Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 64320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 322(@200wpm)___ 257(@250wpm)___ 214(@300wpm)
I finally bring my hands out of my pocket and open my clenched fist only to see the scrap of paper balled up. My breathing comes in shorter and my blood heats.
This shit has to stop. Right fucking now.
Diary Entry Two
Dear Pops,
I’m ashamed. I feel like I’ve lost complete control and I know it’s hurt Kat.
Help me to be a better husband and take the nightmares away. Please. Just get them out of my head.
It’s just getting worse every night, and it’s scaring my wife.
What kind of a man am I? Dreams are tearing my life apart.
I can’t sleep without seeing you. Don’t get me wrong, I love and miss you so damn much, but you always die in my dreams. You’re gone. All of the memories of our life together are changing. I don’t want them to, but I don’t know how to stop it.
I have them with Kat too, and it’s killing me.
I yelled in my sleep last night, and it woke me up. Kat was crying next to me, Pops. She said she’d been trying to wake me up and that’s when I started screaming.
She’s worried, and I feel like less of a man and husband because I can’t stop it.
Please, Pops, if you’re there and you’re able to, please help me.
I miss you. I can’t stand this.
Please just take it all back.
Chapter 25
Kat
At what point did this become my life?
I’ve been asking myself that question all morning. I’ve showered, I’ve eaten and cleaned most of the townhouse. But my mind is fuzzy with disbelief.
A sigh leaves me at the thought as I hail a taxi just outside our townhouse. The winter weather has lightened up some, and I almost feel like I could wear a light jacket and not this heavy wool coat. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the cold.
It doesn’t take long for a yellow and black cab to pull to a stop in front of me. Ushering myself in, my mind still fails to grasp all the details of everything that’s happened in only months.
If an author submitted my story to me as a manuscript, I’d tell them it’s too unbelievable. What’s that quote from Mark Twain? Something about how truth is stranger than fiction because fiction needs to make sense.
“Where to, miss?” the cabby asks me as I get in the back seat and close the door.
“Saks on Fifth, please,” I answer confidently, although my nerves creep up. Evan would kill me if he knew what I was doing, but it’s not going to stop me. I need this.
There are only two things I’m certain of.
I can’t afford to let Evan leave me again or else I’ll truly lose my mind.
I’m not going to stay out of this like Evan wants.
The car moves forward, taking me away from the empty townhouse. He’s gone off to meet with Mason and tell him what we agreed on. He’s staying with me, committing to me and our baby. And he promised to move past this. I’ll listen to what he tells me to do, but every night he comes back to me and sleeps with me in our bed. No more secrets and hiding. I have to help him, not let the fear of what might happen ruin what we have in the present.
I’m still pissed that Mason knew when I didn’t. It’s the second knife in my back, but I let it slide simply because it’s not his ring on my finger.
Instead, I focus on the real target here. Samantha Lapour. I’m not over her being with him when we were separated. The hate and jealousy are still there.
She loves Fifth Avenue. What rich New York socialite doesn’t?
I remember her bragging about her apartment above Saks when I first met her. She was so happy to keep it even though she and her husband were happily married. It wasn’t so much a humblebrag as it was just bragging.
That should’ve been my first clue we were never destined to become friends, but her smile was charming and her stories were alluring. I’ll admit, I was dazzled.
The cabby stops before I’m ready, my nerves getting the best of me, and it’s only then that the weight of what I’m doing makes my stomach churn.
I pay the cabby, slipping out and onto the curb to avoid the traffic.
My pulse races faster and faster, adrenaline surging as I make my way through the throngs of people and into the apartment foyer, disappearing from the crowd and readying myself to knock on her door on the fourteenth floor.
I don’t know the exact address, though. There are only so many up here, so if at first I don’t succeed, I’ll simply try again.
My legs are shaky as I climb the stairs; I should have taken the elevator. Some small part of me is quite aware that the decision was made to eat up time.