Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 110624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110624 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
It was quiet wherever he was.
“Okay. Where are you?”
“I just got to my sister’s house. I’m spending the night here.”
“Call me tomorrow?”
“I promise. I love you, Nina.”
“I love you too, Jake.”
I hung up the phone and prayed for tomorrow to come quickly.
***
It was about 5:30 Tuesday night when Ryan came home from work. He walked in the door and hung up his coat.
He hung up his coat.
Normally, the act of hanging up a coat is a very insignificant thing. But for me, the moment when Ryan hung up his coat meant everything.
It was the last moment that I could remember when things were normal. It was the moment before everything changed. Because the second he turned to me and looked into my eyes, I began to suffocate.
“Nina, you need to sit down.”
“What’s going on?”
He gently patted my arm. “Sit down.”
I walked over to the couch and sat. My palms were sweaty, and my heart was beating a mile a minute.
“Nina, I don’t know how to tell you this…”
I gripped the seat cushions. “Just say it. What is it? Did someone die?”
“No…it’s not like that.”
“What?”
“After our talk last night, I did some digging. You know, at work at the D.A.’s office, I think I told you, we have quick access to public records and such.”
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
He continued, “I looked up Jake’s information, did a background check and found this document. Do you know what this is?”
He handed me a piece of paper and I glanced down at it. He immediately moved to the couch next to me and put his arms around my back. It felt like a drum was beating in my ears and my body started to shake uncontrollably.
I had suspected that maybe Jake was in some kind of trouble with the law or that he had a girlfriend in Boston. But I never expected this.
I looked down at the printout again and felt like my head was on fire.
Jake Alan Green
Ivy Marie Macomber
No. Jake didn’t have a girlfriend. He had a wife.
He was married.
PART 2:
JAKE
CHAPTER 21
“Mr. Green, your wife has been transported to McLean Hospital. We think she tried to take her life last night.”
It wasn’t the first time I had received a call like that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Talk about going from heaven to hell in a matter of hours.
Before Nina, that was all my life amounted to…a living hell. Maybe escaping to New York for work during the week was my purgatory. But there was certainly no heaven, no respite, never any peace or true happiness…until she came along. Nina had become my only solace from the nightmare I had been living over the past five years.
The beverage cart stopped in front of my seat, and I asked for the strongest thing they had. It didn’t even matter what it was. I needed to take the edge off because I never knew what I was going be to walking into, especially this time. Thank God, at least from what they told me, Ivy was stable in the safety of a hospital.
The flight attendant nudged me. “Excuse me? Your drink, sir.”
I had been deep in thought staring out the window and hadn’t noticed her handing it to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking the hard liquor, whatever it was, and downing it.
I let out a long breath and closed my eyes. My focus should have been on Ivy, but I couldn’t bear to let my mind drift to the reality that was about to slap me in the face when this plane touched down. There would be no way to escape it then.
These minutes, miles up in the sky, were going to be my last moments of peace for a while. So, I chose to close my eyes and focus on the only thing that took the pain away.
I never should have let things get as far as they did with Nina. But what should have happened and what I wanted to happen with every fiber of my being were two very different things.
I became addicted to her from the moment I first shook her hand, and it trembled in mine. Women have always had strong reactions to me but never like that. I had never met someone so beautiful and sexy, yet humble and innocent at the same time. I wanted to lift her over my shoulder, carry her right then and there back to my room and make her mine, which was a crazy thought to have seconds into meeting someone. That was just the physical pull. Within a few minutes though, when I really looked into her eyes and she was talking about her phobias, there was this darkness there. She looked the same way I imagined I appeared to anyone that could see through my façade. Here was a girl I had just met, and I was sure our life stories couldn’t have been more different. Yet, somehow, I knew we had both been living the same kind of life, just going through the motions, trying to find something to make it worth living. For some unexplained reason, there was a connection with her that I hadn’t even known I was searching desperately for. But it was too late. My life was already laid out for me. So, I had to figure out a way to ignore what I was feeling.