Clarity (14 page)

Authors: Loretta Lost

All the energy drains from my body. I am defeated.

“Do you understand me?” he demands, shoving the gun forward painfully so that it digs into my chest and pushes me slightly off balance. “If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll kill Carmen. Why are you just standing there? Can you hear me? Nod if you understand.”

Very slowly, and with great effort, I force myself to nod.

“Great. But don’t worry,” he says gently, removing the gun from my chest and returning it to his blazer. “There’s no need to be jealous. I still have plenty of love to give to you.”

“Go to hell,” I whisper.

He laughs and grasps the back of my head, leaning down to force a kiss against my lips.

I am stupefied and speechless by his gall. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to do more than this, because I no longer have the strength to fight.
I feel like the blood has left my veins and been replaced by empty air. I won’t risk my sister’s life, and he must know that. He has won. When he moves away, I hear him wiping his mouth with his sleeve to remove any telltale traces of lipstick. For a brief moment, a spark of fury fills me with fire. I consider tackling him and trying to steal the gun away from him—maybe I could shoot
him
in the chest. But the thought disappears as soon as it comes. Even if my limbs didn’t feel lifeless and weak, I am not sure I could be capable of such cruelty. I am not even sure if he deserves such treatment. After all—he did not take my life. It would be unfair to take his.

“It’s been a pleasure catching up with you,” Grayson says as he walks to the library doors. “But I’ve got to get back to my wedding. Haven’t you heard? It’s the most important day of my life.” He pushes open the sliding doors and moves back into the foyer. There are joyous sounds of welcoming as the other guests greet him with good cheer and claps on the back.

I am left standing alone and staring into my familiar nothingness.

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for joining me for the beginning of Helen’s story. This book and the upcoming novels are heavily based on true events from my life, and the lives of several of my close friends. It is very important to me to try to accurately depict Helen’s heartache and her struggle to trust someone again and find love after what happened to her.

I have recently been dissatisfied with the depictions of sexual abuse and violence in some popular fiction. I felt it was often used solely as a vehicle for entertainment, and did not truly examine the way that being a victim of such crimes can affect a person’s entire life and psyche. I was appalled when someone recently said to me that “only soldiers experience Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” and I discovered that many people think this way. I wanted to try to dispel this common misconception. Almost fifty percent of rapes result in PTSD, and these symptoms can have serious consequences for the sufferer’s long-term mental health.

Rape itself is far too common, and it is a problem we face here at home, and in our families; not on some distant battlefield. It also does occur at increased rates for college students like Helen. I find it very upsetting that campuses, which should be sacred places of learning and safe environments, can end up being so dangerous to female students.

Regarding the cliffhanger ending of this story, I must apologize for leaving you without a firm resolution. This book was originally intended to be one single standalone novel, but the more I wrote, the more I fell in love with the characters, and the more it developed into a series. I had planned for Owen to be funny, but he surprised me by being laugh-out-loud hilarious. There was never a boring moment with that character, and I enjoyed writing about him so much that I could do it forever!

After sending the story to my beta-readers for feedback, we all came to the conclusion that this was the best possible place to end the story. It left us with strong lingering thoughts and feelings, that took some time to get past. Rushing into the subsequent events while still recovering from the bombshell Helen just received felt emotionally exhausting. As I wrote the next chapters, I began to realize that the atmosphere had changed greatly and that I was writing an entirely new book that needed to be separated from this one.

I hope that you will join us for the next installment of Clarity, to be released soon! If you enjoyed this novel, it would be a great help if you would take the time to leave a review on Amazon and share your thoughts. You can also join my mailing list to be informed when a new book is available.

Thank you so much for reading!

Best wishes,

Loretta Lost