“Nobody will believe you. We’ve fucked plenty of times. I can say it was all your idea,” he sneers.
“Don’t forget we had a witness.” She gestures to me with a nod of her head. “Sure, we might get into some trouble, but you can’t deny what you did. I had bruises for days. My friends saw them, too. You’ll never get away with this. You’ll go to jail.”
Wyatt seems to contemplate her words before he looks at us with his own mask of anger. “Fuck. Fine,” he spits. “But this shit isn’t done. You belong to me.”
I’ve had enough. This ends. Now. “It is done. Finished. You don’t leave her alone, you say one word to anyone, and we’re going down to the police station and making a report. I’m not fucking around.”
“You can have her. Who knows where that cunt as been. I’m out of here.” Wyatt pushes past a group of students near the mouth of the hall, but from the looks of it, we didn’t gather anyone’s attention.
“You okay?” I ask, because Tatum is unnaturally silent beside me. I can only imagine what’s running through her head right now. God, I want to pull her into my arms and hold her tight enough to make her worries fade.
She looks up at me and smiles, but it seems uncertain. “Yeah. I just really hope this is the end of him.”
“It is,” I vow. “He’s not going to hurt you again. I wish I could do something right now to ease your worries, but you have to get to class, Sweetheart. I’ll see you in calculus.”
“It’s okay. I’ll see you later.”
I watch as Tatum walks away, and I greet the students entering my class. There’s a cloud of unease swirling in my gut that won’t go away. Wyatt better leave us alone after this, because I meant what I said. I will make him pay.
As I turn to go into class, my cell vibrates from my pocket. I forgot it was in there and not in my brief case where I usually leave it. When I answer the call, my whole world tilts. A new change is coming, and it effectively cuts me off at the knees. My mind turns into a single track. I’m out of time.
I need to get out of here.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Tatum
The second the bell rings, I’m out of my seat and tearing down the hall to the parking lot. I pass masses of students coming out of their sixth period classes, but I’m ahead of the herd. I don’t have time for obstacles. I have to get home…to Jacoby’s home. He’s there waiting for me. He has to be. There’s a valid explanation why he wasn’t here for calculus.
I know with everything I am that he wouldn’t leave without telling me. He wouldn’t leave me behind.
I drive like a psycho, running stop signs and ignoring the speed limit. My mind is a one track train from hell and I’m forcing myself to stay positive. We’re okay. Jacoby is okay. Everything is okay. I’ve fought too hard to have this happiness in my life; I’m not about to let it be taken away without one last battle.
I hit the garage door opener as I round the corner of Jacoby’s street. My blood roars in my ears as the door lifts painfully slow. Just a crack inching open little by little.
He’s here.
He’s here.
He has to be here.
I jump the curb, cutting over the patch of browning grass between his house and the next, and blow out a gigantic breath when I see the dark blue bumper of his car peek out beneath the rising door.
Thank God.
Pulling in beside him, I cut the engine, hit the opener again, and race into the house.
“Jacoby?” I yell, my voice echoing throughout the open spaces.
Silence.
The room smells of Jacoby, the familiar sweet, woodsy scent and something else uniquely him. It wraps around me like a shield, and my mind relinquishes its racing thoughts. I charge through the empty living room and into the kitchen. Empty. Turning on my heel, I race down the hall to the spare bedroom and bathroom. Both empty.
“Jacoby, where are you?” I shout, my voice shrill to my own ears. The panic is rising, cresting, consuming my chest and my lungs and my heart.
When I hit the top of the stairs, I throw the bedroom door open with so much force it cracks against the wall. I don’t have to step inside the room to know he isn’t here either. The space is too still, too quiet, like the air itself hasn’t been disturbed since we both left for school this morning.
“Jacoby, where are you?” I whisper into the nothingness. The room doesn’t answer me as I enter the space we shared as recently as this morning. The bed we slept in, the shower we made love in, all of it is as quiet and as clueless as the inanimate objects they are.
Tears tickle my eyelids, and I can’t hold them back any longer. They rush down my cheeks in a torrent of pain and fear. I curl into a ball on my side in the center of the bed, and rest my cheek against the soft comforter.
Love is a strange thing. Sometimes it finds you when you aren’t even looking. Other times it requires you to fight with all the energy you have, and then some, to prove yourself worthy. Regardless of how it came to be, when it’s gone, it treats us all the same. It rips you wide open, leaving a gaping, unfillable hole in its absence. Leaving you forever changed.
I don’t know how long I lie in this bed, watching the rays of sun sink across the wall until only dark shadows remain. My only company is the thoughts swirling around my head. Thoughts of love and loss, of mistakes and pain.
Desperation.
The room grows dark and shadows crawl like living beings across the wall. My tears eventually dry. My eyelids droop, and I feel like sleep could take me away. But a loud knock coming from down stairs has me suddenly wide awake. I bolt from the room and take the stairs two at a time, rushing towards the sound. When I hit the living room, the loud knocking sounds from the door, and I fling it open without checking the peephole.
“Trey,” I cry out before lunging at the big man wearing a mask of confusion in the doorway. I wrap my arms around his thick neck and burrow my face in his wide chest as a torrent of tears stream from my eyes. Trey lifts my body with him as he walks inside the house, shutting the door and leading me to the couch. All the while I cry.
“Shh, honey. What’s going on? Where’s Jacoby?” he asks. Something about his tone, about the careful way he delivers the question has my tears immediately calming, and I look up at his concerned blue gaze.
“I don’t know. He’s gone, and I think…I think he had to leave. Someone found out about us.”
Simultaneously, Trey’s body locks tight, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his face is carefully blank.
“What makes you say that?”
I sit with Trey while he holds my hand, and I fill him in on the events of the past day. The more I talk, the more agitated he becomes until he jumps up from the couch and begins pacing the room. His behavior is frightening, and it gives me a deep feeling of dread in my gut.
“Trey,” I begin cautiously. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“When was the last time you spoke to him?” he asks, and I don’t even have to think about it. Our routine has been the same ever since I started staying at his house. We don’t text back and forth all day because Jacoby has been adamant that I pay attention in class. I see him in the morning, then we both leave for school in our own cars. We text a bit during second period, because he knows I have study hall. Most days we’d meet up for lunch in his classroom. Just thinking about what happened today has a wave of bile rising in my throat. We were so damn stupid.
“I saw him during lunch. Someone found out about us and threatened to tell the principal. I thought we had it handled. Jacoby told me he’d see me during sixth period. It’s his calculus class. After that, we usually leave in our separate cars and come home, but today, he wasn’t in class. He hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts.”