parking, something that was a novelty in a college-student packed town.

Since it was a Friday and I had no weekend classes, I left my bag in the car as I walked into the