by Casey, L. A.
I looked around, my eyes wild as I tracked any and every bit of movement I could see. My heart jumped when a small car pulled into the car park of the building and came to a stop right in front of me. I gripped the strap of my bag, and I burst into tears when Bailey jumped out of her car and hurried around to me.
“Noah!”
I wrapped my arms around her and cried.
“I love you.” I hugged her tightly. “I love you, I always have.”
“I love ye too, Noah,” Bailey said, her voice cracking. “You’re me sister.”
I whimpered.
“I’m here,” she said, squeezing me. “I’m here, it’s okay.”
“You’re all grown up now.” I pulled back, sniffling, and looked at her. “You’re so beautiful.”
She smiled at me, but that smile faded when she squinted and leaned in to look at my face. I watched as her eyes of ocean blue, ones identical to her brother’s, scanned my face from top to bottom. I saw the worry, and anger, that glowed within them.
“The fuckin’ scumbag,” she hissed as she lifted her fingers and brushed them over my throbbing cheek. “Look what he’s done to your face.”
“This is nothing,” I assured her. “It’s really not, I swear. Let’s just go. I don’t know where he is. He’ll kill me if he finds out I’m leaving him. ”
Bailey dropped her hand and nodded, then she grabbed my bag and put it in the boot of her car.
“Get in,” she said to me. “It’s fuckin’ Baltic out here.”
I hurried towards the passenger-side door.
“Noah!”
I got such a fright that I jumped, and for a moment my feet cleared the ground. With my hand gripping the door handle of Bailey’s car, I looked over my shoulder as Anderson slammed the door of his own car shut. I wasn’t anywhere near him, but I could see the anger burning within his cruel black dahlia eyes. He knew what I was doing. He knew. He had a bouquet of flowers in his hand. With his eyes on me he dropped the flowers to the ground, took a step forward and crushed them under his boot.
“Don’t you dare get in that fucking car, woman.”
I stared at him, and for the first time since I became fearful of him, I held his gaze and met his challenge head-on. I wasn’t going to cower before him any more; I wasn’t going to allow him to break my spirit any longer. He was nothing, and I wanted him to know that.
“I want a divorce, Anderson. I don’t want to be your wife for a second longer.”
“She’s done with you, ye woman-beatin’, no-good stream of piss!”
He didn’t look at Bailey for a second; his focus was entirely on me. When he suddenly lunged and started to cross the car park, Bailey and I screamed as we rushed into the car and locked the doors behind us. I put my hands over my ears and screeched when pounding erupted on the window of my door. Bailey fumbled with her keys for just a moment before she started her car and pulled away.
“Noah!”
I looked over my shoulder, and in the moon’s light I spotted Anderson running back towards his car.
“He’s coming after us!” I gasped in fright. “Oh my God! Oh my God, Bailey!”
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice determined. “He can’t hurt ye any more. He knows that I know that he’s been abusin’ ye.”
She may have known that he was abusive to me, but she didn’t know Anderson or the lengths he would go to keep me. I did – I had first-hand experience of how dangerous he could be when someone tried to take away something that was his. He viewed me as his property, even though he always tried to spin a story that everything he did was for my benefit.
“What do we do?” I asked, then I looked over my shoulder and screamed when Anderson’s car skidded out of the car park. “He’s coming!”
“Call me brother,” Bailey shouted as I struggled with my seat belt before I heard it click into place. “The dispatch grid might be busy with a lot of callers tonight. Call Elliot directly, his number is the same as it’s always been.”
“I don’t have a phone,” I said, panicked. “Anderson never let me have one, I used the flat phone to ring you.”
She grabbed her phone from her pocket and pushed it at me without taking her eyes off the road. I took it and hurriedly unlocked it once Bailey told me her passcode. I dialled Elliot’s number; I knew it by heart. I pressed Call just as Anderson drove directly behind us, making me scream with terror. Elliot’s phone rang a couple of times, then I heard a beep instead of a voice.
“Elliot? Elliot? Shit, shit, shit! It’s his voicemail!”
Panic gripped me as my hand grabbed on to the handle of the door. I kept looking over my shoulder, and when I realised Anderson was never going to let me go, I began to cry.
“Help us,” I sobbed. “Oh God. Please, I don’t know what do! Bailey, what’re we gonna do? It’s so dark, put the high beams on.”
I screeched as the car slid slightly as Bailey made a sharp turn.
“Oh God, oh God!” I sobbed. “Bailey, you’re going too fast!”
With shaking hands, I looked back at my phone and realised I was still on a call with Elliot’s voicemail. I tried to hang up and call him again, but I was so distraught I couldn’t make my fingers do what I needed them to do.
“Tulse Hill,” I cried into the phone. “Elliot, we’re on – Bailey, slow down!”
“I’m tryin’!” Bailey suddenly shouted. “I can’t stop, it’s black ice! We’re slidin’.”
“Elliot!” I screamed as the car swerved. “Elliot, help us. We’re driving through Tulse Hill. Please, please! Anderson is going to kill us – Bailey! Look out!”
One moment we were sliding at an insane speed, then the next our bodies were being violently jerked from side to side as the car flipped multiple times before landing on its side and smashing into something solid and unmoving. Somewhere in the midst of this, I smacked my head against the window of my door and felt warm liquid dripping down my face, as pain unlike anything I had ever felt before spread like wildfire across my head and body.
Before I closed my eyes, I called out a name. I called out for a man to help me, but before he could answer . . . darkness had already claimed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ELLIOT
Present day . . .
I was going fucking crazy.
I hit my hands against the steering wheel of my car for the millionth time. This was the most insane thing I had ever done, and I was a fucking firefighter! Sitting in my car while knowing the woman I loved was in the flat she’d once shared with a husband she couldn’t remember was like resting my balls on scalding-hot coals. I hated every fucking second of it. But I had no choice but to endure it until she heard whatever it was that she thought Anderson Riley was going to tell her.
For her sake, I hoped he had the information she believed he might.
I would be lying if I said a huge part of me wasn’t curious to know if he knew anything. The police had questioned him for information about that night, but he’d said he hadn’t been aware that Noah had even left their flat. He went to sleep early and was awoken by the police knocking on his door to inform him about the crash that took Bailey and almost took Noah too. They had no reason not to believe him, and though I disliked him greatly, I had no reason either.
Maybe Noah was right. Maybe there was a chance that Anderson knew something that could help shine a light on what took place that night and he didn’t realise it, but I wasn’t holding out much hope.
My issues with the man boiled down to one thing on my part: raging jealousy. I hated him for having Noah, and he knew it. He hated me for wanting her, because I made no effort to hide that fact. Back when I found out that Noah had moved in with the creep barely a few weeks after we broke up, I blew like a fuse. I was so furious, hurt and ready to beat the shite out of the man who had moved in on my girl. I’d found out where they lived, showed up at the place and demanded to know what was happening. Anderson had happily told me how he’d fucked Noah in ev
ery way imaginable, and planned to continue fucking her for the foreseeable future. I landed a solid to his jaw. Noah hadn’t been home at the time, but Anderson made sure to let me know that she would be returning to him and to his bed.
I left the flat that day expecting to feel better after letting my frustrations out on the pathetic wankstain, but I didn’t. I felt a million times worse off than I could have ever imagined. It had solidified in my mind – and heart – that Noah and I were never going to get back together. She had chosen another man over me . . . and at the time, I blamed myself. As time went by, I’d still mourned the loss of her and our relationship, and had a lot of self-hatred and blame for what had happened, but after thinking of our talk in the hospital I’d come to a conclusion.
It was no one’s fault.
Noah had wanted to get married and I didn’t; it was something we couldn’t compromise on and it was the end of our relationship. When said like that, it seemed easy to understand and to accept, but the reality of it was very different. It had been very hard for me to accept it was the end for us because I was still so deeply in love with her. So in love that, years later when she needed me, I still came running without a second thought or a moment of hesitation. I loved Noah Ainsley, and I always would.
She was my woman.
My person that was alone in the company of her husband who she planned to divorce. It eased my nerves, mind and racing heart to know that she had chosen me over him. It was even more comforting knowing that even if I wasn’t around, she would still be leaving him. He wasn’t the person for her, especially in the frame of mind she was in. He was a smooth-talking son of a bitch – I had heard him spin tales so easily the night I confronted him, and I’d learned that he was very good at making people believe what he wanted them to believe when he wanted them to believe it.
Present-day Noah wasn’t falling for his bullshit.
When he’d met her, she’d been in a low, dark place over our break-up; I didn’t need all the brains in the world to know that. He arrived in her life when she was at her lowest point, and the scumbag had sunk his claws into her before I ever got the chance to speak to her. It always made me tense when I wondered if things would have turned out differently if I’d spoken to Noah before Anderson entered her life. I had no way of knowing, but I believed that we could have talked at length about what was bothering us both, and we could have come to an understanding.
I would have rather been scared of marriage ruining us than losing her . . . The pain of that hurt more than I could ever describe. My mindset on marriage had drastically changed from the night Noah and I broke up. It was stupid to me that I’d been scared that marriage would change us, when in reality, the only thing that would change was Noah’s surname. Our daily lives would still continue, we would still have the future we’d planned together, and we would still love and be the person the other one kissed each night before bed.
I wondered if Noah believed me when I told her I wanted a life that involved everything with her. I wanted to stand in front of our friends and family and declare before them, before God, that Noah was the one I’d chosen to spend the rest of my life with. After bringing it up in the cemetery, I would leave her to think about it until she was ready to talk about it. Noah wasn’t one to keep things bottled up, especially when she needed an answer to whatever was bothering her.
That was exactly why she was in Anderson’s flat right now: she needed answers to the questions that plagued her mind.
“Me poor sasanach,” I mumbled to myself. “How can I make this better for ye?”
I already knew the answer. I couldn’t make any of this better for her. She had just found out Bailey had died – but what was worse, she now knew that the crash she was in was the same crash that killed my sister. I still believe that the decision to keep Noah in the dark was a sound one. If we had told her the truth weeks ago, then she would have reacted differently – and by that I mean she would have likely collapsed and maybe even died.
I could have lost her too.
Her brain was stronger now than it had been a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t fool enough to think she was healed. I saw the physical pain she’d been suffering in the cemetery. I understood that the emotional pain of Bailey’s death hitting her had overshadowed the pain in her head and body. I knew that later, once I had her home and alone, everything would hit her all at once. Her pain, Bailey’s death, the confusion of it all. It would slam into her when she had a moment to stop and realise the weight, and truth, of it, and I would be there to shoulder the burden with her.
I closed my eyes and heard her scream in my head as I remembered running up to her on the ground by Bailey’s grave. It was a wail of disbelief and raw pain, and a desperate plea for what she was seeing to not be true. I knew it because Noah had been voicing the scream that I’d been keeping inside since the night my little sister died. Noah couldn’t hold her emotions in, and I couldn’t let them out. Not because I didn’t want to – I just had a wall built up inside me to keep everything in check. It was the only way I could function.
I was terrified that if that wall broke I would collapse right along with it.
A shout followed by a feminine scream snapped my eyes open. I jolted as my eyes sought out the source of the commotion, and I locked my gaze on the entrance to the flat building. A few people were rushing out of the double doors, almost trampling over one another to get outside, and it caused me to jump out of my car in a panic.
“What’s wrong?” I shouted, rushing forward. “What’s goin’ on?”
“Fire,” a man coughed, waving his hand in front of his face. “Fourth floor. It’s bad. There are dozens of families in this building, lots of elderly too!”
I widened my eyes. “Call 999. Now!”
Without another word, thought or a second’s hesitation, I took off sprinting towards the building. I shoved my way through the crowd of people who were pouring out of the doors clutching their children, loose belongings, pets and their sanity, as the sound of the building’s fire alarms reached my ears. Nothing else mattered to me in that moment, other than getting to Noah and bringing her to safety.
Nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NOAH
When I opened my eyes and found Anderson practically in my face, I flinched. I stared at him with slowly blinking eyes for a long moment. He was silently staring at me, as if waiting for me to do something. I tried to gather my thoughts but couldn’t.
“What?” I rasped. “What happened?”
My head was sore, but only slightly. There was a heavy pressure on my wrists and hands that made me feel uncomfortable. I tried to move my arms but found I couldn’t. They were behind my back and bound together. Confusion swirled in my jumbled brain. My mind felt hazy, like I couldn’t straighten anything out to form a coherent thought.
“You were only out for a few minutes,” Anderson answered with a tilt of his head. “That’s surprising. You said that morphine knocks you out for hours.”
His words made no sense to me.
“Anderson.” I struggled against the material tied around my wrists and feet. My boot had been removed and I couldn’t see it anywhere. “What is this? Untie me.”
I looked to my left and right as he straightened to his full height, crossed the room to the dining table and sat in front of a plate full of food and a wine glass that was filled to the top. I realised that I was on the floor in a sitting position, with my back resting against the base of the sofa. I leaned my head back and groaned. I hated how fuzzy my mind was; it reminded me of being in the hospital when I was given medicine to kill my pain.
“Anderson.” I swallowed, my throat dry as a desert. “I can’t think.”
“You don’t have to think,” he answered. “I’ll do that for you.”
I looked at him and frowned. “What?”
“Things are going to go back to the way they were,” he said as he cut up his food with his knife and fork. “I promise.”
I struggled against my bindings.
“Let me go!” I demanded. “What are you doing?”
He paused and glanced at me. “You know better than to raise your voice at me, woman.”
I most definitely did not know better. Had he forgotten I didn’t know anything about him?
“I’m so confused,” I said, clearing my throat. “Did I collapse?”
“No,” Anderson answered as he picked up his wine glass. “I drugged you, but before you fell asleep you tried to leave so I hit you. I had to protect you from yourself, so I did what I had to do.”
I heard every single astonishing word he said and repeated them twice in my head. I stared at him as he calmly drank some wine, then went back to eating his food like he hadn’t just said the most insane thing I had ever heard another person say. I looked straight ahead as I tried to process what I was hearing. I closed my eyes to think, and suddenly the memory of the night of the crash, of Bailey’s death, resurfaced and my body jolted.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I remember.”
The cutlery Anderson was using clanked against his plate, and within seconds I found him on his knees in front of me. His hands touched my shoulders and his fingers bit into my flesh painfully. His eyes looked wild as his gaze drilled into mine.
“What d’you remember?”
My eyes burned with tears.
“I was leaving you . . . that night . . . I was leaving you.”
My husband blinked, sat back on his heels and sighed, long and deep.
“You weren’t leaving me,” he said, his dark eyes still boring into me. “You were just confused; you’d never leave me.”
I was about to disagree with him, but fear made me hold my tongue. I couldn’t remember everything about my life with this man, I could just remember the night he ruined mine and I knew it was enough for me to watch what I said to him. Anderson . . . he was abusive towards me. He’d beaten me, controlled me . . . and tried to kill me.