Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
I’d turned my phone off after talking to mom because there wasn’t anyone else I wanted to talk to. Selfish, yes, but the way I was feeling, it was the lesser of two evils. I bet Scott had already told Janie and her family where he thought I was, and it would only be a matter of time before they came looking for me.
They wouldn’t make too much of a fuss because they wouldn’t want the world to know that I’d run to her side, so they’d have to move slowly, which should buy me some time. It was best for all concerned that we do not meet right now anyway, though they may not know that. It’s amazing what becomes clear once you ease up off the drugs.
My head was hot enough to do some damage to certain people, and that would only take me away from her when she needed me, something I’d made up my mind never to do again. There was something niggling at the back of my mind whenever I had that thought, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was.
There was something about protecting Elena that kept slipping my mind, and when I tried to remember what that could possibly be, my head only hurt more. It appears that the drugs I’d drowned myself in to escape the pain of losing her had done a bang-up job, and I’d lost more than time.
I had a lot of work to do on myself, but all of that needed to be put on the back burner until she was okay. The hardest part was the drugs. I had to settle for oxy and whatever pills I’d had in my bag on me, and when it got so bad that I wanted to hit the streets to look for something a bit stronger, I just kept reminding myself that I was doing this for her. But fuck, it was hard.
My mind hadn’t allowed me to go beyond her getting out of the hospital. Like I didn’t fool myself into thinking that I could just walk back into her life like nothing happened, but there’s no way that I could not be here for her now.
I wanted to go see her during the daytime while she was awake, but even that I knew would’ve been nothing short of selfish and would only be for me, not to mention the cameras that were bound to be staking out the place as well as her family who hates my guts and with good reason.
It’s fucked being shut away in a room that you can’t leave with nothing but your own company and not enough drugs to numb you. With all that time on my hands, there was nothing left to do but think. I’m not sure what good that did me because my thoughts were still a bit jumbled; I wasn’t clear enough to separate truth from fiction and knew that I wouldn’t be until I got clean.
I pushed it until as late as I could before stepping out of the hotel and going to the nearest cellphone store. It was a bitch finding anything other than a little mom-and-pop place, which, all things considered, fit into my plans perfectly since the couple who ran the place looked to be about a hundred. They are not fans.
They didn’t seem interested in anything more than selling me a phone and some other stuff that I needed. I found a place not too far away to buy some clothes and looked on Google for a dealership nearby. Shit, I don’t have enough cash on me to buy a car, not even a used one, since I’d given mom most of the cash I carried on me.
If I use my card, even with the alias, Scott will know, and I have no doubt that he’s trying to track me. I decided to hold off on the car until I really needed it since everything I needed was within walking distance.
I’m pretty sure that they’d send someone after me, maybe someone from the church, so it’s probably not good to stay in the same place for too long. Damn!
I started looking for another hotel in the area as soon as I got back to my room. I ordered some lunch which tasted like ashes in my mouth, but I forced it down because if I was not well, I wouldn’t be able to look out for her. I was avoiding something I knew I had to do, and when I turned on the new phone, things were even worse than the last time I’d checked.
There was talk about calling the cops, and mom had said they’d even hit her up, which was a reach because I hadn’t been back to my hometown in years, not that anyone knew of anyway. I bypassed all of that, though, and did a deep dive into what mom had said about the posts that had sent Elena into the depression the guy at the hospital had mentioned, and it was bad.