Page 53 of Deadly Obsession

I’m also terrible at lying to them. They’re going to know something’s wrong, especially when Chase shows up at their home for a visit—which he never did when we were together.

But I have no choice. I can’t defy Chase.

Hopefully he won’t want to stay the entire week. The moment he’s gone, I’ll figure out a way to escape his goons and take my parents somewhere safe.

“You’re not eating.”

I jump at the sound of Chase’s voice.

It’s Christmas Day, and Chase got in late last night after he had quote, ‘business to take care of’ the past few days. He sent his goons with me to my parents. At least the two creepy men drove in their own vehicle. They barely speak and tend to stare at me as if I’m meat on a stick and they haven’t had a meal in days.

I have no doubt that the word ‘no’ means shit to them.

I push the green bean casserole around my plate with my fork and shrug.

“You’re always hungry. Eat.”

My grip on the utensil tightens, and I stifle the urge to stab him in the eye.

I force myself to take a bite, not because he ‘ordered’ me to, but because I can feel my mother’s questioning stare our way.

“So, Chase,” she says, giving him her infamous icy stare down.

She’s hated him since the moment they met the day before our wedding. She hated him because he refused to ‘allow’ me to come visit them. She hated him because she knew he was controlling me, but she couldn’t convince me to leave him. When we got divorced, she just had to throw it in my face that she ‘always knew something was off with him.’

I love my mother, I really do, but she’s not one to hold back her opinions. She’s vocal abouteverything. But she also supported me in all my life decisions, even if they weren’t the best options for me. Then she was there when I’d run back to them with my tail between my legs because something didn’t work out the way I planned.

Like my marriage.

I met Chase when I was twenty-one and he was thirty. I moved to New York City to ‘find myself’ andwas bartending at a hole in the wall dive bar in the East Village. Chase’s band had booked a gig there. We immediately clicked and hooked up, and the next morning he asked me to go on tour with him. I was young and restless and had no real responsibilities. I was renting a dump of an apartment on a monthly basis and had enough money saved to fuck around for a few years, so I went with him. I followed him around the country with his band for two years until his mom got sick, and he left the band to take care of her.

I went with him to New Jersey because I convinced myself I was in love.

He proposed to me a year later, and after a year-long engagement, we got married. Six months after the ceremony, his mother passed away.

Things went downhill after that.

I missed all the signs of him being a narcissist. It was always me taking care of him. He constantly demanded my attention, my company. I always thought it was because he was stressed about his mother and needed an escape. It got to a point where he’d get angry when I tried to go to the grocery store without him or when I wanted to hang out with a friend for a movie night. He dismissed my feelings, especially when I expressed how much I missed my parents and wanted to go visit them.

The final straw was when he lost his job at the mechanic shop. He didn’t tell me we were struggling for money because he’d spent our paychecks on drugs, anything tonumb the pain of his mother’s death. Bills went unpaid, and I had to get a second job just to keep the lights on. Then I found out he used my identity and applied for five credit cards, maxing out each one.

He didn’t stop with me. He realized he could make a lot of money stealing identities, especially those of elderly people. I told Noah he went to jail, but I lied. He never got caught. He just kept doing worse and worse things.

And I never turned him in.

I was too afraid of what he’d do to me.

What if I turned him in and he made bail? He would have killed me.

Instead, I served him divorce papers. I was surprised he signed them. He didn’t even put up a fight. Turns out, he was cheating on me. He was more than willing to leave me for this other woman.

Once everything was finalized, I moved back to New York City and assumed a new identity in hopes to never see the asshole again. Sage Morgan no longer existed as far as I was concerned.

It didn’t matter how big New York City is... Chase still found me.

“What are you doing for work these days?” Mom asks.

My throat dries out, and I choke on the bite of green bean casserole I just shoved into my mouth. I wash the food down with a sip of wine.