The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 32.

The next morning has the audacity to start out looking pretty.

Among all of the ugliness I stand at my bedroom window and look out over the front yard. The tree limbs sag under the blanket of thick snow. The sky is light today, the first time I've seen the sun peak through the thick white grey clouds in days. It illuminates the yard, making the snow glitter and sparkle on the ground.

It only takes a moment longer to be reminded of the situation taking place in the middle of this otherwise winter wonderland.

An unmarked police cruiser sits to the side of the yard, getting pelted with large hunks of snow that fall from the tree above it.

My car and Kelsea's truck are parked right out front, but the police staying here now, are an unwelcome sight.

A new day, but the same drama.

I'd woken before Kelsea for once, just laying in bed looking at the ceiling. I felt strangely good. Emotionally I'm still split into a million different pieces, but physically, I feel human.

The shakes are gone.

My body, while still weak, feels like my own again. I don't feel the weight of it crushing my insides anymore. I feel light and clear headed for the first time in a very long time.

It makes me a little sad to know how long I've lived that other life. The one of escape and hiding. Part of me feels very visible now, which I don't love, but it feels better than being nothing.

I'd laid in bed for a long time, just taking count of all of the ways I felt weirdly different today.

It was a strange sort of hopefulness.

A beautiful new day, but awful tasks waiting ahead of me.

Today starts laying the trap for Aries.

I still don't think I hold much weight to him. Not like the detectives seem to believe. If he'd ever cared about me at all in any sort of real way, he'd never have done this to me.

It's a sobering thought.

Letting go of all of my misconceptions about who he was. It hurts to think I have spent so much time caring about him, carrying the hurt, and now realizing I never knew him at all.

Maybe his walls weren't the romanticized blocker between me and his heart that I'd always made them out to be. Now I wonder if those walls are just the casing holding together a man with demons I could have never put in the same thought as him before.

I try to keep my mind from straying from the convictions I need to keep to steady myself through this. I don't like to think of the way he begged me to speak to him, or the hurt in his eyes when I'd said no.

Instead I try to focus on the thought of that locket.

Amie Farmer didn't deserve this.

None of the girls did.

And as long as he's out there, everyone is still in danger.

He's already broken me so many times. The only way he could hurt me worse is to actually kill me this time.

The smallest part of me hopes he won't call. That they'll be wrong. That he won't want to see me after the incident in the kitchen. That I won't have to be the one who leads to his ultimate downfall.

Every time I hear one of the officers on the phone or their radio going off, I hope like hell I will hear them say they got him.

Tell me I don't have to do this.