“Lemon, you don’t know . . .”
Dante interrupted her. “Make her stay here. I’ll be right back.” He turned to me. “I will prove it to you.” He ran off down the hallway. What was he going to do, go and get changed into his suit to keep up the façade? They had tricked so many people over the years, and I wasn’t about to be added to that list.
I was so, so done. I started for the door, but Taylor grabbed my suitcase out of my hand. “You need to calm down and . . .”
“Shut up!” I told her through clenched teeth. My hand balled up into a fist, and I only just stopped myself from punching her. “I don’t have to do anything but get out of this house.”
Screw the clothes and shoes. She could keep them. I had my purse, and that was all I needed to get home.
I ran out into the hall and down the stairs. A cameraman got right up in my face, and I shoved the lens away. The car Dante had reserved for me was still sitting in the driveway, and the driver was texting on his phone.
I came around to his window and knocked. He rolled it down. “I will give you five hundred dollars if you drive me to the airport right now.”
“Done!” he said. I got into the back, and just as he pulled out, I heard the muffled sound of Dante calling my name.
I didn’t look back. I got played like a grand piano, and it would never happen again.
Ever.
I found the first flight out, which was headed to Salt Lake City. It was scheduled to depart about twenty minutes after I arrived, and from there I would get a flight back to Atlanta. I just had to leave Los Angeles. I couldn’t be sitting in the airport waiting for a plane when he showed up with a camera crew to tell me more lies. Because the TSA would probably arrest me after I killed him.
The plane was somewhere over the Dakotas when my anger finally subsided. Then there was just an overwhelming sadness and a pain so acute that it hurt to breathe or to move. My heart physically ached. Like, really, seriously ached. I shivered and started to cry, curled up in a ball in my seat. I had the row to myself, and I turned sideways to pull my legs up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
I cried the whole way back to Georgia. When we landed, I had a taxi take me to a nearby hotel. I didn’t want to wake my parents up. I would explain everything to them in the morning. I looked through my purse for my cell phone and realized it was another thing I had left in California, along with my dignity and my heart.
The crying didn’t stop, no matter how often I told myself that it was dumb to be crying over a man who obviously cared so little for me. It was hours before I finally fell asleep.
My constant crying had apparently exhausted me, and when I finally woke up, the sun was setting. I had been asleep for hours, and the hotel charged me for an extra day since I’d missed checkout. They called a cab to take me home.
When I pulled up to the house, I had expected to see camera crews and Dante waiting for me. But it was quiet, normal.
I went inside and called out for my parents. No answer.
The day passed with me in a fugue state, numb with shock, crying all the time. A haze of misery covered everything. Poor Droopy and Snoopy kept whining at me, nudging me with their noses, and trying to cuddle. They wanted to make it better. They couldn’t.
I didn’t watch sad movies or listen to breakup songs. I couldn’t do any of the things I normally did when this happened. Because this was different.
The suffocating despair made me wonder if I’d ever be happy again. I probably should have eaten, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. I stood in front of the liquor cabinet and wanted to get smashed. At least then I could forget for a few hours. Problem was, once I sobered up, I’d still be just as depressed, only then I’d have a hangover, too. I decided against adding to my suffering.
My parents hadn’t returned by the time I fell asleep. I probably should have called them, but I couldn’t bear telling them what had happened. It would be too humiliating. I wasn’t ready to talk about it to anyone. Not even Kat.
The last thought I had before I drifted off was that every moment of the day, I expected Dante to show up. To try and fix things.
He didn’t come. If that wasn’t an admission of guilt, I didn’t know what was.
I spent the next morning in my bed, well into the afternoon. I catnapped most of the day, and the image I saw whenever I would close my eyes was him with Genesis. Like it had been seared into my brain, and I would never be able to think about him again without remembering what I had seen.
My parents returned. I recalled my mother mentioning that they had a corporate function in downtown Atlanta, just before my wedding. They had probably chosen to stay in a hotel overnight instead of driving back home. It was something they did all the time, especially if they had both been drinking.