This was so depressing. It made her feel like she’d been gutted. She was mourning emotion that she knew she’d never had before and would never have for anyone else again. Ever. She’d never have a normal relationship. Falling in love again this deep wouldn’t ever happen.
Happily never after.
Any emotion she’d ever feel for another man would pale if compared to the emotions Tristan had churned up in her. And that sucked.
~~~Victoria was a colourful city nestled on a beautiful island that had a great vibe. She absorbed the atmosphere of shops and restaurants and flowers and people laughing and smiling. She could smell the water and see beautiful boats. This was a place she’d longed to live in before Tristan. Post-Tristan, she couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to walk hand in hand with him on the waterfront? What would it be like to see the wind in his hair out on a sailboat together? How amazing would it be to sit at a little café staring at the water, drinking coffee together and staring into one another’s eyes?
Those eyes…
It had been less than two weeks since she’d left him but it didn’t feel like this feeling of loss, this agony, would ever go away.
Kyla purchased a few staple items and went back to the RV. She sat outside on a lawn chair staring at the water for what might’ve been hours, lost in thought, until finally going to bed early.
She had a dreamless sleep but woke up at least ten times craving him. It was reminiscent of when he’d chained her to his bed for almost a week, only this time he wasn’t punishing her; she was punishing herself.
She’d left. She could go back. She could call. She could suggest a test to see if he was still affected by her blood in that negative way. Yeah, and it could all go so horribly wrong, too, like it did last time, couldn’t it? Only this time maybe she wouldn’t be able to get away.
She still had no idea if she was able to break through to him with her words and her love vibes or if it’d just been that he’d been hit with enough tranquilizers to take down two elephants that had saved her life.
~~~She woke up early the morning after, relieved that her period was still gone. The pinching sensation was still there but was a dull ache instead of piercing pain.
She decided to spend the day exploring the city. She bought a camera and snapped copious amounts of touristy pictures --- countless pictures of the skyline, the water, the flowers. She wandered through the streets and the Butchart gardens, where she admired lush flowers and plants. She loved how walkable the city was, that if she stayed she wouldn’t need a car, how friendly it was, but she hated how miserable she’d felt, how empty she was.
Then she wandered into a public library and found herself at a computer, Googling Kovac Capital.
Don’t, Kyla. Don’t look back. Look forward! Survive!
She felt a nagging feeling as she did it but couldn’t stop herself.
Could not.
She found a short press release on a business website dated 3 weeks back naming Tristan Walker as the new company president. It said he’d been with the company ten years and was taking over for Claudio D’Alonzo, who was the new CEO. No mention of a previous CEO. She Googled “Tristan Walker+Kovac” and found several press images of him on Google Images. There was a photo of him in a suit, shaking hands with an older-looking man in a suit and holding a large cheque between them for a children’s hospital charity. She found his corporate headshot with the Kovac logo on the bottom. But that was all she found. He was fairly under the radar. Kovac’s online company activities looked underwhelming. They had a very basic one-page website, listing a downtown Toronto address and listing a Montreal address as their headquarters. There were some blanket statements about the company investing in a variety of business ventures and that was pretty much it. There was virtually no social media presence.
There were way too many T Walker phone listings to go through in order to find him, if that’s what she wanted to do.
Nothing came up that matched the condo address and she hadn’t a clue what the address to the villa was. She didn’t want the number for his office but asked herself why she wanted his home number. Was she going to call and tell him she was just making sure he was okay and to say that she was sorry, but then plead with him not to look for her? Did she just want to save the number and have it on her, just in case she needed it? She was about to Google Claudio D’Alonzo but decided she needed to let this all go.