Eruption (The Hunted Series Book 3) (8 page)

"He doesn't need to be taken care of. We've been
together for two and a half years and I've seen nothing. He's fine. He's over
whatever it is you're talking about. We're both fine."

"He's not fine. He's addicted to you."

"Stop saying that." I knew she was just trying to
make me paranoid. But James was fine. He wasn't like that anymore.

"You're rewarding his behavior."

"Are you so blind that you can't see the difference?
Just because no one has ever loved you doesn't mean you have to take it out on
me."

"You don't think James loved me? He really does like to
keep you in the dark, doesn't he? His affection lasted for a few years and then
it was gone. The same thing will happen to you."

"Stop living in the past. It's pathetic."

"Stop living in denial."

"Don't you ever come near him again, Isabella. Leave us
alone."

"Or what?"

"You don't want to find out."

She laughed. "I'm so unbelievably scared." She
smiled at me. "There's two weeks until your wedding. Which means I have
two weeks to make James see the light. It's plenty of time. I just have to
remind him about what he's missing. I'll only need a few minutes alone with
him. Until he's screaming my name instead of yours."

"You bitch."

She slapped me hard across the face.

I grabbed my cheek. No one had ever slapped me before. I
hadn't been expecting that at all. She was wearing a few rings on her hand and
I could feel the small bruises already forming on my face.

She put her hand on her cheek and made a fake shocked look.
"Sorry, did I hurt you?" She removed her hand from her own cheek and
smiled. "I didn't think you'd mind. I know how aggressive James can be. I
figured you liked to be smacked around."

"You don't know him, Isabella. I know you wish you did.
I know you're upset that he left you. But it's not my fault. Stop blaming me
for your shortcomings."

"My shortcomings? He slept with you while he was still
married to me. You're a slut."

"Look, you can keep his parents. I know you have them
wrapped around your finger. And I want nothing to do with them. But you can't
have him. He's mine." I walked past her and out of the room. I looked to
the right toward the party. There was still light classical music pouring
through the hallway. I turned to the left and walked as quickly as I could away
from everyone else.

I pulled out my phone and called James. There was still no
answer. I stopped in the middle of the foyer, unsure of where to go. I heard
voices outside and the front door started to open. I couldn't face anyone else
right now. I turned and ran up the stairs.

Friday

I felt like I was trespassing as I made my way down the
corridor. I just needed to find a bathroom to hide in until James picked up his
phone. When I turned the corner, I saw a door with a nameplate on it.
Robert.
My heart skipped a beat and I looked farther down the hall. A door with James'
name was on the opposite side of the corridor. I looked behind me. It didn't
matter if I was sneaking around. There was never going to be another opportunity
to see James' childhood room.

Before I could change my mind, I walked over to the door and
went inside, quickly closing it behind me. Moonlight shown in through the sides
of the closed blinds, casting eerie shadows along the floor. I ran my hand
along the wall until my fingers found the light, and I quickly switched it on.

Everything in the room was a pale blue. The walls, the carpet
in the center of the room, the comforter on the bed. His parent's must have
been thrilled to have a boy. There were a few posters pinned to the walls of
who I assumed were old quarterbacks for the Giants. The only one I had ever
known of was Eli Manning, and neither poster was of him. Besides for those,
there was nothing that seemed very personal in the room. Actually, there wasn't
much in the room at all except for the extensive library along one wall. I
walked over to the shelves and let my eyes wander the titles. There were tons
of classics that had been on my school reading lists growing up, like Lord of
the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Huckleberry Finn.

It was almost like he had put them in order of when he had
read them. The later shelves seemed to be filled with books from college. Books
about website coding, marketing, management, and any kind of business
imaginable. I only recognized one title in the marketing section, and I was
glad that my education shared at least one similarity with his at Harvard.
Unless he had just read Marketing Principles in Foreign Markets on a whim one
summer.

I smiled when my eyes fell on all the books in the Harry
Potter series. When he had seen my room, he had teased me about Harry Potter. I
thought he had been joking when he said he read the series, that he was just
trying to make me feel less immature for having children's things in my room.
It was sometimes so hard to tell whether or not he was serious. Either way, I
was glad he liked Harry Potter as much as I did. I tilted my head as my eyes
wandered across the titles in the series. He didn't have all of them, actually.
He was missing the first one. I scanned the rest of the shelves to try and find
it.

I laughed to myself as I ran my finger along the spine of a
Boy Scouts handbook. For the life of me, I couldn't quite picture him in one of
those cute little uniforms. Actually, I couldn't really picture him as a child
at all. And there hadn't been any pictures of him on the walls downstairs like
I'd hope there'd be either. I turned away from the bookshelf and saw a picture
tucked into the side of the mirror above his dresser. But it wasn't of him. I
walked over, staring at the girl in the picture, and pulled it off the mirror.

I didn't need to turn it over to know who it was. It had to
be his high school girlfriend, Rachel. Young love. It was something I knew
nothing about. James was my first real boyfriend. I guess I was young when I
first met him. I didn't feel young anymore though. And compared to the girl in
the picture, I doubted I looked young either.

James must have kept her picture hanging here all through
college too. The only reason that they had broken up was because his parents
thought she wasn't suitable for him. If they had liked her, would they still be
together? Would he have had a happier life?

When I had first met Isabella, she had told me I wasn't his
type. Rachel had brunette hair like Isabella and brown eyes like her too.
Isabella and James weren't compatible, but he must have been attracted to her
if she looked like Rachel. Maybe they really were his type. Which meant I
wasn't.

I turned the picture over. There was just one line scrawled
on the back: Forever and always.

I had the eerie feeling that Rachel had given this to him
after they had broken up. Maybe she thought he'd go back to her after college
when he no longer needed his parents money. Maybe she was still waiting for
him.

I tried to shake the thought away as I stuck the image back
on the mirror. She was part of James' past, just like Isabella. I was his
present and future. There was no reason to dwell over either of them. I pulled
out my phone and saw that there were still no messages from James. Hopefully
Rob would find him soon.

As I sat down on James' bed to wait for him, I noticed the
copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that had been missing from his
bookshelf. It was sitting on his night stand. I pulled it onto my lap and let
it fall open to a random page. The copy was really worn and felt oddly
comforting in my hands, similar to my own copy. I skimmed the words that I had
read half a dozen times and froze.

James hadn't read these books for the cute little redheaded
girl. That part had been a tease. He read them because he needed an escape. He
felt trapped here. I looked up at the very blue room. Living up to his parents'
expectations must have been stifling. He dumped the girl that he loved and married
a girl he never would. But that's all I really knew. And that wasn't his
childhood. What horrible things had they made him do before that?

I loved the man that I knew. But I didn't know everything
about him. All I knew about his childhood now was that he escaped to this very
blue room to read. He must have felt so alone. There were hundreds of books on
those shelves. I had told him I was nerdy growing up, preferring a book over
socializing, but he had never told me that he was the same. Maybe we had more
in common than I ever realized.

I started flipping through the book and saw a folded piece of
paper laying between the pages. I pulled it out and unfolded it. The writing
was faint, either faded from age or he hadn't had as sure of a hand back then.
But I could make out the words. It was a list of criteria for emancipation.
James had crossed out each line, probably because none of them applied to him.
A permanent escape was unattainable.

So where had this boy gone? Why had he tried to become
independent from his family only to do whatever they wanted for the next ten
years of his life? What had changed? It couldn't have just been the issue of
money. His parents were plenty generous with that. Offering me five million
dollars to disappear to supposedly protect their son. They never would have
really cut him off, would they? It didn't make any sense. There must have been
something James hadn't told me.

I put the piece of paper back and closed the book. I didn't
need to ask myself all those questions. His parents had taken away the love of
his life, and I knew better than anyone how strongly James loved. So he had
given up on life. He realized he was destined to be miserable and just seemed
to accept it. James wasn't weak. He was the exact opposite. He was stoic. His
parents repeatedly tried to break him and he just took it. Anyone would have
needed an escape. A book, a bottle of scotch, sex. His escapes had matured with
him.

I set the book back down on the nightstand. He wasn't
addicted to me. We were both an escape for each other from our normal lives. We
were each other's happy endings. The fairytales in the books that lined his
shelves really did exist. It wasn't an addiction. It was our reality. We were
the lucky ones because we had found each other. No one could ever convince me
otherwise.

The door squeaked but I didn't turn around. I could feel that
it was him. "You really did like Harry Potter?" I put my palm down on
top of the book on the nightstand.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," he said,
ignoring my comment. He sounded on edge, like he really had searched through
the whole house for me.

"I texted you to tell you I was in your room." I
stood up but kept my face turned to the ground. I knew there was a bruise
forming on my cheek and I didn't want him to see it. Not until we were far away
from this awful party.

"There's no cell reception in this stupid house."

"Oh. Is it okay if I take this?" I asked and picked
up the book. "We don't have a copy at our place."

"No." He cleared his throat. "We'll buy a new
copy for us."

He hadn't wanted me to see the paper inside. I shouldn't have
come in here. I had invaded his privacy. I put the book back down. "Okay,
let's go then." I pretended to scratch my cheek and I walked past him so
that he wouldn't be able to see my face.

"Penny?" He grabbed my wrist, moving my hand away
from my face. "What the hell happened?" His words were harsh, but his
thumb tracing over the bruise on my cheekbone was soft and delicate. "Are
you okay?" His touch felt even gentler than it had a second ago. It made
me feel like crying. But I didn't want him to think it was worse than it was.

"Nothing." I didn't look up at him. "It's
fine."

"Baby?" He kept his hand on the side of my face.
"Who did this?"

"No one. I was upset and I made a wrong turn. This house
is enormous, I just ran into..."

"Why are you lying to me?" He sounded hurt. I still
hadn't made eye contact with him.

Why was I lying? We didn't lie to each other. Not anymore.
And it didn't matter if he knew the truth. Making him hate Isabella even more
was only for the best. I never wanted to see any of these people ever again.

"Penny, tell me."

"Isabella slapped me. It's not a big deal. Can we please
just go?"

His hand fell from my face and he grabbed the door handle.

"Don't. Don't you dare walk away from me again."

He let go of the handle and turned back to me. "I didn't
walk away from you earlier. I told you it was time to go and you refused to
come with me."

"Exactly, James. You told me it was time to go. You
didn't ask if I was ready to leave."

"Penny, I couldn't stand there and pretend that
everything was alright."

"I know, I'm sorry. Please don't leave me alone in this
house again, though. Can't we just leave? You were right about everything.
Talking to your parents was pointless."

"You talked to them?"

"They think I just want your money. They offered me five
million dollars to walk away from you. They wouldn't even entertain the idea
that I actually loved you." I shook my head. They were so disgusting.

"They tried to pay you off?" He lowered his
eyebrows slightly and then ran both his hands down his face. It looked like he
was understanding something for the first time. Like how evil his parents truly
were. "Did you take it?" It came out as a barely audible whisper.

"What?"

He stared at me. He looked defeated and tired. Normally I
couldn't see the age difference between us. But as he looked at me now, I could
see the small crinkles around the corners of his eyes. They probably weren't
laugh lines. The thought made my chest feel tight.

"James..." my throat caught. "How could you
think that?" The rollercoaster of emotions from the night suddenly seemed
to catch up to me and tears started running down my cheeks. The salty water
stung as it slid down my left cheek. One of Isabella's rings must have left a
small cut on my face.

He just stood there looking stunned. I quickly wrapped my
arms around him. I winced when I pressed the side of my face into his chest.
Hug
me back.
His body seemed to stiffen instead. "James?"

He wrapped his arms around me in response. "I'm sorry.
God, I'm so sorry." He put his chin on the top of my head. "I knew
better than to bring you here. I don't know what's wrong with me. Nothing's
changed. They'll never change. I'm so sorry, Penny."

"Don't apologize, this is what I wanted. You knew I
wanted to meet them, so you made it happen. And now I have. It's done. We don't
have to see them ever again."

He sighed. "Except for the wedding in two weeks."

"I uninvited them."

He laughed. "What?"

"Oh." I leaned back to look up at him. "Sorry,
I mean, it was just in the heat of the moment. Obviously if you want them
there..."

"No." He put his hand on the side of my face,
gently rubbing his thumb over the bruise on my cheek. "No, I don't want
them there. I'm done with them."

"I'm sorry that I forced all this. I just thought if
they met me, maybe I could change their minds, you know? I was just trying to
help."

"You can't change my parents' minds. Trust me, I've
tried my whole life."

I wanted to ask him about the paper in his book, about his
relationship with Rachel, about his whole childhood. I wanted him to fill in
all the blanks. But right now all I wanted was for him to take me home. I
needed to get out of this house, away from all the memories that seemed to
upset him.

"But it was really sweet of you to try."

"Or foolish. What a disaster of an engagement party. Can
we go home now?"

He smiled down at me. "Let me show you one thing
first." He grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the window.

"It wasn't a good night, but I'm not going to fling
myself out the window."

He laughed as he pushed the window up. He put his hands on
the windowsill and looked back at me. "I used to sneak out of my room all
the time. Let's leave this way."

I looked past him toward the lawn. We were really high up.
"I'm wearing heels. And I've had too much to drink."

"I dare you."

I smiled. Neither one of us had ever backed down from a dare.
"Well, I guess a few more bruises won't hurt me." I took off my shoes
and peered out the window. "Did you really just jump?" I tossed my
shoes out the window and watched them hit the lawn below. "It seems kind
of high."