Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 136(@200wpm)___ 109(@250wpm)___ 91(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 136(@200wpm)___ 109(@250wpm)___ 91(@300wpm)
My world slides sideways, like fried eggs off a hot frying pan.
I hear nothing else that’s said because there is a deafening siren going off in my ears. Nausea roils in my stomach and rises in my throat. I stumble from the classroom and start to run. I see and hear nothing as I run to Ayla’s house, my leg muscles on fire, lungs in a permanent seize. I won’t speculate on where she’s been or if something happened to her, because I’ll go even madder than I am now. I’ll go berserk.
My heart is pumping wildly as I reach the end of her driveway and sprint to the door, pounding on it while shouting her name hoarsely, prepared to rip it off the hinges, if necessary.
“Mister Porter,” says an older male. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”
I turn in a circle but see no one. Where is the voice coming from?
There’s a mechanical buzz and a small movement just above the door. A camera.
Someone is watching me and speaking to me through a camera.
And that somebody must be Ayla’s father. But I don’t remember these cameras from before. I don’t remember the extra locks on the door, either.
“What the fuck is going on?” I roar at the device. “Is she in here?” The possibility that occurs to me next sends my blood into a boil. “Are you keeping her in here?”
“It’s for the good of our family, Mister Porter. You are not to have any contact with her, do you understand? You have done more than enough already.”
“More than enough…” My heart is crumbling in my chest. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what is going on here, but it’s becoming unbearably obvious that my girl has been suffering in my absence. She’s been suffering because of me.
A sound rips up my throat, raw and pitiful, and I reach up, ripping the camera from its perch, throwing it clear across the yard.
“Ayla, if you’re in there, stand back.” I’m just about kick in the door when I sense movement to my left. The curtain moved. I’m positive. She’s in there. But she won’t let me in. Oh God, she hates me. I got her pregnant and left her alone. Left her helpless to the whims of a controlling father. She is never going to love me now.
The emptiness tries to knock me to my knees, but my excruciating need to see her again keeps me standing. It takes three kicks to break the door down and then I’m inside, hooking a left at the end of the entryway, going toward her bedroom. Of course, I know which one is hers. I’ve lost track of how many times I came here to watch her sleep over the last four years. Just to make sure she was okay.
“Ayla.” I kneel outside of her bedroom door, dropping my head into my hands. “Open the door. Please.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” comes her murmur from the other side of the barrier—and I nearly come in my pants at the sound of her voice. “H-he’ll call the police—”
Denial rips at my insides. “Don’t tell me you’ve been in here for three months, baby. I’ll die.”
Several seconds tick past, giving me my answer and I slam my head into the door.
“He means well,” she says. “Sometimes it’s hard to see that he loves me, but…”
“This isn’t love. This is captivity.”
“I know,” she whispers. “But I just keep thinking about the time he gave me my mother’s car for my sixteenth birthday. He does care sometimes, doesn’t he?”
My chest twists viciously. “Open the door.”
Her breath quickens. “No.”
Pain cuts through me like a freshly sharpened blade. I’m itching to kick this door open, too, but the bedroom is small. There’s too much of a chance I could hurt her. If a single splinter touched her skin, I’d be inconsolable. “I think you might have a little bit of Stockholm syndrome, Ayla.”
God, I want to hold her. Rock her. Tell her everything will be all right. If she would just open the door. Maybe there is only one way to break through to her.
“I have to tell you something. I was never going to…tell you the truth, because I wanted you to believe your father was a good man. You deserve a good father. But…” I rub at the dryness in my throat. “I’m the one who left your mother’s car for you in the driveway on your sixteenth birthday. With the big red bow. That was me. I spent months fixing it up.”
Silence.
I squeeze my eyes closed.
“You did a presentation on it during freshman year. An object that has special significance to you. Remember? You spoke about your mother’s car. And it was just rotting away in the shed. When I took it to the garage to work on it, your father didn’t notice it was gone.”