Leaving Eva (The Eva Series Book 1) (19 page)

The rage disappeared as quickly as it came.

She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to scream so that everyone could hear about how he had beaten Stacy, almost daily at times. She wanted everyone to know how he told her day after day that she was fat, and that no one would ever love her. She wanted to tell all of his sheep that he had taken his other girls into the woods, behind the shed, and done things to them that they never talked about. And she wanted them to know that Stacy had only been spared because he told her she was too ugly and fat, like her mother.

Brynn looked away from him. She would not speak to him, not today, not ever. She knew that his caricature of a wife, Samantha, would protect him now that she was the wife of the Chief of Police, and that Brynn had no proof of anything he’d done. His other daughters had fled town, and she knew that they never came back. They hadn’t even come back for their sister’s funeral.

Brynn continued to walk through and stare blindly at the pictures.

A voice came over the room.

“Please, have a seat everyone. Please sit down. We are going to begin.” The old pastor was bent over, his white head of hair hardly visible above the pulpit. His weakened voice could hardly be heard above the din of the crowd. Everyone kept milling about, and ignoring him until he banged on the pulpit repeatedly, with a little gavel, to get everyone’s attention. Slowly, people started taking their seats. He was there when Brynn was a child and her parents made her sit quietly in her pew, and she thought that he looked old then.

Brynn and Jane moved slowly to the back of the room weaving through the crowd. Brynn wanted to leave as soon as possible, and knew that she had to sit in the back in order to do so.

The service lasted about an hour. There were songs and prayers that Brynn hadn’t heard in years. She only half heard them as she stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the giant picture of Stacy that was displayed front and center, right next to the pulpit.

Brynn’s eyes scanned the room briefly for Adam and then again for her rat of a husband, Toby. She didn’t expect she would see Toby. He was disgraced and there were whispers around the room that nobody had seen him since the story was on the national news. They said he was hiding out until the trial. She wondered where since his little girlfriend was in jail, and his Momma wouldn’t even talk to him now, humiliated and hysterical about the loss of her first and only grandchild.

Brynn was relieved not to see Adam. She only half expected him to come. He had only been Stacy’s friend because she was. After walking out on her, she didn’t know what to expect from him anymore. It was as though the Adam that she knew was gone. After all, her Adam would not have left the way that he did, so abruptly and cruelly.

She pushed those thoughts as far into the recesses of her mind as she could. She could only deal with one thing and one thing only.

Brynn closed her eyes and prayed silently. She hadn’t prayed in so long that she wasn’t sure if she remembered how. Her prayers as a child to deliver her from Thomas’ hand went unheard, so she decided that God wasn’t listening to her and didn’t love her. She figured that the Sunday school teachers were wrong. After all, if there were a God, how could He let her stay in a home like hers without saving her? It was the only thing she prayed for all of her life. She couldn’t see how a good and gracious God would want her to suffer so much.

She gave up on God a long time ago just as she thought He gave up on her.
Adam is gone and Stacy is gone. What good can prayer possibly do me now?
All of Brynn’s reasons for praying were gone and there was nothing left.

But Brynn closed her eyes and bowed her head as she did as a child, and thought that if there were a chance that God would hear her now, it would have to be here, in her childhood church. After all, what did she have to lose?

Despite her fractured relationship with the Almighty, it still made her feel good to pray.

Dear God, I know it’s been a while. Please be with Stacy and take care of her soul. Maybe she came to you as I came to you asking for deliverance from our demons. But I know that her heart was purer and that she deserved to be protected more than anyone. Please take care of her unborn baby and let them be together in heaven. She never thought she would have a child, so I’m sure she was so happy to be pregnant. Thank you for a good friend like Jane. Did you send her to me? Please be with Adam, my Adam, who I love and adore. Take care of him. Watch over him. Please.
Brynn repeated the same prayers over and over.

She was praying so hard that she only heard bits and pieces of the service. She tried to tune out completely when Samantha went up and blubbered and wailed about how much she loved “her baby.” Brynn knew it was all for show. Samantha hadn’t loved her daughter. If she had, she would have saved her. She would have saved all of them.

Brynn felt herself struggling to breathe. She needed to get out of there. She motioned to Jane that she was ready to leave. She had done what she came here to do. She came here to say good-bye to her friend, and she had done that.

They stood up to go.

She turned around, and her eyes locked with his.
Adam!

And next to him was Annie.

ADAM WAS
SO STUPID.

He couldn’t believe how stupid he had become. Taking Annie to the memorial service for Stacy, knowing that Brynn would be there had to be the single most stupid act of his life.

He didn’t know what he was thinking or why he would have done such a thing.

The look on Brynn’s face had broken his heart when she turned around and saw Adam sitting next to Annie.
Was it disappointment, anger, hatred, sadness?
For once, he couldn’t read her. He always prided himself on being able to read her thoughts, but since they had been apart for so long, he felt rusty. He thought that it was probably a combination of all of them, and more. He had never seen her with that expression before, but he knew that whatever it meant, it wasn’t good.

Brynn always disliked Annie. She knew the moment she met her, at the company Christmas party that she was an “opportunistic bitch,” she had called her. Adam didn’t believe her. He thought she was just a nice co-worker. But now he could see that Annie always favored him, always flirted with him. And it was too late.

His life was upside down and he couldn’t believe that he had been so stupid.

He knew that Brynn was hurt. He tried to go after her when the service was over, but she was nowhere in sight. She walked out of the service early, and instead of chasing her right then, he waited. He didn’t want to create a scene.

He tried to call her for days after the memorial service but she ignored his calls. She ignored his texts and his emails. And when he tried to stop by the restaurant, she ducked out the back door and took off in her car. She clearly didn’t want anything to do with him.

Four months apart turned into five, and now it was six. He kept waiting for her to call and tell him that she was filing divorce papers. He knew that she wouldn’t know where to send them because he had never even given her his address. But Adam knew that it was a small detail. If Brynn filed the papers, he knew that they would find them.

Filing for divorce was the last thing on his mind, but he had a pit in his stomach every day waiting for her to finally do it. After all, he left her, so why shouldn’t she?

He continued to sit outside of her house and watch for her. He no longer cared if she saw him. He hoped that she saw him. He wanted her to know that he was out there. But she never even looked his way, and he could never find the courage to let her know that he was there. He was afraid she would just ignore him. Ignoring his calls, texts, and emails hurt. But he just didn’t know how he would be able to deal with her ignoring him face to face.

He realized on the day of the memorial that he still loved her. Maybe it was being in their hometown or the pictures of her with Stacy when she was a kid. He didn’t know why he had forgotten about his love for her.

When he fell for her at fifteen, the only thing that mattered in his life was being able to make her smile or make her laugh. He knew from the beginning what he was getting into with her. He knew then that there was sadness within her that even she could not explain. But all of his life he had never been able to love anyone else, except for her.

He forgot that.

And now, he didn’t know how he could get her back if she wouldn’t even talk to him. He couldn’t blame her. After all, she gave him her trust, and he completely destroyed it in one thoughtless moment.

He twisted his wedding band over and over in frustration. He knew that it had been too long, but he also knew that she had not yet moved on. He caught a glimpse of her the last time he tried to catch her in the restaurant, and saw that she was no longer wearing her ring. He refused to take his off. He believed that she would come around, if she would just talk to him.

He knew that Brynn assumed that he and Annie were couple by the look on her face. Annie had made it a point to put her hand on his arm when she saw that Brynn was looking. But Brynn didn’t see him take her hand off his arm.

She was already gone by then.

He liked Annie, and was attracted to her, but he knew that being friends with her would only cloud his judgment. He didn’t want her to distract him anymore. When he explained it to her on the long car ride from the memorial service, Annie had not understood.

“Why can’t we just hang out as ‘friends’?” she had pouted.

“Because Annie, you want more. And I can’t,” he said gravely. “I like you. You’re fun and sexy. If I met you in another life, we may have been something. But I’m married, and I love her.”

“But you left her! There is a reason you left her. She was mean to you, and she didn’t appreciate you. You could have so much more with me!” she countered. She was upset. She had put the past few months into him, and now he wasn’t even going to let her be his friend.

“She’s been through a lot in her life, which I don’t need to explain to you. I just can’t do this with you anymore. It’s crossing the line!” Adam was getting angry with her.

“But what about our date and our chemistry? You know we could be great together!” Annie said angrily, her thin voice going up an octave.

She kept replaying their kiss over and over in her mind. She had never kissed anyone like that before and she couldn’t stop thinking about it, how passionate he was and how she could feel how excited he was getting. Their kiss was mind blowing, and she didn’t want to let that go. She wanted more, and it was all she could think about.

She knew that it was just a prelude to something even more fantastic.

She couldn’t believe it, but midway through the kiss he suddenly pulled away from her. He looked at her as though he didn’t recognize her, his eyes wide. Before she knew what was happening, he backed away from her and got out of the car, his belt flapping around where she was trying to open it.

He looked guilty, his eyes turning dark when he looked at her. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have kissed you and I’m sorry. I won’t make excuses for what I did.”

He had been refusing to spend time alone with her, no matter how hard she tried. He said that he wasn’t ready, but he seemed ready that night.

“So that’s it? That’s all you have to say?” she was livid.

“What do you want from me? You know that I am married. I can’t give you more! I don’t want to give you more.” Adam felt defeated but there was nothing else he could say to her. He felt guilty but there was nothing that he could do about his moment of weakness. He had been drunk and lonely, and he knew that he was on a slippery slope but he backed away just in time. He knew that she would be angry with him, but there was nothing that he could do to change it. She was spending time with him under the guise of friendship, hoping that his wedding band would one day disappear.

He didn’t want to tell her, but in the moment he had kissed her a life with her flashed before his eyes. He liked her, but he knew that he could never love her enough to endure. He knew that nothing he could ever feel for her could make him forget his love for his Brynn.

They drove the rest of the way in silence and she refused to speak to him since. She was icy to him in the office and everyone noticed. There had been talk about them spending so much time together, and now that she went out of her way to ignore him everyone assumed that their relationship just went sour. He was embarrassed, but there was nothing that could be done now. He knew that he should have stayed away from her in the first place, but he couldn’t waste any more time now thinking about her. He knew what he wanted and what he needed.

He loved Brynn and he needed to be able to make it right with her.

AFTER THE
MEMORIAL FOR STACY
, Brynn went back to crying every day. When she could breathe, it hurt. Any emotion scraped against her like an open wound that refused to heal. She tried to summon her strength but any effort felt futile.

She couldn’t gather herself no matter how hard she tried to pull it together. Every time she thought of Adam and Annie together, her stomach hurt, her eyes watered, and she wanted to die. She thought that if she just lay still enough on the floor that her body would just give out and stop working.

Even the air she struggled to breathe felt like poison, as she thought about them together. She saw them sitting close at the memorial Service. Their arms and legs were touching. She saw how Annie drew closer to him while she stared Brynn down, as if to let her know that he was hers now.

She thought about what they were doing, where they were going. She thought about him touching her, kissing her, caressing her, looking into her eyes, and stroking her hair. She thought about their naked bodies entwined on satin sheets and about his skin touching her skin. She thought about them making love with every single detail, and it made her want to vomit. She knew that it was demented and sick to torture herself, but she couldn’t stop.

She watched herself wasting away. She watched Mirror Brynn turning into skin and bones, and she didn’t care. She wanted her to fade away. She was tired. She had done all that she could to endure. She was abandoned, abused, and abandoned again. She just didn’t want to do it anymore.

Adam was in love with someone else and nothing in her life mattered.

She had been with him since she was fifteen and he was the only real love in her life. She had a hard enough time living without him. But she couldn’t even find it conceivable that he was already with someone else.

She hated Annie in a way that she didn’t even know was possible.

From the first time she met her she knew that she was after Adam. Brynn warned him but he obviously didn’t listen. Women knew how to read other women, but he thought she was just being silly and jealous. Brynn realized from the sight of them touching and Annie’s possessiveness over him, that Adam was completely lost to her, now.

Brynn had been waiting for Adam to come back but the realization hit her like a brick.
Annie must be why he left in the first place.

When Jane saw the look on Brynn’s face, she felt her stomach flip. She worked so hard just to get Brynn out of the house and now this! She didn’t know how she was ever going to save her now. As expected, Brynn cocooned herself again, and this time when Jane went to visit she refused to answer the door altogether, even though Jane rang the doorbell for over an hour.

Brynn thought about Annie and Adam, nonstop. She knew it was unhealthy, but even in her broken sleep she dreamt about them. She slept with her razor blade next to the bed, but as much as she wanted to, she refused to use it. She didn’t want to escape just yet. She wanted to feel everything. She wanted to keep thinking of them, as sick as it was.

She never imagined her Adam with anyone else because he had always only ever been with her. He had only ever kissed her and touched her, but that felt like so long ago. She realized when he first left that she may never get to touch his face or his smooth skin ever again. But that didn’t make it easier to know that he was already with someone else.

Brynn wondered what Annie’s skin felt like and if it was as soft as hers. She touched her fingers to her own lips and wondered if Annie kissed better than she did. She ran her fingers through her hair and wondered if Annie’s hair was softer than her hair. She pulled it and imagined Adam pulling Annie’s hair. Did she like it? Did he?

Adam always said that they fit together like a puzzle, perfectly. They would often lie as close together as they could, their bodies tight. She missed how safe and small and protected she felt when he held her so close. She wondered if he held Annie so close, and if she felt the same way that Brynn did when tucked in his arms.

She wondered what she smelled like. She wondered if she smelled fresh, or sweet, or spicy. She imagined that she would smell spicy. She imagined that her scent would be overpowering and she imagined herself gagging on it. She wondered if Adam buried himself in Annie’s neck like he did to her, and she pictured it.

She thought about the two of them together, and she felt a rage growing within her that she had never felt before. Brynn hated her. And the thought of her with her husband made her sick.

Brynn thought about hurting her, she wanted to hurt her, and she wanted to hurt herself.