I reach the campus. Students scatter when they see me.
The principal steps into my path, as if to stop me from entering the school, but one look at my face and he steps aside with an audible gulp. It’s almost lunch time. She’ll be in health class. I’m going to carry her straight out of here, drive us to the lake and fuck her until we forget the last three months of hell. Then I’m going to marry her. Today. Tomorrow. As soon as possible. I’ve had a taste of living without her and I realize now how foolish I was all those years, thinking I’d be able to let her go when we graduated high school.
I’d have followed her wherever she went. Stalked her.
Eventually given in and taken her to bed without a rubber.
It has been inevitable since the first time I saw her.
Ayla is my forever. And I desperately need to hold her and tell her that.
I’m inside the school now, right outside the door where we would have been spending third period, if everything hadn’t gone to hell. It takes my whole reserve of willpower not to kick the door down. Instead, I wrench it open and step inside.
“Ayla!”
Several students drop to the floor to hide behind their desks. Shrieks fill my ears.
I don’t see her. I don’t fucking see her anywhere.
“Where is Ayla Barnes?” I slam my first down on the closest desk. “Where is she?”
The teacher steps forward hesitantly. “Ayla hasn’t been in school for several months.”
“Nobody has seen her in so long,” a girl whispers near the back row.
My world slides sideways, like fried eggs off a hot frying pan.
I hear nothing else that’s said because there is a deafening siren going off in my ears. Nausea roils in my stomach and rises in my throat. I stumble from the classroom and start to run. I see and hear nothing as I run to Ayla’s house, my leg muscles on fire, lungs in a permanent seize. I won’t speculate on where she’s been or if something happened to her, because I’ll go even madder than I am now. I’ll go berserk.
My heart is pumping wildly as I reach the end of her driveway and sprint to the door, pounding on it while shouting her name hoarsely, prepared to rip it off the hinges, if necessary.
“Mister Porter,” says an older male. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”
I turn in a circle but see no one. Where is the voice coming from?
There’s a mechanical buzz and a small movement just above the door. A camera.
Someone is watching me and speaking to me through a camera.
And that somebody must be Ayla’s father. But I don’t remember these cameras from before. I don’t remember the extra locks on the door, either.
“What the fuck is going on?” I roar at the device. “Is she in here?” The possibility that occurs to me next sends my blood into a boil. “Are youkeepingher in here?”
“It’s for the good of our family, Mister Porter. You are not to have any contact with her, do you understand? You have done more than enough already.”
“More than enough…” My heart is crumbling in my chest. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what is going on here, but it’s becoming unbearably obvious that my girl has been suffering in my absence. She’s been suffering because of me.
A sound rips up my throat, raw and pitiful, and I reach up, ripping the camera from its perch, throwing it clear across the yard.
“Ayla, if you’re in there, stand back.” I’m just about kick in the door when I sense movement to my left. The curtain moved. I’m positive. She’s in there. But she won’t let me in. Oh God, she hates me. I got her pregnant and left her alone. Left her helpless to the whims of a controlling father. She is never going to love me now.
The emptiness tries to knock me to my knees, but my excruciating need to see her again keeps me standing. It takes three kicks to break the door down and then I’m inside, hooking a left at the end of the entryway, going toward her bedroom. Of course, I know which one is hers. I’ve lost track of how many times I came here to watch her sleep over the last four years. Just to make sure she was okay.
“Ayla.” I kneel outside of her bedroom door, dropping my head into my hands. “Open the door.Please.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” comes her murmur from the other side of the barrier—and I nearly come in my pants at the sound of her voice. “H-he’ll call the police—”
Denial rips at my insides. “Don’t tell me you’ve been in here for three months, baby. I’lldie.”