Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Tommy Ferrano was light and dark, like the colors in the wedding band I’d chosen for him. He thought the light and dark represented us but to me, it represented him. Woven together, the light and dark was who he was. I wondered if I’d be able to take the dark, though; I wanted the light to win out over it. But it looked like it’d be both I’d have to live with. Unless I found a way out. Did I still want a way out?
I needed a restroom. As we were walking through a mall-like area in between two hotels, I told him so and he said he did as well. Once we found bathrooms, he said he would meet me right outside the door afterwards.
But, he wasn’t there when I got out. It felt strange to find myself totally alone and with no eyes on me, no security guards around. I had the urge to run, to disappear into the crowd. My heart pounded with adrenaline as I looked around myself.
If I did take off, what would happen? My father clearly hadn’t been honest with me and so did that mean they wouldn’t have killed him if I hadn’t cooperated? I knew, for a fact, that they didn’t hesitate to kill their enemies, so Dad probably would be in danger. But did he even deserve my consideration after selling me out when I had escaped from Tommy? I didn’t know. But, where would I go?
No. I wasn’t going to do it. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’d promised to be faithful, he’d said he was sorry about this morning, and he was trying to make his miserable mood up to me. I’d been weighing the good and the bad and right now the scales were still tipping in his favor. And if he was starting to trust me to be alone, without security, maybe it meant that it’d evolve to where I’d have enough freedom that if I ever did need to run, I could do it then. I didn’t want to run. I just wanted him to always be who he’d been in many of the moments when he’d been sweet to me. I could handle the hotness in the games we played, too, I liked the hotness, but this morning? Not hot at all.
I didn’t know what was keeping him. It’d been at least ten or fifteen minutes. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted him with:
“Did you fall in? LOL”
Five more minutes. Ten more minutes. No reply to my text and no sign of Tommy.
A man went in and then came back out of the bathroom, an older grandfatherly-looking man.
“Excuse me?” I called out. “My I’m wondering if my fiancé is all right. He went in kind of a long time ago, and hasn’t come out. He’s quite tall, brown hair, wearing a green t-shirt and dark shorts.”
“Bathroom’s empty,” the man said, shrugging.
I’m sure I must’ve looked shocked. “Thank you,” I said. I leaned against the wall and dialed Tommy’s phone number. It just rang.
I looked back at the text message. It was iMessage and it now said the earlier message had been read, just a moment before.
Where are you? I texted.
It was read immediately.
I waited to see the little dots showing me he was typing. It showed nothing after the read notification.
I looked around me. There were people everywhere. I sat there for another few minutes and finally, I felt like I had to do something. So I called him again. It rang and rang. Then I called Dario. His was the only other number in my contacts.
“Yeah?” he answered on the first ring.
“Dario, it’s Tia.”
“Hey-ya Tia Tyson!” he answered enthusiastically, and it sounded like he was smiling through the phone, which was weird because he’d gone from being the angry brother to this other person, still pretty intense, but now nice to me.
“Um, hi, uh… sorry to bug you but I don’t know what to make of this.”
“What’s that?” He sounded like he was in a restaurant. There was a lot of background noise.
“Um, I can’t find your brother. I went to the ladies’ room, he went to the men’s room, and I’ve been waiting outside the door for a long time, like almost half an hour. Someone told me the washroom is empty, he’s not there. I don’t know what to do.”
“Where’s security?”
“Tommy let them go have time to themselves.”
“Shit,” Dario said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Okay, someone said the washroom was empty?”
“Yep.”
“Go in the washroom and check every stall, make sure he’s not passed out or something,” he told me. “Keep me on the line.” Then I heard him shout in the background to someone, “Gimme your phone.”
I walked into the mens’ room and followed his directions. I pushed every door open and there was no one there. I could hear Dario’s was voice muffled as he probably had his hand over his phone while, I imagined, calling Nino and James on someone else’s phone.