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But that nagging little voice in the back of my head that only started as a whisper, is beginning to scream, and the realization that I’ve just fucked up my life tremendously, claws at my insides. Panic eats away at me and I know what Liam will do if he finds out what I’ve done.
Pushing Travis off of me, I roll over in a panic, and jump to my feet, snatching the sweatpants and t-shirt that I had been wearing, from the floor. Clothing belonging to him, that he must have dressed me in at some point after they found me.
“What are you doing?”
Sliding my feet into the pants quickly, I try not to trip as I run for the door, “I-I’ve gotta get out of here. I gotta go home. I’ve been missing for days. I-“ I trip and stumble over my words as my heart races.
“You’re not leaving,” he commands with an air of dominance that makes my knees buckle beneath me. Jumping up after me, he grips my arm and yanks me backward, spinning me around into his chest. “I just got you back, you’re not fucking leaving.”
“I-I’m engaged Travis!” I exclaim, tears streaming down my face. I don’t know why the fuck I’m even crying, but I can’t stop.
Scoffing loudly, he shakes his head as he runs his fingers through my hair, “You are not fucking marrying that piece of shit, Spencer.”
Jerking my arm from his grip, I turn on one heel and stomp toward the door. Grabbing me by the back of my neck, he spins me around to face him once more and pushes my back against the wall, planting both hands on either side of my head, “I’ll fucking kill him before I let him have you. You’re mine.”
“No I’m not! Goddamnit! You can’t just burst back into my life! It doesn’t work like this. You left. You fucking left me. He is the one who picked up the pieces you broke.”
“He’s a fucking prick! He didn’t pick up shit, he was a vulture, waiting for the right moment to swoop in and pick at your carcass. He’s no fucking good for you,” he grits between clenched teeth.
“And you are? Fuck you! You knew. You knew, and you left me there, not knowing what would happen when you weren’t around to protect me anymore! You didn’t even ask me to go with you. You just fucking disappeared,” I spit, my words laced with every ounce of pain that my heart has held onto for all these years. And somewhere deep inside I hope the verbal lashing cuts him deep.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Pinning me to the wall with his hips, he smashes his lips against mine frantically in a final attempt to make me cave. To make me stay. I bite down hard, sinking my teeth into the tender flesh of his bottom lip. As he pulls back, swiping at the blood with his thumb, my hand whips across his face, the loud smack reverberating throughout the quiet room.
“Fuck you Travis,” I bite, dragging the t-shirt I’d been holding onto, down over my head.
“Just fucking did.”
“This is never happening again,” I shout, slipping through the bedroom door and running down the steps.
“Oh red, I’m not going to give up that easy,” his voice vibrates off the walls behind me. “You can’t run away this time!”
My breath catches in my throat as I quickly slip my feet into my shoes, dart out the front door, and run for the street. Because I know he’s right. Travis Price is the kind of man who gets whatever he wants, and after all these years, apparently, he still wants me.
Tears stream down my face as I walk briskly down the dark street, with no real direction. The saline filling my eyes blurs the street lights into a mess of yellow, glowing brightly in the dark. I don’t have my phone; the bastard that abducted me smashed it and threw it out a car window. Travis was the one who found me. He rescued me, and instead of taking me home, he took me to his house on the outskirts of the city, miles away from where I live.
All of the events from the last few days swirl around my head like a tornado, and I try to make some fucking sense of it all, but I’m still in utter disbelief. When I turned around and saw him standing in the bar with my friends, at my engagement party, my heart exploded, the pieces falling around my feet like shattered glass.
I always thought I’d be relieved if I ever saw him again, but instead I was filled with indignation. So much rage coursed through my veins over seeing the boy who left me behind, all grown up, having the audacity to look at me with pain in his eyes. Pain over the revelation that I’d moved on with my life. Little does he know, I could never really move on, I just go through the motions.
In that instant, I had to get out of there. I couldn’t fucking breathe. This whole time we had people in common? He knew my best friend. How did no one know? How did no one piece it all together?
My best friend, Echo, was trying to talk me down off the ledge, when the two of us were assaulted and snatched by the sadistic bastard who ran the Havok Brotherhood. She was comforting me in the alley when suddenly everything went black. I can barely remember a thing before waking up in Travis’s arms in the middle of the street. I remember losing consciousness again in the back seat of a car, and the gaps continue in waves until I woke up alone in a strange bed this morning.
His bed.
I don’t even know how I let it happen, but he looked at me with those fucking eyes. Those light brown, honeyed eyes, dripping with old promises, nostalgia, and the love he once had for me.
One look.
That’s all it took for me to flush my engagement down the drain. One look and I was a whore for Travis James Price. I was that teenage girl again that believed all of his pretty lies.
But he’s wrong, he’s so fucking wrong. I’m not his anymore. No matter how good it felt when he declared that I was. He lost that privilege 12 years ago when he left me in Lakeview to suffer alone. When he obliterated my heart and soul, leaving without so much as a goodbye.
Now here I am, stuck walking back to the city alone in the middle of the night. If I can just make it to a bus stop, maybe I’ll be ok.
Sniffling, I wipe my face with the hem of Travis’s oversized t-shirt, and as soon as the scent of cedar-wood and citrus invades my nostrils, my steady tears turn to full blown sobs. He doesn’t smell like the boy I remember, but it’s intoxicating, warm, and it feels like home anyway.