That was the longest two hours of my life. Running to the car, I dialed Morgan’s phone with no answer. Derik wouldn’t answer his either. Shit. Something happened. Something was wrong. I could feel it.
I had no idea what the hell happened. Derik was MIA, Morgan wasn’t answering her phone and there was no sign of her when I finally entered the house.
‘Morgan,’ I called to the empty house.
‘I ran upstairs, the den, the kitchen, my office, she wasn’t anywhere. Where the hell was she? It was a long shot, but I walked down the long hall where Michael once slept and where I’d once kept Morgan locked for days. She wouldn’t go down that way. She always said it gave her the creeps and left an eerie feeling in her bones. I, of course, knew why she felt that way. I felt that way about that room too.
‘Morgan,’ I softly spoke.
Her words will haunt me for the rest of my life.
‘Do you think it’s still Stockholm syndrome when you fall in love with the Drew that you didn’t know?’
I hated the thought of that. Stockholm syndrome. What a filthy word and she felt that way. She thought I was a monster.
She’d no doubt lost her mind. She stood and pointed the gun right at my head when I tried to go to her. That was the first time in my life that I’d felt real pain. She cried, shaking and screaming out everything I’d ever done to her. Her entire life had been a bad joke and I made it worse.
‘You hit me, Drew. You hurt me,’ she cried over and over. Her words rang like sound waves, repeating incessantly, ‘You hit me, you hurt me.’
I’d finally done it. Everything that had been bothering her over the last few months was out. She knew. I spent an hour confessing and explaining through a microphone, just like I’d spoke to her many times. Knowing she was crying from everything that I was saying to her, I wanted to go to her. I wanted to hold her and take away the pain, the pain that I caused. The pain that I could have kept from her, and now the fury that I felt learning that Derik had raped her, not once, not twice, but multiple times. I let that happen to her too.”
I could have interrupted Drew at that moment. I almost told him that I forgave him, and not to be sad over it. I didn’t say anything when I felt the pain in my eye after touching it. Brushing my hair back in a breath of disgust about all of this, I felt it, deciding to keep quiet and let Drew talk.
“Locked in that room for four hours, I paced, cussed screamed, and hated myself. Would she really leave me there? What did she mean with my sheriff? She was really going to marry another man while being married to me? That meant he fucked her. I’d kill that son of a bitch. Some other man had his hands on Morgan. My mind was all over the place. What right did I have to be angry with a man that evidently did what I didn’t? He loved her. Why didn’t I love her? Why couldn’t I have been the prince charming that day when she turned eighteen, picked her up with a white horse and carriage, and got to know her?
Not even a year before I would have been fretting about her exposing me to Callaway, telling him all that I had done to her. That wasn’t what I was worried about. I didn’t care about any of it. I was worried that I was going to lose her. I couldn’t lose her. It could have been great. I could have shown her so much. We could have experienced a whole world together. Why did I have to be such an ass?
I excitedly looked up when I heard the lock on the door hours later. Morgan stood, staring at me. Taking a step forward she stopped me with her hand on my chest. I stopped.
‘I don’t want any of this,’ she stated, taking a step back and crossing her arms. ‘I want to go home. I want to go to Maine where I have friends.’
I nodded. What else was I going to do? What right did I have? ‘I’ll have Felix fly you there.’
I tried to tell her how sorry I was, how much I loved her, but expectedly it didn’t work. She left.
I should have given her space, let her have a moment to breath, soak it all in. I couldn’t do it. I called to make sure she made it to Maine okay, and then later on that night. The height of my day became my nightly conversations with Morgan. Two whole weeks, I went without seeing her. I couldn’t take it. I had to see her. There had to be some reason for me to go to her.
‘I want to find my mom,’ she confessed as we talked on the phone.
That was all I needed. I’d find her mother and deliver the news.
I didn’t really have a hard time at all finding Amanda. She had married a handyman, opened a bed and breakfast in North Carolina, and had a daughter. I delivered the news to Morgan the very next day.
I would almost say that was the best couple days of my life. I mowed her grass for her, changed her oil, and hunted sea glass, my new favorite thing to do. I actually found one of the rarest colors there is: black. I was going to do something special with it, for Morgan. We made love on top of the world again, this time overlooking the ocean.