“I’m standing outside your apartment,” I interrupted her. “Your neighbor told me you left with some guy in a fancy car.”
“You went to my house?” she choked out. I couldn’t even respond. I wanted to break something, like the face of the asshole she was with. “I didn’t leave with some guy. Kai, I need your help.”
“Seriously? You ran off with another guy, and you want my help?” I took a deep breath, unable to control the rage flowing through me. My skin felt too tight, my eye twitching. “I came all the way back here to work something out with you, and you aren’t even here.”
“Kai. Would you shut up and listen please? I only have a—”
There was a loud banging noise in the background, followed by someone shouting, “Hurry the fuck up, Chloe. I want to be home for breakfast.” The voice was muffled, but it was a guy, and he’d called her Chloe.
“I said give me a fucking minute, asshole. Let the pregnant woman take a damn piss in peace,” she screamed back, sounding pissed as all hell.
“Who the fuck was that?” I demanded, but based off what Mia had said, I had the feeling I knew exactly who it was. Exactly why she needed my help. My stomach churned.
“It was Jared,” she whispered even quieter. “He found me. He’s taking me back home. I can’t go home, Kai.”
My mind reeled. “How am I supposed to help you from here, huh? And why the hell would you leave with him anyway?”
“I can’t explain it right now. You don’t understand what he’s like,” she hissed. My chest hurt, my hands curling and uncurling. The implications of just the one sentence made me want to rip him to shreds. “I’m sorry I kept things from you. But the me I was with you is the real me. I need you to believe that, and I need you to trust me, despite everything. I’ll tell you everything. Every. Single. Thing. But right now, I need you. The twins and I need you so desperately.”
For her to even say that alone cracked something inside me. She could do shit on her own. She liked controlling just about everything in her world. But she needed me just then. I wanted to be there, no matter how mad I’d been or how hurt I was. And the twins. Those were my twins.
“Where are you?” I demanded. There really wasn’t much I could do from where I was, but I had to try.
“We’re at a gas station a few hours out of New—”
The banging cut her off again, followed by Jared’s muffled yell. “Chloe, so help me, I will come in there and drag your ass out if you don’t hurry the hell up.”
That made her whimper. My strong, amazing woman whimpered. Rage consumed me, making me see red.
“I have to go,” she whispered to me. “I just… if things…. Shit. I love you, Kai. No matter what, know that I love you.”
Then the line went dead.
There was nothing close for me to hit. And I couldn’t just stand there in her parking lot staring off in the distance.
I got out my debit card and messed with her doorknob for a few minutes. Luckily her neighbor didn’t poke her head out again. It didn’t take long to get the door open. I hurried inside, finding her keys and then grabbing some of her injection kits for her Zofran pump and a few tubes of the medicine out of her fridge. It was fortunate she had a little cooler and some ice packs in her freezer for me to store them in.
I went through her apartment to see if there was anything useful there. The whole place smelled of jasmine and orange, mixed with her, driving me insane.
My bag of stuff was still sitting on the floor in her bedroom with my clothes folded neatly in it. Changing into slightly nicer clothes than I had on was mostly so I could smell her during this trip rather than a fashion statement. Her scent clung to all of the stuff I left at her house. I had hopes she hadn’t gone through the bag, since the ring from my dad was in the side pocket. I grabbed it and stuck it in my pants pocket, then went back to the kitchen, getting a few bottles of water from her fridge before heading out, locking the door behind me.
I didn’t think her car would even be able to make it all the way to New Orleans, but I had to try. Flying would have been optimal, but having to take a cab to wherever her parents lived wasn’t ideal. I needed something to leave with her in. If we ended up just flying back to Ohio from Louisiana, that’s what would happen.
She had said she loved me. I hadn’t gotten to say it back. She was being taken somewhere she was terrified to go, and I didn’t know what that looked like, didn’t know how I would be able to get in and get her out.
But no matter what I was about to encounter, I would get her out of there.
Chloe
The border of Mississippi and Louisiana was right in front of us. From there, we only had about half an hour until we got to my hometown at the rate he was driving. I was out of time and hadn’t come up with any sort of plan. Aside from calling Kai, who’d flown all the way back to Tennessee to work things out with me. Now he was there and I was almost home. There was no hope inside me. I would be stuck living whatever they had planned for me, and under a much closer eye than before.
In even less time than I’d imagined, he was pulling up to the gate of the old plantation. As the sun peaked over the horizon, causing a dewy heat outside that we couldn’t feel inside his electric car, it shone on the impeccably manicured lawn. Hundreds of enormous trees lined the wrought iron fence, a new addition to the property. They had to have had them transplanted with how huge they were. I knew it was to make it impossible for me to escape the way I had before.
“Welcome home, babe,” Jared smiled at me as the twelve-foot gates swung inward. I was dead inside.
He drove up the long driveway, the gates closing behind us. His tires crunched over the gravel until he stopped right in front of the white plantation home.
“Let’s go, Chloe,” Jared instructed, and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to hurt him in every way possible for bringing me back to this place. He got out first, then came around to my side and opened the door.
When he went to grab my arm, I jerked back from him, snarling. “I can get out myself.”
He held his hands in the air, chuckling while I grunted and huffed out of the car. I spun in a circle, taking in every bit of the old property. The bench swing still swung from an old oak on the other side of the house. The green shutters remained as pristine as ever, the windows so clean you could barely see them. Including my window at the top right of the second floor.
Then I realized the tree I had shimmied down so long ago was completely missing, stump and all, the area where it had been now covered by a new cement pathway. They had plucked that five-hundred-year-old oak right from the ground as if it were the thing that had offended them. It made me wonder if they’d fired the old gardener since he never told them about the pieces of rope I’d tied in lattice steps to the fence on the backside of the property.
Jared grabbed my arm, gripping tighter than was necessary, before leading me up the gothic green front steps. When we stood in front of the glass-paned french doors, I tugged my black T-shirt over my belly. I was still wearing my work clothes, my light blue jeans a little dirty. My hair was in a twisted side braid, and I had very little makeup on. Why I cared was beyond me. Maybe it was because there were so many things they could scold me for, so it would have been nice if I were dressed in a manner they wouldn’t be able to sneer at.