by Anna Lewis
I shook Ellie off me, and stalked towards him. I felt bad for leaving her there alone, terrified, but I needed the answers. More than that, I really needed him gone.
He took snaps of me as I got closer, feeling too cocky, too confident to feel the need to run just yet. If he thought that he could outrun me, he would be very, very wrong.
As he stood, I grabbed him tightly, scaring the living daylights out of him and I pulled him roughly towards me until his face was touching mine.
“What are you doing?” I spat out angrily. “Who are you? Why won’t you leave Ellie alone?”
“Please, I… Please let me go…” he stammered, sweat pouring down his forehead. He looked terrified, but I didn’t care about that. He deserved to be terrified after all the hurt and pain that he’d caused Ellie. “I’m sorry.”
I pulled my fist back, waiting for him to get the hint, waiting for him to spill everything, but he didn’t. He simply continued to stand there, whimpering, so regretfully I slammed my fist into his face, causing it to snap backwards. I hurt my hand, so I sure as hell must have hurt his face.
“Fuck,” he muffled through the blood in his mouth. “Fuck.”
I dropped him, watching his body slump pathetically to the ground. I placed my foot on his chest to fix him in place, to ensure that he knew where he stood. “Just tell me what you’re doing. Tell me why you are harassing my girlfriend. Tell me why you keep photographing her, why you broke into her car. Tell me who put you up to this?”
He didn’t answer me. He couldn’t because he was crying too hard, but that wasn’t going to put me off. I wouldn’t feel sorry for him, not now. It was far too late for that. If I had to hit him again then I would, I truly didn’t care anymore. I would do whatever it took to get him to talk and finally end this. Anything.
I pumped my fists by my side, anger eating me up. I bit down on my lip, waiting for him to talk, and eventually he did. He opened his mouth slowly, almost too slowly for me to be able to handle it, and he said just two words. They didn’t spark any recognition in me, but from the way Ellie’s face fell, she knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Aaron Wilkes.”
I looked up at her as she gasped, waiting for her to explain and after a few moments she did.
“My… my father. He put you up to this?”
“Yes,” he nodded sadly. “Yes, he did.”
She paced the streets for a couple of seconds, mulling it over before turning to face me. “Let him go, I don’t want to look at him anymore.”
“No, let’s call the cops,” I tried my best to argue. “Let’s get him arrested…”
“Let him go,” she insisted firmly, giving me an intense look that I really couldn’t ignore. “I will speak to my dad and put an end to it once and for all.”
Chapter 9 – Ellie
I couldn’t believe it. I was in shock. I’d known that my dad wasn’t happy with me breaking out of my strict, sheltered life, and coming to New York to be a model, but I never would have thought that he would go this far. I assumed that cutting me off was punishment enough. I didn’t think that he would want to torment me too.
I grabbed my phone while the rage was still bursting from me, and dialed my landline number. I knew that this could tear the fabric of our family apart forever, probably causing my mom to stop speaking to me as well, but things were broken enough anyway and there was no way that I could allow this to continue.
“He… hello?” my mom answered in her meek tone of voice. I was certain that she had no knowledge of it, which was why I didn’t have anything to say to her.
“Mom, get dad. I need to talk to him.” I was shaking with temper, and I could tell that was evident in my voice.
“I… I don’t think that he wants to talk to you,” she told me honestly. “I think…”
“I don’t care what he wants,” I yelled back, taking my rage out on the wrong person. “Put him on the phone now.”
The line went silent for a while, but I could hear noise in the background. I kept expecting the line to go dead, but after a while my dad unexpectedly came on the line.
“What do you want?” he asked glumly. “What are you yelling at your mother for?”
“You,” I sneered at him, all the fear that I’d ever felt in his presence simply melting away. “You hired a man to stalk me, to torment me, to run my life. Why? Did you want me to come home? Did you want to force me back to you? Was that your plan?”
“No!” he jumped in, shocking me into silence. “No that wasn’t it at all.”
“So you aren’t denying it?” I gasped in surprise. “You admit that you did that to me?” Tears started streaming down my face, and I didn’t even try to stop them. This was utterly heartbreaking. I felt like the foundation of my life had been ripped away.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. For the first time ever, I heard something in his voice, an uncertainty. My dad always seemed so sure in everything he said and did, all the rules he laid down, but now he wasn’t and I wanted to know more. “I was scared for you,” he admitted. “I wanted to know more. You just… you upped and left without a proper goodbye and I grew scared for you. We were all too worried to just call you up, so I hired that man to photograph you, to let me see where your life was at.”
“Do you know how mad that sounds?” I asked him, genuinely curious. “Do you understand how crazy you’re being right now?”
“Of course I do, but I was desperate. Then he got snaps of you with a man, a stranger that we didn’t know. I looked him up online, but all I could find were bad things, so I asked him to keep on with the mission, just until I could learn more.”
“Do you understand how scared I’ve been? Do you know how much he’s tormented me?” I exclaimed loudly, still not fully getting it. “He broke into my car the other day, I thought that my life was in danger.”
“He shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry,” I could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m really sorry, I never wanted to ruin you. I might be scared for you, but I want you to achieve your dream. It might not be the dream that I would have chosen for you, but I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy, dad,” I told him. “In fact, the only problem is this man following me. That’s the only thing that’s bringing me down. My career is starting to take off, I’m starting to be noticed, and the man that you could only find bad stuff online about… well, I love him.” At that moment, I glanced up at him and smiled through my sadness. He was a shining beacon in all this madness, and if it wasn’t for Kyle, I would still be stuck in a rut, never finding out the truth. “You should have just called.”
“I will, in the future I will,” he replied gratefully, seeming to sense that I was letting him off easily. “I want to make it up to you. Maybe… maybe when you are more settled, me and your mom can come and visit. Really see how you’re getting on.”
This was something that I never dared to dream about, yet it was happening for me. It would take a long time to heal the rift, I was perfectly aware of that, but this was a start. This really could lead to something very positive.
“I would love that,” I told him honestly. “I need some time to get more settled, more established, but when you come, you’ll be proud of me. And that’s all that I’ve ever wanted. But you have to tell that photographer to stop following me!”
“I am proud of you,” he told me, healing a hole in my heart. “And I can promise you this, you will never see that man again. I will contact him right away and tell him to leave you alone. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I will do whatever it takes to make this right.”
“I love you, dad,” I told him, feeling the weight of the world lifting from my shoulders. I was finally getting the sense of closure that I’d always needed, and that felt incredible. I really felt like the lucky one here, the one who was getting everything that she needed.
“I love you too,” he replied warmly. “You really are a great kid. Thank you.”
Chapter 10 – Ky
le
It was over, it really was over. I actually couldn’t believe it. All the obstacles that Ellie and I had faced during our time together were all finally gone. The stalker was the last issue that we faced, and now Ellie was fixing that.
It was totally messed up that her dad had organized this, but who was I to judge? It wasn’t like I didn’t come without my own baggage… all that nightmare that my ex-wife had inflicted upon us. Still, I was glad that it was all finally coming to an end. The future looked bright.
As Ellie said goodbye to her father, with a promise to speak again soon, I felt my spirits soar. She was finally smiling again, a genuine smile.
“Well?” I asked her, moving close to her side. “Is it all done?”
“It’s great,” she replied happily. “I didn’t expect that. Now that it’s done I feel incredible. I think that there has been a massive weight on my shoulders for far too long now, and I didn’t even realize it.”
I pulled her in for a deep hug, allowing her to lose herself in my embrace. “Good, I’m so glad that you’re alright. I’m so glad that it’s over and done with now.”
“It’s done,” she giggled like crazy. “It’s over. But what do we do now?”
“Well, you have your job to get to soon,” I reminded her, making her laugh even louder. “I know, doesn’t that seem too normal after all that we’ve just been through?”
“Totally,” she giggled.
I pulled back from the hug to look into her eyes. “After that I want you to gather up your belongings and move in with me.”
“What?” she gasped in shock. “Are you serious? You want me to move in with you? Isn’t it a little soon?”
I kissed her hard, allowing everything to flow free from within me. “Of course it isn’t too soon,” I murmured against her lips. “I love you and you love me. Why hold back anymore? I want you to come and live with me, I want you to be mine forever, I want you to one day be my wife.”
“Is that your way of asking me to marry you?” she chuckled.
“No, of course not,” I laughed along with her. “When I propose to you, you will know about it. You will be swept from your feet, totally unable to resist.”
“I will, will I?” she teased, kissing me again.
“Come on then, hop in the car, let’s get the hell out of here,” I said, as I turned and started to walk her towards the car. “You have work to do.”
Epilogue – Ellie
Ten Years Later…
“Mom?” Kate asked in a sing song tone of voice. “How did you meet Dad?”
“What makes you ask that?” I smiled at my beautiful daughter, before wrapping her up in my arms.
“Well, we were talking about it at school today…”
“What? Already? You’ve only been at school for a few months,” I teased her playfully. “Do you really want to know?”
With that, Kyle walked into the room with a tray of cookies for us both. “What are you two talking about?” he asked with a smile across his face.
“I want to know how you and Mommy met,” Kate insisted. “Will one of you just tell me?” That girl was incredible. She’d inherited Kyle’s determined nature, and my feistiness – a personality trait that I didn’t even know I had until my life in New York set me free and allowed me to be myself. Kyle brought me out of my shell. He had helped me to be who I was, and I would always be grateful for that. I told him that on the day we got married, and it was still true today.
“Oh that’s a great story,” Kyle smiled. “Shall I tell it?”
He shot me a look, and we smiled secretly to one another, remembering that moment, that fateful day, the one that would be ingrained in both of our memories forever. “Well,” he started, settling down next to us. “Did you know that your mother was a model? I gave her a job.”
“At your fashion company?” Kyle still ran his business, really successfully, and I was a part of it too, but more on the design side. I’d given up my modeling the day that I discovered I was pregnant after a short but very successful career, and I discovered a new passion. I realized that it was the clothes that I loved, and that I could actually create some amazing stuff.
“Yes, at the fashion company. And I fell in love with her at first sight,” he said. My heart fluttered at those words, remembering the same sensation flowing right through me when I first saw him. “And it’s a good thing I did, because that led us to have you.”
As they hugged, and Kyle continued to tell Kate everything, I thought about how wonderful our lives were. We faced a lot of adversity in the beginning, but that had only served to make us stronger, and had gotten us through everything.
Now I had something else to tell Kyle, another secret buried deep inside, but I would wait until Kate was in bed before I said anything. I held my stomach gently, cradling our brand new baby, filled with excitement at the prospect of making our perfect family just that little bit bigger.
THE END
Out Of This World
Book 1: The War
Talia was only a child when it was revealed that aliens have been living among the human race for many years, and that they’d always been planning an invasion from within. She grew up in the war, and became a badass, loner fighter because of that.
But when she gets captured by the aliens, she develops a bond with her captor. Will she find out that she has more in common with her enemy than she first thought? Will she build an unexpected bond with someone in particular? And will that somehow becomes something so much more…?
Chapter 1
Talia was only six years old when the whole world collapsed around her. She might not have been able to remember much of her life before the war, but that was the one day that she didn’t think she would ever forget. It was ingrained so deeply into her memory that it would probably be the last thing that she thought about before she died.
She was sitting in class, next to her best friend at the time – Bonnie Smith. They were giggling about something, not really concentrating on the lesson, until the teacher’s voice started to change enough to actually drag them out of their little friendship bubble.
Talia had never particularly liked Mr. Jones – he wasn’t passionate or interesting – and it was ironic that the first time he’d ever sparked any kind of reaction from her was when he was telling her the worst news ever. The news that would change her life forever.
“Everything is about to change,” he said, actually sounding passionate for the first time in his entire life, but also completely bizarre too. “Everything you ever knew is about to be no more.”
A murmur burst up around the class, and Talia had glanced towards her friend, but Bonnie was so sucked in by their teacher’s words that she didn’t even realize that her eyes were upon her.
“There has been a plan in place for generations. We have merely been biding our time, waiting for the time to strike. Now, finally, that time is upon us.”
Talia watched in a stunned silence as his skin took on a purplish hue and his face began to change shape. She blinked a few times, trying to make the terrifying image in front of her to finally disappear. This had to be a dream, some kind of nightmare and she needed desperately to wake up. Even though her young mind didn’t fully understand what was going on, it seemed to be able to grasp that she should be afraid. There was a cold terror coursing through her veins and fixing her to the seat.
“What’s happening?” she asked out of the side of her mouth, needing some kind of confirmation from Bonnie. “What is he doing?”
But as she spun around to look at her friend, to get the reassurance that she so desperately needed, she realized that not only was Bonnie taking on the same look as their teacher, but so were a few of the other members of the class too.
Talia scooted back in her seat, feeling more frightened than she ever had before, which only got worse as the teacher spoke out again.
“Now this will be too much for your young minds to comprehend, but I will tell you about it a
nyway.” His shape shifted over and over again, until Talia couldn’t keep up. She didn’t understand what he was at all, and that was almost worse than anything else. “We have been living among you for a very long time, taking your form. You didn’t ever recognize that there was something different about us. Of course, a few of us have gone rogue, but thankfully human nature is unpredictable enough so that no one realized.” Talia didn’t really understand the words, but they stuck firmly in her mind regardless. She could just tell that they would be important and that she needed to remember them to get her through the rest of her life. “And now it is time for us to act, to take you down. You might assume that because we have lived among you and we have adopted your ways, that we would have sympathy for you. But we don’t. Nor do we wish to continue living among you as we have been. That was never our end goal.” He began walking through the rows of children, focusing on the few remaining humans. “I think that you should know our race is far ahead of humans in every way possible. We have skills, talents, and abilities that you wouldn’t believe. It has been torture to hold ourselves back, to act like we are just these boring vessels. You will die at our hands, unless you make the smart choice right now.”
Die?! Her eyes flickered everywhere at that word. She didn’t want to die. Bonnie wouldn’t do that to her would she? They were friends, they shared secrets. But as she glanced over to Bonnie, all she saw was another terrifying beast that wanted her dead too. Everything that she’d ever thought in her life had been a lie, and that was utterly devastating.
“It is a shame for you to die, which is why I want you to join us, work for us, start your life in the right way for the time that the new regime is beginning.”
He looked at every one in turn, waiting for a response. Finally he got one from the youngest lad in the class… Johnny. “Can I ask my mommy first?”