End of the Innocence

Chapter 74

The day passed in a blur of questions, medical tests, family, and friends. My wedding dress hung in the corner of the room, a constant indicator of the wedding that never occurred. The money wasted stuck like a forgotten burr, poking and scraping with every reminder—the mountain of wrapped gifts piled in a corner of the guest room, the useless Post-It note stuck to a corner of the fridge, with reception times and a reminder to pull passports from the safe. Our honeymoon also picked at my conscience, despite my unwilling part in my disappearance, all this—the police, the doctor, the haunted look in Brad’s eyes—was a burden brought on by my actions. If only I had stayed inside the house, ignored my car alarm and the words painted on the windows and doors. But the guilt was soon washed away in the overwhelming current of love and celebration that filled the home. Mother shone, Dad’s eyes twinkled, and Olivia was the beaming best friend of a year prior. We ate every casserole Martha had baked, demolished the groom’s cake, and I had some vintage bubbly, obeying the doctor’s stern orders to limit it to one glass. Brad’s hand never left my skin, his arm around me, his mouth making frequent trips to my forehead, my cheek, my lips. I saw fear in his eyes when he looked at me, a protective, raw emotion that both comforted and chilled me, the dark look so vulnerable in its whatmighthavebeen caress. Then he stood, heralding them all out, glaring at anyone who dared to object—‘doctor’s orders’ his reprimand of choice.

And we had two hours—two hours of peace, our bodies molded together on the bed, his hand trailing lightly through my hair until I slept. Then, Martha’s knock reawakened us, and I dressed for the police.

More questions. So many questions. So many I had already answered. The officers questioned me until my voice was hoarse, and Brad held up a hand, giving them one hard look that ended all questions. Then they took a turn, speaking instead of interrogating, updating me on everything that had happened in the last twelve hours.

I didn’t know what my kidnappers had planned, but my escape certainly put a kink in their plans. An hour after I returned home, police raided the showroom, finding nothing helpful in their search of the downstairs. The gurney I had laid on? Almost been raped on? Gone. That room had been empty, the smell of bleach strong. The electronics room, which held the security system was also clean, all footage gone, the system’s history wiped. The police tracked down the owner of the building at 3:15 a.m. and questioned him. He said the downstairs of the building was leased, and provided, bleary-eyed and irritated, copies of a lease agreement. The police looked up the renter, which turned out to be a bogus corporation with no ties to anything. Dead ends leading to dead ends.

I told the police everything. That I choked him until he passed out, then pushed him off me and ran. I had been unnecessarily prepped by Brad and performed well, his head imperceptibly nodding as I ran through the liability-safe lines of our script.

I was exhausted by the time they left, and sat in Brad’s lap on the sofa in the den, the memory of two weeks ago, our fuck on this couch, seeming light years away. “I want to turn the theatre room back into a theatre,” I said, my voice muffled slightly by his neck.

“You don’t want to train with Ben anymore?” he asked, surprise in his tone. “I thought, with everything that happened ...”

“I just want things to go back to normal. In a few months I might start training again. It’s too soon right now. I want to go back to using that room for mindless entertainment.”

He nodded. “On that note, I have a suggestion.”

“About the theatre room?”

“No. About something else entirely.”

I turned in his lap, facing him head on, and raised an eyebrow questioningly, his eyes glued to mine as he started to speak.