Chapter 101

* Ryder *

“Is there something on your mind, Elena? You know you can tell me anything right.” I know we’re straight, that we’re back on the right track, and, dare I say, even stronger and better than ever. I can feel it with each breath I take in her presence; I see it in her eyes each time we make love. But sometimes, she gets this look on her face that I’m not too sure about.

This is new territory for both of us. Our fights in the past never lasted this long, and there was never this much to overcome before, obviously. Add the fact that we’d both grown and changed in our own way; there were now some things I didn’t know about her, and that look was one of them.

I’m not gonna lie; it was making me nervous, and this feeling brought home the fact of just how much I had taken for granted in the past. Before, I would’ve been too far up my own ass to broach the subject, but that’s a version of myself I wish not to revisit in this lifetime, so now I’m asking just to clear the air and make sure that everything really is okay with her.

“What makes you ask? Do I look like something is bothering me?” Yup, she’s pissed, alright. She always becomes evasive when something is bothering her, and she doesn’t want to open up, or she thinks that I will just shut her down, so there’s no point in wasting her breath. That I remember only too well. When is the shame of my past going to let me go?

It’s as if each day, I recall something about myself that I’m ashamed of and have to fight to drag myself back to the present with the promise of doing better this time around. I’m not sure what I expected from our reunion, but this attack of conscience with every other breath wasn’t it, that’s for sure. That shit is brutal.

“Are you still mad at me?” I watched her carefully because even though she doesn’t lie, she does have a way of circumventing the truth to avoid confrontation. Not this time.

“Of course I am Ryder. You humiliated me in front of the whole world for five years. Just because I’ve forgiven you and we’ve gotten back together does not negate that fact.”

“Ah, I see…”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Don’t I dare what?”

“I know that tone; you’re about to do what you always do when you’ve done something to piss me off.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know very well what I mean. You were about to say something about my period, weren’t you?” Don’t laugh Ryder, or that Italian half of her just might brain you with something. I should probably be looking for cover if the look on her face was any kind of warning, but she’s so damn adorably cute when she’s riled up that I couldn’t help wanting to be near her.

“I wasn’t about to say anything of the sort.” She hissed at me, and I lost it. The laughter I’d been trying so hard to contain just rushed out, and she smacked my shoulder as I rolled around on the bed. I wasn’t laughing at her distress, of course, but the way her little face puckered up was too cute.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry; I don’t mean to laugh, but you look like an adorable little kitten when you’re upset.” She folded her arms and pouted before turning her back to me, and that kind of sobered me up just a little bit. It was hard to have a serious conversation such as this when, inside, I felt like jumping for joy.

That’s something else that has been happening a lot lately. Every once in a while, throughout the day, I’d get this burst of feeling in my gut, happiness I find hard to contain, and it’s all because she was back in my life, because she’d given me, given us, a second chance. I was feeling that way now, so it was kind of difficult having this much-needed talk at the moment, even though I was the one to open that door.

“Okay, let’s talk, let it all out.” I gave her the opening she seemed to need because no sooner had the words left my mouth than she ripped into me, in her quiet way, of course. She was never one to rant and rave, and usually, I could only gauge her level of upset by her body language, which I think is another reason why I used to push the envelope so much in the past. Since I didn’t plan on repeating my idiot mistakes, this time, I sat up and listened.

She laid out her grievances, most of which stemmed from the fact that I hadn’t trusted her even after everything that she had done for me. She felt slighted because she’d given me and the relationship her all, and in the end, I’d throw it away because of strangers’ lies. When she put it like that, I really was an ass. But I drew the line when she accused me of wanting an out back then and using those lies as an excuse. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I may not have been the best person back then, but one thing was for certain: I loved her more than life. Somehow, we ended up holding each other while she cried, and I beat myself up for ever doing that to her. My biggest regret in life to date is that I can’t undo what was already done. That I can’t go back and change everything so that our history wasn’t marred by my fuck-up.

But even with the conversation as it was, I felt at ease. I was amazed that we’d reached this point already, that we were back to being so comfortable with each other that this kind of petty fight was on the table. I thought for sure that we’d be walking on eggshells around each other for a while or that she’d go back to being that timid young girl who was afraid to rock the boat.

It hit me then how much she had grown up. She was all woman now. That strength I’d been threatened by at times was even more prevalent than before, but this time, instead of feeling like a shadow passing through her life, I felt emboldened by it. Because I knew that if no one else was, I had this amazingly beautiful being by my side.

“Fuck I love you.” That stumped her mid-sentence, and she got that soft, dewy look in her eye as she closed her mouth on whatever she was about to blast me with. “I love you too.”

When I opened my arms, and she fell into them, it was like every song I’d ever written for her had come alive. I made up my mind right then that those were the only songs I would sing at the concert.

***

* Janie *

I don’t know how long I lay there after she was gone, but from the shadows on the walls in the room, it must’ve been a while because it had grown dark outside. I kept telling myself that I needed to get up and, at the very least, find something to eat, but the thought of food made me sick, so there was no rush.

I was lying there, ruminating, when I felt a presence like there was someone else in the house with me. I hadn’t heard a sound, like a door opening and closing or anything like that; it was just a sense that I was not alone. Then someone walked into the room and scared me half to death.

He turned on the light, and it took me a moment to recognize him as one of the men who had driven me home earlier. Was that today or yesterday? I can’t recall; the days just seem to be running into each other. I swallowed the fear that had crawled up my throat, “You, what are you doing here?”

“Someone wants to talk to you.” He held out a phone that was not mine, and I took it reflexively, not even thinking about who he could possibly know who would want to talk to me. If my mind was working correctly, I would’ve guessed.

“Hello, Janie.”

“Oh, it’s you.” The little bitch as I had taken to calling her, had the nerve, the audacity.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m calling to let you know what we have decided about your future.”

“What? What the hell are you talking about? What does my future have to do with you?”

For some reason, my heart started racing, and my mouth was filled with the taste of fear. Something about her fills me with dread, which I don’t understand because she’s just a kid. But just the tone of her voice and the matter-of-fact way in which she said those words sent fear coursing down my spine.

“We thought long and hard about what should become of you; we even gave some thought to releasing you. In fact, we had a hard time deciding your fate. We considered that maybe you were a victim of your father’s greed, which would make it hard to punish you.”

“Who is we? And what right do you have to decide anything about me?” She carried on as if I hadn’t spoken while the man’s presence in the room suddenly felt like a threat. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t said a word since handing me the phone, but now I was looking around him to find an escape. I don’t think I like where this was going.

“But then you sent that last message, and we realized that you are just as foul as he is. You knew about the missing girls and did nothing; instead, you held onto the information to use it for your own gain. Despicable quadruped.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Anyway, I thought it only fair that I reminded you of why you ended up here, lest you convince yourself that you’re being wronged.” Again, I tried to interject, but once again, she just kept going as if I hadn’t spoken a word.

“Six years ago, you lied to one Ryder Sumner about his longtime lover having an abortion and getting rid of a baby that he desperately wanted, a baby that did not exist. At the same time, you, your father, along with Mary Hudson and her kids, concocted a scheme in which you sent Elena Gianni overseas on a supposed girl’s trip, which was just a cover to give you time to carry out your schemes.”

“Once your lies bore fruit and you had destroyed the relationship between the two, thereby marrying Mr. Sumner, that wasn’t enough for you; you then proceeded to spend the next five years tormenting her into a mental hell that dogged her every step by vilifying her in the press.”

“As if that weren’t enough, you turned her best friend against her, used said friend to spy on her, and placed listening devices throughout her home, which you then used to drive her over the edge into insanity. And here we have the doctor you paid off to convince her that she was indeed going insane.”

“How do you…”

“Your commentary is not needed.”

How could she possibly know about all this? I’d forgotten about that bitch, Rachel. Was this all her doing? Had she somehow got an attack of conscience and spilled everything? It can’t be; we had her mother in our sights, something she knew only too well. I remember paying the old woman a visit myself and putting the fear of hell in her to get her daughter to do my bidding.

It hadn’t been too hard in the end because she was looking for any excuse to stick it to Elena because she, too, hated her guts. But it was a little bit of added incentive at the time just to ensure that she didn’t go back on her word and let their failing friendship stand in the way.

“Goodbye, Janie.”

“What, wait, what did you say?” I hadn’t heard the last bit of the conversation because my mind had wandered. “By the way, I have something for you. Those men will give it to you once you leave.”

“Leave? Where am I going?” I was still screaming that question when the phone was taken away, and I was ordered, not told, to get dressed because it was time to leave. I looked up at the total stranger who had no recognizable look on his face, meaning I couldn’t read his expression because there was none.

If I thought I was afraid before, that was nothing compared to the knee-shaking horror I felt as I got up from the bed to look for something to wear. My eyes fell on the Walmart bag in the corner, and I felt tears of defeat run down my face. “Where are you taking me?” I thought briefly of seducing him, but how do you seduce someone who acts like you’re not even there?

He left the room long enough for me to get changed, and I thought of all the ways I could escape, but there were none. The window was too far up, and I had no idea where his partner was. The only solace I had was the fact that if they were going to kill me, I would’ve been dead already.

I wish I hadn’t let my mind wander or that I wasn’t going through another bout of withdrawals right now because I’d really like to know where I was going. I asked him again and again, but he ignored me each time as he led me outside to the waiting car under cover of night.

I was barely seated in the back when the other one announced that the little bitch had sent me a gift. When he turned on the radio, I thought it was going to be a repeat of the last time I was in this damn car, with stupid music that seemed to mock me, but I was wrong; it was worst.

At first, when Ryder’s voice came through the speakers, I wasn’t sure what it was. Was it one last message for me? Or even an apology, maybe? Or was he about to tell me that this was all a big prank or something? He used to be into that kind of stuff when he was with her before, but he’d never done anything like that with me.

I started listening, and then I heard her voice, and it dawned on me from the words that were being said that I was listening to Ryder and Elena’s first meeting after five years. I started screaming and kicking in the backseat until I passed out, their words still ringing in my ears.