Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83216 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
After getting to Vancouver she’d taken a ferry over to Vancouver Island. Maybe it was overkill to travel that way since she could’ve flown from Toronto’s international airport directly to the city of Victoria but Kyla had been thinking at DEFCON 1.
She wanted far away and fast but knew a direct flight would make it beyond easy to be found. She didn’t know if her multi-stopover, multi-mode plane, bus, boat trip would stop him from finding her or if he had the resources to find her easily despite her efforts and she didn’t know how long she could safely stay put where she was now but she was exhausted, emotionally shattered, and a few days by the water in an RV that was relatively off the radar sounded like as ideal place as could be to get some distance, space, and to figure out what to do next.
How to go on without him…
By the time she arrived in Victoria and found the waterfront RV park to rent the park model trailer in she was exhausted and numb. She slept for 14 hours straight. And when she’d woken up she was in full-on withdrawal or detox mode, or that’s what she figured it must be.
She could barely breathe. She could barely think. She craved him like never before. She craved his touch, his scent, his voice, his teeth, their connection.
She’d shivered under the covers, unable to get warm, in a state of agony that could best be described as a pinching sensation inside every inch of every vein in her body.
Alternating hot flashes and cold sweats punished her for hours and hours with pinching inside and itching outside. It must have been because she’d finally stopped to rest. She’d been in full-on survival mode all the way there. When she stopped, finally, it was evidently time for withdrawals.
She chewed a pillow to muffle her cries because she was in an RV park that had trailers and motorhomes sardined together with only a few feet between each so didn’t want anyone calling the police at what would’ve sounded like a woman being tortured. And it was like torture, like the worst stomach bug she’d ever remembered, but way worse. This was nothing like the feeling she’d had when withdrawals kicked in after being chained to his bed for days. Probably because he wasn’t on the other side of the door. And, she supposed, because she’d evidently become more addicted to their connection in the days that had followed that incarceration. This was multiple times worse than that and it went on for days.
He’d said that he got stronger after each feeding and evidently she also got more addicted after each feeding, too.
Mutual addiction.
At one point she’d dashed to the bathroom looking for a razor, thinking if she’d nicked herself and let out a little bit of blood it’d provide some relief. There were none there. She found herself at the kitchen drawer with a butcher’s knife and she’d poked her arm with the tip of the blade. When she saw the red dot emerge she closed her eyes and tried to imagine his mouth on her but it did nothing.
Kyla regained rational thought before opening her skin further and then rational thought disintegrated as she got paranoid about others smelling her blood and felt frantic, trying to cover it up and stop the bleeding with pressure. Finally, she collapsed back into bed and cried herself to sleep.
“Oh Tristan, what have you done to me?” she whispered this at least at one point but maybe she’d said it a hundred more times, too.
After a few days of feeling like she was at death’s door, subsisting on meal replacement shakes and, at one stage, forcing herself into what felt like a death-warmed-over state to go to a nearby convenience store to buy more maxi pads, she felt slightly more human. Afterwards, while digging through the duffle bag for a change of clothes, (she’d bought a few things on the way and had added them to the bag, which still had everything in it that Tristan had packed) she heard something hit the floor.
It was Tristan’s passport and it was wide open. Her heart thudded wildly as she lifted it and looked at his photograph. Her heart sank as her thumb skimmed over his two-dimensional, handsome face. The pain of seeing his face hit her in the gut like an iron fist.
She’d given her passport a few fleeting thoughts, including thinking that she might go down to the U.S. from here and if his passport wasn’t at home it’d at least slow down his ability to get across the border.
Sure, he probably had a connection to get himself another one quickly but she wanted every possible advantage. She’d probably stay here for a little while, as if he was looking for her, he’d probably be watching the borders right now. It hurt so bad to think of him as the enemy, as the one to run from, but wasn’t that how she had to think right now?