Forsaken (17 page)

Whatever Alex had done to the GTO
worked because it didn’t squeal anymore as I made the drive to
Emily’s apartment. The sun shone bright and brilliant in the sky
but it didn’t do much to lift my mood. I was tired of always
feeling so down lately but I didn’t know how to dig myself out of
this hole.

I knocked on Emily’s door hard and
waited for her to open it. I knocked again, listening for any
sounds from inside. There were none. I tried the door and to my
total surprise, it was unlocked.

Feeling like I was encroaching upon
Emily’s privacy, I let myself in. “Emily,” I called as I walked
from the living room to the kitchen. When I didn’t see any signs of
her I moved onto her bedroom and stood in shock in the
doorway.

Emily was normally a very tidy person
but her room was a disaster. Clothes were strewn everywhere, a
jewelry box over turned, its contents strewn across the top of the
dresser. Shoes were spilling out of the closet. I found her
bathroom in much the same state.

My first thought had been that someone
had broken in but I quickly dismissed this. If she had been robbed
I was pretty sure her flat screen TV and other valuables would be
gone. No, it looked as if Emily had done this herself. She had
packed and left in a hurry.

I combed the apartment carefully,
looking for any signs of where Emily may have run off to but found
nothing. Had someone caught onto her and come to take her to
prison? Maybe she’d gone on the run.

I had just closed the door behind me
when a very overweight man came walking toward the door, a bright
yellow sheet of paper in hand.

“
Is Emily in there?” he
demanded, his voice sounding irritated.

“
No,” I answered,
shielding my eyes against the bright sun. “I haven’t been able to
get a hold of her in a while.”

The man gave a grunt, reached around
me and taped the paper to the door. It was an eviction
notice.

“
She’s three weeks behind
on her rent,” he explained when he saw the surprised expression on
my face. “If I don’t get the money by the day after tomorrow I’m
going to have no choice but to toss all her stuff in the
dumpster.”

“
You haven’t seen her
around then?” I asked, dismay in my voice.

“
Not in a few weeks. She
always comes and pays the rent in person. She didn’t show up this
time though. No phone call, nothing.”

“
Does it matter who pays
the rent?” I asked as I pulled my wallet out of my purse. “How much
is it?”

The man’s face lit up as he looked at
my wallet. “Don’t matter to me as long as I get some money. It’s
four hundred plus utilities. Those are billed directly to the
tenant though. You can usually get away with not paying those for
at least a month or two before they shut them off.”

I had a hundred and fifty in cash in
my wallet and wrote a check out for the rest. “Will you give me a
call if you see or hear from her?” I asked as I wrote my number on
a piece of paper and handed it to him with the money.

“
Sure, whatever,” he said
as he ripped the eviction notice off of the door, leaving the tape
and a traces of the paper stuck to it. Without saying anything else
he turned and waddled away.

Emily seriously owed me, wherever she
was.

X

I stopped for gas on the way home and
by the time I arrived home the sun was starting to set. Rod’s car
pulled away from the curb just as I pulled in. He gave a wave and a
smile but I was glad he didn’t stop to chat. I wasn’t in the best
mood.

Amber wasn’t home yet. She had gotten
a job as a receptionist at a temp agency not long after she had
arrived. Apparently she was planning on staying a while. I
suspected Rod had a lot to do with that. When I had found out about
the job I called my dad to let him know where Amber was. He wasn’t
happy with her for not letting him know where she had run off to
but he had figured she had found me.

I found Alex pulling the bag out of
the garbage can. He glanced up at me with a smile but I caught the
hesitancy in it.

“
Missed you,” he said as
he tied the drawstrings closed and leaned over it to press a kiss
quickly to my lips.

“
I missed you too,” I said
genuinely but feeling my mood start to sour again. “So what’d you
guys do today? What was your big adventure?”

I saw the slight way Alex stiffened,
the way his jaw clenched. He suddenly seemed very uncomfortable. “I
kind of don’t want to tell you,” he said honestly, sounding like a
twelve-year-old boy about to get in trouble.

“
Why not?” I asked,
feeling hurt, offended, and defensive all at the same
time.

Alex sighed slightly before he sat at
the bar, ignoring the bag of garbage on the floor. “We went
shopping. Didn’t get anything yet but we went shopping.”

“
Shopping?”

“
Looking at rings,” Alex
said, his expression becoming more uncomfortable by the
moment.

“
Rings?”

“
Engagement
rings.”

I was confused for a moment, hope
rising for a brief moment before it was painfully crushed. Alex had
already bought my engagement ring. Alex had gone with
Rod.

“
He’s going to propose?!”
I suddenly bellowed, connecting the dots.

“
Yeah, he’s planning on
it,” Alex said quietly.

“
But it’s only been…” I
trailed off. I did the math in my head, counting how long Amber had
been here. It had been just over a month now. I was about to
protest and say they hadn’t known each other long enough to be
talking about getting married but I then remembered that Alex and I
had only known each other for about a month and a half before he
planned to ask me to marry him.

“
Huh,” I said quietly. It
felt as if that rock had settled itself back into my stomach again.
My limbs suddenly felt heavy and as if all the blood in them had
been turned into ice. “Good for them.”

Without waiting for a response from
Alex, I walked toward the back door that led out to the upper back
deck.

“
I’m sorry, Jessica,” Alex
said quietly as I pulled the door open.

“
Don’t be,” I whispered.
“It’s my fault things are the way they are.”

Before Alex could protest or try to
reason uselessly like I knew he would, I closed the door behind me.
I hoped he wouldn’t follow me and I was glad when I heard his
footsteps walk across the floor to the garage, taking the trash
out.

I sat on one of the lounge chairs and
pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. The
sun started to set, dyeing the sky an angry blood red. It stretched
from the hilltop behind me, over my head, before giving way to the
darkening cloudy sky in the east.

I didn’t realize there were tears
pouring down my cheeks until the muffled sob that escaped my chest
made me jump. All of my insides trembled and rattled. I felt weak
and tired yet my limbs held their form stiffly as I tried to hold
myself together and prevent myself from shattering from the inside
out like I felt I was about to.

The desire to scream at someone filled
me. I wanted to scream at Alex. To tell him to just do it and stop
giving me his excuses that made no sense. I wanted to scream at
Cole, for telling me in the first place that Alex had planned on
proposing. I wanted to scream at everyone in the afterlife, for
trying to take me before it should have been my time to go in the
first place. If they hadn’t have tried to take me, Alex wouldn’t
have had to sacrifice his own life to save mine.

But what was the point?
Screaming wasn’t going to change anything. The council had already
been gracious enough to give me
any
time with Alex. I somehow knew that Cole was gone
now, so screaming at him wasn’t an option. And I knew, no matter
how mad I was at Alex, I could never scream at him. I owed him so
much. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. And besides that, I
loved Alex.

I still wanted to scream though. I was
tired of always crying so maybe screaming would have been a nice
change.

When I heard the door open, I didn’t
turn to look and see who it was. I was enough of a freak now to
recognize the sound and way everyone walked. Amber was
home.

“
Are you and Alex
fighting?” she said as she sat in the chair next to me.

“
Kind of,” I muttered
against my knees and wiped a tear away. “How’d you
guess?”

“
He just seemed really
depressed. Didn’t even say anything. I could just feel it rolling
off him,” she said as she mirrored my stance. “Want to talk about
it?”

“
Not really,” I sighed.
“It’s complicated.”

“
Does it have something to
do with the feathers?” Amber asked quietly.

Amber couldn’t seem to make herself
refer to Alex as being angel, whenever something came up she just
referred to “the feathers” or “the wings.”

“
Yeah,” I whispered as I
wiped at a tear that had escaped onto my cheek.

“
Whatever it is, you two
will work things out. You two are perfect for each other. I don’t
think I’ve seen two people more in love.”

I gave my sister an appreciative
smile. “Speaking of which,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“How are you and Rod doing?”

I didn’t even have to look at Amber’s
face to see the way it lit up. “Amazing,” she burst. “Jessica, I’ve
never felt like this about anyone before. He’s the most amazing man
I’ve ever known. I’m so in over my head.”

“
I can tell,” I said as I
met her smiling face, trying to smile back.

“
I think…” she said, her
gaze dropping to her knees for a moment. “I feel so sappy for
saying it but, I think he’s the one!”

I just smiled at her for a minute,
trying to keep it genuine. “I’m happy for you, Amber. You deserve
someone perfect for you.” And I meant it. It didn’t mean I wasn’t
almost violently jealous that she was about to get what she wanted
and it seemed I never was.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ALEX

I set the groceries on the counter and
went to answer the phone as it started ringing. Jessica followed me
in, carrying another brown paper bag.

“
Hello,” a female voice on
the other end said. “Is Mrs. Wright there?”

“
She passed away a few
months ago,” I answered as I watched Jessica start to put the food
away. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched her fluid movements.
It was so weird to see her move that way, it still freaked me out
just a little.

“
I’m sorry to hear that
sir. Mrs. Jessica Wright?”

Hearing Jessica’s name
paired with mine jerked me back into paying attention to what the
woman on the line had to say. “Uh, there’s no one here by that
name,” I said as I looked away, feeling guilty or something for
some strange reason. It wasn’t like Jessica could hear the woman.
At least I didn’t
think
she could.

“
Well sir, perhaps you
might be interested in our special offer today…” she started her
pitch.

“
Ah,” I groaned, realizing
this was a sales call. “Not interested. Thank you!” I tried to say
nicely as I hung up the phone.

“
Who was that?” Jessica
asked as she bent over and put something in a lower
cupboard.

“
Just a sales call,” I
said with a half grin on my face. I couldn’t help but stare at
Jessica. I tried to be the nice guy but I was still a
guy.

“
What are you looking at?”
she asked with a sly smile as she stood up and caught me
staring.

I chuckled as I walked up to her and
wrapped my arms around her tiny waist. “The most beautiful thing
known to man,” I teased as I bent my head and pressed my lips to
hers. “And she’s mine.”

Jessica only smiled in return as she
moved her lips with mine. Not thinking about what I was doing, I
lifted her off the floor and her legs wrapped around my waist.
Distracted, I made my way to the leather couch.

She had no idea, the amount of
restraint it took to keep from hurting her when we were together
like this. I had to watch every movement I made with my hands,
check every embrace, just to make sure I didn’t crush her. Had she
been a normal person she would have constantly been covered in
bruises. Jessica was far from normal though.

“
Alex,” she moaned into my
throat. “I really don’t want to stop.”

“
Me either,” I growled as
I moved my lips against her neck. Before I even realized what was
happening, Jessica had peeled my shirt off and unbuttoned my
pants.

And then the door suddenly opened and
in walked Amber.

“
Whoa,” she said as she
diverted her eyes from us as we scrambled to get off each other.
“Sorry to be interrupting something. You know you two
do
have
rooms?”

“
Shut up Amber,” Jessica
chuckled as she tried to tame back her impossible hair. I loved it
when it got crazy like that.