AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m gonna fucking fix it!” he shouts, hollering it in my face with such fury on his face that I’m immediately terrified, wishing I could turtle into myself.
He lays me on the bed and is about to speak when his phone chimes from his pocket. He pulls it out and rushes out of the room.
Hearing him run down the stairs, I decide to follow. He’s outside, walking toward Ken who is with another guy. My Cherokee is parked out front.
I gasp as Derek punches Ken in the mouth. They shout in one another’s faces for a moment and then Ken and the other guy leave in Ken’s blue SUV.
Derek gets into my Cherokee, leaving the driver’s door open. He’s bent over on the seat, looking around.
He turns, sees me and makes his way to me with the half-drank bottle of Gatorade in his hand. My handbag.
He storms past me, shooting me a look of murder. He dumps my purse upside down on the kitchen island. “Where is it? I need to know if you took it.”
I say nothing.
He drops the Gatorade and now has the Plan B box in his hand.
He shakes the empty box and then drops it, staring at me with his mouth open.
I choke on a sob.
“No, no, no, no…” He falls to his knees and thrusts his hands into his hair, staring at me in disbelief. “I just want to fucking make you happy!” He shouts. “Give you a family. Give you everything you want. Why is that so fucking bad? I’ve never wanted to give these things to anyone and I’m trying so fucking hard, Chloe, and nothing I do is enough for you. Or it’s too much. I can’t fucking take it! I can’t win with you, can I?” He grips his hair on both sides of his head. His face is beet-red. “What can I do to fix it? Tell me!”
“You need to fix yourself!” I choke out. “Please, please, please, just leave me alone. Just let me go. You have to stop this. Let it go, Derek, or it’ll end in death.”
“In about sixty years, yeah, Chloe. It’ll end in death then.”
“No. Not sixty years. Probably soon. Everything is falling apart. Everything. You’re not right up here.” I point to my temple. “And I don’t trust you won’t lose it and snap my neck or something.”
“I know down to my bones it’s you and me. It’s possible. You know it. I fucked up before you gave me this chance and you just gotta please, please give me the chance you agreed to give me. I switched the pills out weeks ago, knowing you’d start a new pack soon. If you’d given me a chance sooner I wouldn’t have resorted to that and–”
“Oh, it’s my fault you deceived me?”
“No, baby. No.”
“This is going to end badly. So badly, Derek.”
“No. It’s not,” he says, shaking his head, raking his hands through his hair.
“Please let me go. Please let me leave. Please just… please let me go.”
I sit on the couch and curl tight into a ball.
“Please let me go,” I repeat. “I want my life back.”
He sits beside me and tries to pry me out of the ball I’m in. I hold on tight.
“How do I fix myself, Chloe? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Just don’t tell me to let you go because I can’t. I won’t.”
“It’s gonna end with one of us dead, because either you’re gonna snap and kill me or you’re gonna go postal and wind up shot by a fucking SWAT team. I know it down to my bones. Ken said you told him to do whatever he had to do to bring me here? He pointed a gun at me, Derek. He fired a shot and scared the shit out of me and then dragged me kicking and screaming back to you. And you’re scaring me now. I’m fucking terrified of you. Terrified one or both of us is going to wind up dead because you’re so unhinged, so out of touch with reality. You want me to bring a baby into this? An innocent life coming into this? I know you’re crazy but seriously?”
He stills.
I sniffle and after a few long minutes, I uncurl from the ball I’m in, roll over and get a Kleenex and blow my nose.
“Please let me go,” I plead.
He says nothing for a minute, just stares into space.
