Page 24 of Malicious Marriage
That’s the last bit of information I can squeeze out of Clara. She becomes too focused on her drinks and her friends. Hailey is instantly forgotten.
But I have a lead.
A very terrible, almost useless lead. Why Hailey would suddenly call an old school friend and ask for a professor’s name is beyond me, but if it really was her, then she’s alive.
Four years I’ve been desperate for any sign that she was still with me, that I wasn’t just chasing a ghost.
And now I have it.
Outside, the air is cold compared to the sweltering heat inside the club. Texting Bobby with an apology for rushing out, I ask him to come and pick me up. After several furious texts about why I went anywhere without him, he agrees to pick me up around the corner and makes me swear not to move from that spot.
That’s fine.
I need to find out everything I can about this professor and work out what his connection to Hailey is. He no longer teaches at the college she went to. In fact, he no longer lives in the state. He moved to Colorado a couple of years ago where he married and…
Shit.
Scrolling further down the list, I spot an article with a large headline declaring a community was shaken to the core after the deaths of Adam Prize, his wife, and their two children in a house fire.
Fuck.
He’s dead?
Is that a clue or just a terrible way to end my search?
“Fuck,” I mutter out loud.
“Problem?” A voice from my left makes me jump right out of my skin and I stumble backward as a hand belonging to the voice shoots out and grasps my wrist. “Careful, Clover. Don’t want anything to happen to you now, do we?”
I squint up and my heart begins to race. “Ryan? What… what are you doing here?”
My ex-boyfriend Ryan steps up to me, forcing me backward until my back collides with the wall of the bus shelter. “I’m out for a walk, what about you?”
My heart races faster and faster. Ryan and I initially split on somewhat amicable terms after I found him in bed with some girl he picked up at a club. His only defense was that he wantedto know what it was like to fuck a skinny girl with tits as big as mine. For months he told me he never had a problem with my size and then in one night, he basically destroyed every drop of confidence I’d gained from him. Our breakup should have been explosive, but not long after our split, my life fell apart, and Ryan just happened to be a loan shark.
Theloan shark who’s been funding my life ever since my uncle cut me off and who promised me I wouldn’t be under any pressure to pay him back since I’d been so good in bed. I was desperate, so I agreed.
The past six months of constant harassment and threats show how fake that was.
“I’ve gone round your place and you weren’t there,” Ryan says, his hand still firmly around my forearm. “What happened, you get kicked out?”
“No,” I say as I grow breathless from how frantic my heart is racing. “I’m staying with a friend.”
“You?” Ryan scoffs and his eyes narrow. “You don’thaveany friends. I was your only friend, Clover.”
“Not true.”
“Yes true!” His head snaps forward and he brings his face so close to mine that I recoil on reflex and hit my head against the bus shelter. “And look how you treated me. I seem to remember an agreement between us, Clover. I lent you money and you were going to pay me back. It’s kind of how my entire job works.”
“I am paying you back,” I gasp, shrinking away from him. “It’s just… slower than I’d like. And you told me it was okay because?—”
“Because what, you have a sweet pussy? It’s been too long since I had a taste of Clover, but if you want to reduce some of the interest, then I’d be happy to let you take my dick for another ride.”
He leers at me, his eyes flashing in the glare of the shelter lights. How did I ever find him attractive? There was a time when he was the most important person in my life, but looking back, I think I was just happy someone was showing me attention. As a bigger girl, being chosen for a change was nice. So often, I’d tell myself it didn’t matter as my high school friends got dates to prom and went off to get married. I’d tell myself that I’d find someone who liked me for me and not the size of my waist. But I never did.
Until Ryan.
What a mistake that was.