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And even though I would have spotted a tail very early on in my journey, it didn’t change the fact that I now felt safer than I had.
That’s not to say I thought I was out of the woods yet. I knew I wasn’t. I was fully away that this might always be something I had to be concerned about. I understood that this wasn’t over, but there was something oddly comforting about the fact that I was here, that I’d actually done it.
So for now, for at least today, I thought I deserved to savor the feeling of being out of harm’s way.
Maybe it was being this far away that gave me that sense of security.
Maybe it was the fact that I’d finally gotten out.
I didn’t care either way. I just knew that I felt as though a lead weight had been lifted from my chest and that I could finally breathe again.
I promised myself I wouldn’t get comfortable, though. There was still far too much to be concerned about, and there was no question that my husband wasn’t going to just accept that I went missing.
He’d search.
He’d search until he found me.
But Patrick wouldn’t be doing that because he cared for me.
No.
No, he’d keep looking, because he’d want to punish me. He’d want to see to it that I’d paid for ever daring to believe I could leave him.
And while I’d always questioned the morals of a man who was willing and able to marry a woman he didn’t know or who had been essentially forced into it, he hadn’t done anything in eight years to prove to me that he was a decent guy.
If anything, I’d learned that things were far worse than I had already assumed they were.
That was precisely the reason why I knew I could only give myself tonight. One night. One single night to just breathe easy.
Tomorrow, I’d get right back to it.
From this point forward, my only goal would be to focus on acquiring the necessary skills to make sure I could not only keep myself safe but to be able to defend myself in the event that trouble landed on my doorstep again.
To be fair, even if I had no plans to start that today, I still believed I was taking the necessary measures I believed would keep me off Patrick’s radar. That meant I was doing everything that was the exact opposite of what the woman I’d pretended to be for the last eight years would do.
Patrick believed I was high maintenance. That had come from the fact that, again, he married a woman he knew nothing about. He thought because I’d come from a wealthy family that I’d need to live in the lap of luxury.
His huge house, his fancy cars, his chefs, his maids.
He thought I liked having all of that.
Quite frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he believed I needed them to survive, because he didn’t think I knew how to do any of it on my own.
Spending sprees had become part of the norm for me. Patrick assumed I liked material things. He didn’t know that none of the things I ever bought using his money were of any importance to me.
That was why I’d left all of it behind.
I didn’t care about any of it.
And I certainly wasn’t the kind of woman who would leave his mansion and only travel to stay in a luxury resort.
Nope.
My living arrangements for the foreseeable future were going to be in a place that Patrick would hopefully never consider looking.
Short and Sweetin Steel Ridge, Pennsylvania.
I’d stumbled uponShort and Sweetwhen I knew I’d reached the beginning of the end of things with Patrick. It was a relatively new operation here in Steel Ridge, and it was essentially a tiny home hotel.
