Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
He sent me a gift card to a spa via email, telling me that I’m his “beautiful princess” and that he was so sorry and he was going to get anger management help he clearly needed. I finally broke the cycle of abuse and just rolled my eyes and went up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. Later that day, a friend saw him out to dinner with Noel—the woman he’s still dating. I still wonder if she’s incredibly naive or dumb, though I’m sure it’s a mixture of both.
Overall, I feel sorry for her because I was that girl once. I was that girl who stayed with someone horrible and abusive out of fear of being alone. I was that girl who believed the lies. Hell, I even believed it when Cory told me that my dad thanked him for marrying me because he was so worried no one else would. I believed him when he told me my sisters hated me and that if it wasn’t for him, I’d have no family.
I was the frog in water slowly being heated up, not realizing my life around me was disintegrating in boiling water.
But that woman has to have something wrong with her head to believe all the lies now. I’ve never once given her any sort of warning. She’s an adult and can figure things out on her own. But I would think the protective orders and pictures of my black eyes and bruises would speak for themselves. The fact that the police were called multiple times means nothing, I guess.
But mostly I feel sorry for her for being a backup plan.
He took her out for a romantic dinner while at the same time was texting me, begging me to take him back. He even went to my parents’ house to tell them how he was going to treat me better, though he failed and just started rambling about how it’s my fault he gets so mad and blows up, screaming and throwing things.
The psychologist in me just can’t help but wonder how she compartmentalizes everything and justifies the fact that she started dating a married man—with a history of abuse. Though over the last year, she’s grown so obsessed with me I legitimately think she’s only dating Cory because it’s the closest she can get to becoming me, which is tragically fascinating with major personality disorder vibes.
Inhaling, I look around this little entryway and feel the same sense of peace, though I need to remind myself that while Cory was physically dangerous too, he didn’t have the connections Enzo did.
“Three-oh-four,” I say, and Elsie nods. We get in the elevator and go to the third floor, walking down the hall just a bit until we get to the door. It has an electronic keypad and I punch in the code Mason gave me. The lock clicks open and we step in.
He warned me there would be cameras, lights, and an alarm that he would disable once we were in and that he verified it was me. My heart speeds up a bit when the alarm starts to blare. We step in and close the door behind us, not moving until the alarm stops beeping.
“Now what?” Elsie asks, jumping as the door locks itself behind us.
“Now you wait.” Mason’s voice comes from a camera mounted on the wall right above us, startling us both. “I’ll be there shortly. Just sit down and act natural.”
“So natural with you watching me,” I grumble and take a minute to look around before walking into the living room. The place is set up to look like someone lives here, but it’s all wrong. The furniture is too new and clean, and there’s no evidence of daily life. There needs to be shoes by the door, a coat or sweatshirt tossed over the bench next to the door, and mail on the counter.
It looks staged, like something you’d see walking into an open house. There’s just enough to give you an idea of what living here could look like, with nice, high end furniture that someone living in a little, run down apartment couldn’t afford.
“Are we safe?” Elsie asks softly as we sit on the living room couch. I pick up the remote and turn on the TV, thankful there’s at least cable. I don’t want to watch something, but if I put on the news, it’ll make it harder for Mason to discern what I’m saying.
“Yeah,” I tell her right away and realize that I’m going to have to tell her the full story. Because all she and Zara know is that I went out with some guy on one of my typical fake dates, the guy turned out to be a total creepy-ass loser, but I might go back out with him again to get some more “pressing details” to really put the nail in the coffin.”