Love Me (WITSEC #3)(48)
“Hello?” I answered. When all I got back was silence, I hung up, put my phone on vibrate, and tossed it back in my purse.
Trying not to feel unnerved, I continued to go through the clown costumes. When I finally found Pennywise, I noticed they had multiple variations. Picking the two I liked best, I held them up for Isabelle to see. “Which one?”
She eyed the costumes. “Colt picked Pennywise as your costume?”
“IT was my favorite scary movie once upon a time.”
“Not anymore?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen it.” It was the best thing I could come up with without lying.
“You should watch it again. Oh! We can have a horror movie night. You can sleep over at my house or I can stay at yours. I’m free this Friday.”
The more she talked, the more excited she got, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her no. My throat became tight. “We can do it at my house.”
She clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay for girls’ night!”
It would be all right. The only way to get back things I’d lost was to take them back. Or was I being stupid? Had I just set us both up to be traumatized on Friday? I didn’t want to do that to Isabelle. Maybe my doubt was my fear talking? Would I feel like this the day of the party? Was I all talk and no action when it came to taking back my life?
I could do it.
I had to try.
I couldn’t let my determination be overpowered by fear.
If I flashed back to that night because of what I saw, then so be it. I had to face it. I had to face what had happened that night. I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
My eyes moved to the scars on my wrists and my memories tried to rise to the surface. I pushed them back down. You don’t have to face them right now, I scolded myself.
I found that since I’d stopped running until I dropped, it was harder to keep my memories from slipping to the forefront of my mind. And even though I was able to push back the memories, the feelings associated with them still rocked me to my core.
“I’m going to go try these on,” I said tightly and headed for the dressing room. As soon as I shut the door to the tiny room behind me, I released a heavy sigh. I hung up the costumes on a hook and stared at myself in the full-length mirror.
Just for a minute, I told myself as I touched the scars around my wrists. The skin was bumpy and discolored. The memories of waking up to rope tied around them flashed behind my eyes, along with the feelings of terror and desperation. I rubbed my hands down my face as I remembered the urgency and need to get free—all of it had pushed me to tear away my skin. There hadn’t been any pain. Being terrified of Mr. X returning had blocked it out. Too bad the terror hadn’t blocked out the pain of my broken heart every time my eyes had been drawn to the tips of Shayla’s shoes in the hall. It had been the only part of her body I’d been able to see from where Mr. X had tied me to my bed.
Enough.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed back the memories to where I kept them locked up. My whole body was shaking, and my eyes welled up.
“You’re all right,” I whispered to myself in the mirror. With trembling hands, I began changing.
I distracted myself with modeling the IT costumes for Isabelle.
“I’d go with the dress instead of the bulky bodysuit,” Isabelle said. “You’ll still look terrifying, but if we get you some white, lacy thigh-highs and some heels, you’ll give your guys some twisted sexual fantasies.”
I laughed and returned to the dressing room to get dressed.
Isabelle and I had gone to a handful of stores to get everything we would need for the party, as well as a few other things, like my secret weapon to seduce Knox, as Isabelle called it. As we headed for the exit of a store, I pulled out my phone to check if I had any messages from the guys. I had a couple of texts from them, but I also had six missed calls from that unknown number.
Again, I did my best to not let it unnerve me, because it could be a scammer for all I knew. As I read through the messages from the guys, Isabelle held the door open for me to exit. Once outside, I glanced up just in time to see Cassy and Amber a few feet away.
“There goes our nice afternoon,” Isabelle grumbled.
Cassy gave me an evil smile as she approached. “It’s a surprise that you have time for shopping.”
When I refused to acknowledge her and her comment, Amber urged her on. “And why is that?”
“Well, I assumed sucking four cocks daily could be quite time-consuming,” Cassy said.
Still refusing to engage, I went to walk around them. I guessed I didn’t put enough distance between us, because Amber still rammed her shoulder into mine. My purse fell to the ground and some of its contents spilled out. Among them was my nightmare medication Dr. Bolton prescribed and my birth control.
Isabelle and I knelt at the same time, and she quickly helped me pick it all up as Cassy and Amber snickered.
“At least the whore is practicing safe sex,” Cassy said.
“The pill is just to prevent babies. The medicine in the bottle is probably for gonorrhea,” Amber said as they both walked into the store.
I grabbed my birth control at the same time Isabelle grabbed my nightmare meds. She didn’t even attempt to read the label as she handed them to me, but I still found myself babbling, “I get really bad nightmares and my doctor prescribed these to help me sleep. The only reason they and my birth control are in my purse is I never know if I’m staying at the guys’ or my place and I don’t want to forget to take them.”