Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180438 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 902(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 601(@300wpm)
“I went online and did some research after hearing all that, and she seems to have spent a lot of time studying me, but it started when you and I started dating, so I’m not quite sure which one of us she was really following. But I will say she knew a whole lot about me and spent a lot of time discussing me on social media, some of it in a not-so-healthy way. It’s almost as if she was obsessed.”
“So, she was stalking you.”
“It looks like she was stalking both of us. I’m not sure how much her wanting to be me has to do with you and her. Honestly, it seems like she has some kind of sick obsession with both of us. Now we know she was your fan; that much is obvious, at least to the public, but where I come in is still a mystery.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why she kept going after me even after she’d won?”
“That’s because she hadn’t won. I told you, but maybe you didn’t believe me. I never gave her what was yours, Elena, not once. Even when I was high, I mostly stayed high to forget us and to escape thoughts of you. So, she was actually doing me a favor by dosing me up.”
“The truth is whatever she was hoping to get out of this was never realized because I knew from the second after getting married that I had made the biggest mistake of my life, and I wasn’t quiet about it. Had I not been so messed up because I didn’t remember the threat against you, I wouldn’t have stayed. I think part of them keeping me drugged was so that I didn’t remember, but it didn’t make me any fonder of her.”
“Somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew that I was meant to be with you and no one else. So even with my memory not at its best, some part of me held onto that, and it showed. My heart, even my very soul, was always fighting its way back to you, but I didn’t know it, didn’t realize that that was why I was only living as half a man. The drugs just helped to camouflage that very well, I guess, and so no one ever guessed at the truth, except maybe Janie. I’m sure she knew what I was thinking every second that I was away from you.”
I could see why Janie was acting so crazy in the press, especially where Elena was concerned. The fact that she’d gone to so much trouble to get me only to have me ignore her behind closed doors and shun her, the fact that I never forgot my love for Elena and wasn’t shy about mentioning it every chance I got, must’ve been a living hell for her.
But knowing all of this now, hearing about the things she and her family had done makes me wish I’d done worse. When I think of her, my blood boils, and the anger is almost too much to bear. I can only be grateful that I never found her attractive and that no matter how hard she tried, she was never able to get me into her bed. Looking back on it now, that must’ve been quite a blow because not even drugs could get me to touch her.
I know she’s been asking for me in the hospital, but I refuse to even acknowledge her existence for now. I know at some point I’m going to have to play the game, but right now, I want her to hurt as much as she hurt my girl for all these years. I want her to suffer as she’s made others suffer. I can’t lay all the blame at her feet, though, because there’s still my part in all this, and I plan on making it up to Elena as best I can for the rest of my life.
But Janie, oh, she needs to suffer not only because she’d scammed me into marriage to satisfy her own disgusting obsession but because she’d tried to make my Elena pay for me not loving her by attacking her in the press. She’d used the fact that we were married to torment the woman I love more than anyone else in the world, and that is something I won’t ever forgive.
I still only knew about half of all that had been done while I was out of it, but I’m sure the deeper I dig when I get the chance, the more I’ll find. The worst of it for me so far are the times they’d used my social media platforms to take shots at her. How must she have felt all those times thinking that I had said and felt those things about her? It breaks my heart to think that she’d spent even a second believing that I felt any of those things, and I want to hurt them even more for that.