Blended (Redemption #1) (24 page)

I thought that I lost all of my fight before he left, but as soon as the suite door shut, I found it once again. Then why am I struggling to breathe? My hand still rests against my heart, internally begging for that shield to come back, to protect me from him.

I feel . . . fragmented. Wounded.

Each and every vulnerability that I kept safe and coded in my heart has grown roots, and I can’t force the emotions to retreat back to their safe place.

Where did he go? Why didn’t he let me explain?

I feel as if I’m fading in this room. I tell myself to retreat into my mind’s prison and leave. The sweetness and pure spark that set my heart on fire has turned into the burning flames of hell. I force my body to take in a deep breath. The suite smells of him, though, and it burns the interior of my lungs before I grab my phone and search for the next flight out of this country. Away from him and his negative assumptions about me.

Once I find a flight that leaves in four hours, I run across the room, searching through my purse for my wallet and then my credit card. I input all of my details before booking my overpriced ticket, and I slip my feet into my new Coach flip-flops. I toss everything of mine that I am able to get my hands on into my suitcase. Once I believe that I have everything, I sit down on it and zip it up. I pull it up to stand on its wheels, and my eyes catch the Burberry shopping bag with my purchases from Wade stowed away inside. I don’t want anything to do with his fancy-ass bank account, his heart, or his cock.

Lies.

I know that lying to myself will only put me at a disadvantage, but who am I kidding? I’m a woman who loathes the thought of love and relationships. I live for sex. I live for penetrating orgasms and bruised vaginal walls. But with Wade I think that I was different. He forced me to see past my sexual needs and to possibly find what has been hidden inside, what I have deprived myself of for my entire life. I connected with him on a level that was raw and beautiful, and there were moments so incredibly real that I was able to see the world in vibrant colors. Now, though, I realize that it was all a lie. I interlocked myself with him for nothing. I’ll recoil to protect the pieces that now make up my shattered soul.

I refuse to let him break me in this way. He’s slowly made me become the person that I never wanted to be. Bitterness rises like bile at the thought of never seeing him again, but I cast it aside.

I don’t want this. I’ve never wanted this. This is not who I am. I subjected myself to a lifestyle that I knew would never work for me. I can feel myself withdrawing by the second because I can’t feel much of the pain anymore as the depression, addiction, and anxiety supplies me with relief.

Within an hour and a half, I’ve made it through the Sydney airport security as I walk unseeing to the terminal and then to the correct gate. I take a seat, not paying attention to anyone or anything around me. I know that my bloodshot eyes and smeared makeup must be drawing a lot of unwanted attention, but if I’m honest, I don’t give a shit. Yes, I’m wearing my fucked-up emotions on my sleeve, and no I can’t control them because I don’t know how to. I want to yell at everyone. I have never been so emotionally messed up in my life. It’s all because of him—his screwed-up way of breaking me and his way of dismissing me from his life. His way of calling me a whore.

“Fuck you, Waylon Brass,” I say as I rummage through my purse for my anxiety medication.

I’ll find that sanctuary that I masked myself in for most of my life again, and I don’t plan on ever coming back from it. The boarding process begins, and I wait until everyone goes through before they announce the final boarding call for Los Angeles. Only then do I stand and hand the woman my boarding pass. She scans it, and I walk past her without a word. I repeat the notion as I walk onto the plane, finding my seat toward the back of the aircraft. Somehow, I’ve gotten a row of seats to myself. As soon as I take my seat, the tears start to flow again. I dig my phone out of my purse before I have to push it under the seat in front of me and type out a text. He needs to know that whatever the fuck we were is no more. Whether he says it or I do. I stare at the screen for a long while before I hit send and stuff my phone into my purse before stowing it.

I gave you my word. I never went back on it. Goodbye, Whiskey.

I’ve gotten sick on the flight a total of three times in the first four hours of the fourteen-hour journey to LAX where I’ll have to connect to Chicago. I’ve been contemplating staying in Los Angeles and starting over there, but I can’t simply disappear on Lola.

The flight attendant comes by with a drink cart again and asks me if I’d like something to drink. I refuse her again, but this time she insists that I drink something because she’s worried that I’ll get dehydrated from being sick so much. I loathe being cared for. I let it go when Wade was mine, but now it needs to stop. I cannot stand letting someone see my weaknesses so easily.

I honestly couldn’t give a fuck that I could be dehydrated, though. Maybe the physical reaction to it will put a stop to my emotional state. I ask her for a ginger ale in hopes of her leaving me alone. After I drink the soda, I shut my eyes in an attempt to keep the rest of the world at bay.

I’m woken suddenly by the plane jerking as it lands at LAX. I take in a deep calming breath and exhale loudly. It takes a while before I’m able to get off of this metal death trap and get the slightest bit of fresh air when I walk out onto the jetway. The cooler air doesn’t settle my mind, body, or soul. It just reminds me of the ache that blankets me. Of my morning with Wade in the sand.

I need alcohol and sex. Maybe I’ll get lucky on my next flight and get seated next to some sex god who won’t be able to keep his hands off of a cheap thrill.

By the time, I find my next gate to Chicago they are calling my name, and I want to punch the fucker who keeps saying Rye.

Note to self: change your last name.

Once I’m seated next to an older man who looks hornier than hell, I pull out my phone and text Lo:
Hi, doll, I’m on my way to Chicago. I’ll be there in a few hours. I just didn’t want to catch you and Owen naked on the couch.

I hit send and then type out a text to Holden:
I need you.

I plug in my headphones and hit play on the first song that pops up. As much as I’ve fought the urge to check my phone for a message from him, I lose at this moment.

I’m more surprised when I realize that I don’t have one from him, but rather I have a few from Isla. I scroll up and read the first one that she sent me:
Listen, I don’t know where the fuck you went, but Wade is a mess.

Then a second one:
You’re a bitch, you know that? Prepare yourself for that fucking roofie that I told you about.

Those two came approximately two hours after my flight took off. Then, her next one says that it came in four hours ago:
Wade was just involved in a boating accident. I wasn’t with him. He was with a few men from the meeting he was in. They have airlifted him to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. This happened about an hour ago. Where the fuck are you, you selfish bitch?

My stomach lurches and I think that I’m going to be sick again. I scroll down again to her last message that came in two hours ago:
He was asking for you before he went into surgery.

Adrenaline spikes my body as I get up and fly out of my seat to the cabin door, just as the flight attendant is about to shut it. I blatantly ignore her reprimand as I squeeze through the opening and run up the jetway, bursting through the security door and back into the terminal. I run back to the international terminal while I search for a plane that leaves for Sydney on my phone. I must be fated to be on this damn flight because there’s one leaving within fifteen minutes. I haul ass through the terminals until I come to the gate that it says the flight it supposed to leave from. I rush to the counter and inform the woman my situation. She frowns and nods in understanding. She then spends too much time typing in my details before she confirms that I will, indeed, be able to board. They had a few seats available for their standby passengers.

She ushers me onto the flight, and I quickly find my seat. My knees are bobbing up and down, anxious to get off of the ground and closer to him.

“Please place your purse underneath the seat in front of you, ma’am,” a flight attendant says as I fish through it to find my phone again.

Once I do, I type out a message to Lola:
Never mind! Change of plans.

Her message comes almost instantly:
All right. Love you. Be safe.

I’m about to reply to Isla and text Hold again when the flight attendant stops in front of me again. “Ma’am, if I have to ask you again, I will escort you off of this plane.”

What a bitch.
I chuck my shit underneath the seat as we taxi down the runway, and I beg no one in particular that Wade hasn’t suffered anything horrific.

Sixteen hours later, I’m exhausted, both mentally and physically. I’ve been away from him for over thirty-five hours, and I don’t know when it was exactly that he was in the accident. When I check my phone as I get into a taxi, it’s dead. I huff and toss it into the seat beside me as I give the cabbie my destination.