by Loretta Lost
“Winter, I need you. I need to see you now,” Liam begs. “I’m sorry—I know that was cruel, what I said about Grayson. I just—I’m not myself right now and I can’t think clearly. I can’t seem to give a fuck that he’s dead. I only care about you, Winter. You mean everything to me. I’m imagining the worst right now. I’m imagining that something bad happened to you. Please. Please, just tell me that you’re okay.”
“Something bad did happen to me,” I say softly.
“Winter? Winter, I can’t hear you.” Liam exhales unevenly. “You’re scaring the shit out of me. Are you hurt? Are you injured? If you can’t speak to me clearly, I’m going to call the cops. Where are you?”
“I’m not injured.” Taking a deep breath, I press my both of my palms against my eyes. I hold them there for a moment, hoping that the heat from my hands will somehow revive my vision. “I’m fine.”
Snowball barks softly, as if to interject in disagreement. She does not think I’m fine.
“Thank god,” Liam says with a sigh. “To be honest, I’m glad that you’re only upset over something Grayson did. For a moment there, I thought you were angry with me.”
I remove my palms from my eyes and stare down at the dashboard in astonishment. Does he really not know?
“I’m so relieved,” Liam says. “Melanie said you stopped by the hospital and mentioned that you were having trouble with your eyes? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? She also said you brought me a gift, and we found the box in the trash—Winter! You got me a telescope? That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me. I called and texted, but when I couldn’t reach you, I started freaking out. I spoke to Krista and she didn’t know where you were. When I came home and saw that you and Snowball were gone, and I started imagining the worst. I thought you had been taken. Then I saw that your stuff was gone and I started thinking that you might have left me...”
“Liam. I have left you.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line. “What?” he finally asks in shock. “Why?”
“Why?” I repeat, looking down at my dashboard with my mouth slightly ajar. I burst out laughing. “Are you serious right now? Why? Owen didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” he asks in a fearful voice.
“Liam, I know. I know everything.”
There’s another silence on the other end of the line. “Winter...”
“And yes, my vision is failing. It’s nearly gone. I can’t see anything.” I smile sardonically through my tears. “I guess you’re a better actor than you are a doctor. I actually did believe that you gave a shit about me. I thought you loved me this whole time. You really fooled me.”
There is a long pause. Finally, I hear him take a shuddering breath. “Winter,” he says tearfully. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You’re my whole world. I’m sorry. I know I didn’t tell you the whole story at first—you started out being just a job, but it became real. I fell for you really hard and fast. Why does it matter now, how we met? We belong together. You know that we belong together.”
“You lied to me,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”
I hear a loud clatter on the other end of the line, and it sounds as though Liam has smashed something. This is immediately followed by a roar as he yells my name in anger. “Winter!” he screams so loudly that it reverberates through the speakers of my car. “I fucking love you to pieces. It was so hard! It’s such a mess. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how—I just couldn’t risk losing you. Please believe me. Please come home. I just want to hold you. I need you. I need to know that you’re safe—and that you’re mine.”
A loud peal of thunder echoes across the mountains. Snowball whimpers and covers her eyes with her paws. I wait for the booming to subside before I speak.
“But I’m not yours,” I tell him softly. “Maybe it was all a game to you, but I really grew to love you, Liam. It isn’t fair.... what you did to me. I trusted you. You were the only person I trusted.”
“I fucked up,” he says. “Please punish me all you want. Punish me forever. Just don’t leave me.”
“I have to.”
“Winter, I didn’t know where this was going when we first met. I didn’t know I was going to fall in love with you. It was supposed to be all business, but you’re not like any girl I’ve ever met. You’re special. We’ve been through so much, in such a short period of time. I’ve never been this close to anyone.”
“These are all just more lies,” I murmur to myself. When the sky is illuminated by lightning, I am grateful that I can see this. For a moment, it’s as bright as day. I can see the curves of the landscape in the distance, and I think that if I turn on my high beams, I might actually be able to make it through the night...
“Just come home, Winter—let’s talk about this. I’ll never lie to you again. Anything you want to know, I’ll tell you.” Liam sounds frantic. “Remember that first night, when I stopped? It was because of all this. I had this huge secret, and I wasn’t sure. I could see how much it meant to you, and I didn’t want to be with you unless it was real—unless I was ready to commit to you completely. I waited until I knew for sure. Once I was one hundred percent sure, I told you that I would stop holding back. Remember? I haven’t held back since then.”
“You told my dad that you were going to break up with me for money.”
“Winter,” Liam says in an agitated voice. It is strange to hear his lack of composure; he is usually so calm and self-possessed. “Your dad can go fuck himself. I would never do such a thing to you. Sorry—that was an awful thing to say. I have great respect for your old man; he was just desperate to be close to you again, at any cost. I think I would have probably done the same thing. You have no idea how much he loves you. I wish my dad ever cared that much. The only reason there is a cure for LCA is because your dad loved you; he’s spent years convincing influential people in the pharmaceutical companies that curing this form of blindness could be profitable. They would have tossed the drug aside and focused on more popular diseases. But your dad has been spearheading the research here, and even traveling to Europe to supervise clinical trials there...”
“After my surgery,” I mumble in realization. “You were talking to him on the phone.”
“Yes,” Liam says. “Winter, he did all this to try and bring you home. He did all this to try to give you a better life; the life he always wanted for you.”
“I guess every father dreams of their daughter getting fucked by a doctor,” I say scornfully. “Or was that part of the deal? Maybe he just wanted you to fuck me—”
A loud wave of thunder begins to boom and echo across the mountains, and it is a few seconds before I can finish my sentence. “—over?”
“Winter...” Liam pauses and waits. “Jesus fuck, Winter. I just realized that there is thunder where you are, and there isn’t any here. You’re really far away, aren’t you? Where the hell you?”
“I’m long gone,” I tell him softly as I put my hand on the gearshift. “You’ll never see me again.”
“You can’t be driving right now if you’re having problems with your eyes,” Liam says with concern. “Especially not in the rain.”
I sigh as I stare out of the car windows at the obscured path before me. “I can’t see the road. It’s so dark.”
“Tell me where you are,” he demands. “Don’t move. I’m coming to get you.”
“Liam. Did I ever tell you that my mom died in a car crash?” I cock my head to the side thoughtfully. “Maybe it would be poetic if I died in the same way. I wonder how my dad would feel about that? It’d be difficult to control me then.”
“You need to stop talking like this. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I gaze down the mountainside, and all I see is freedom. “You couldn’t control me anymore, either. Control me in every way.”
“Listen, Winter. I didn’t mean those things. Can you just forg
ive me so we can move past this?”
I start laughing lightly. “The last time I forgave a man, he hung himself a few minutes later. So I think it’s safe to say that I’m never going to forgive you.”
“Stop comparing me to that sack of shit,” Liam says angrily. “I only lied to you, Winter. Really small lies. I concealed some information. You’re not allowed to do this. You can’t act like what we have isn’t real—our whole relationship isn’t invalidated by a few lies.”
“Our whole relationship has been built on lies,” I point out.
Liam groans loudly. “Jesus, you’re acting like I’m the one who fucking raped you. Just because you have been victimized by one cuntbag doesn’t mean that all men are like him. Stop confusing me with Grayson. I’m not him.”
My eyebrows lift in surprise.
“I have been really good to you,” he says. “I have been trying my best. Can’t I make one mistake?”
“One mistake? Fuck you, Liam. What you’ve done is far worse than anything Grayson ever did to me. He was sick, or disturbed, or messed up in some way. He couldn’t control himself. But you. You are a sensible, intelligent man. You did this intentionally. It wasn’t a fleeting moment where things got out of hand—it was every minute of every day, for months. It wasn’t one thing; it was everything.”
“I never hurt you, physically or emotionally. I took care of you...”
“Oh, that’s right. You babysat me. And you did a damn good job of it.”
“Jesus,” Liam says with a groan. “Sometimes you can be so oversensitive!”
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to be careful anymore.” I turn the key to start my car again. “I’m already in a different state, hundreds of miles away. I’m not your problem anymore.”
“Winter, please. This is only our first fight, and we can get past it. Please don’t do anything reckless. Are you heading back to New Hampshire?”
I narrow my eyes. “Yes,” I say softly, lying to him for the first time. “I’m going home.”
“I’m coming after you,” Liam says adamantly. “I know I screwed up, but I’m not letting you go without fighting for us. I’m not losing you.”
“You can save yourself the trouble,” I tell him. “You don’t need to act like you give a damn anymore. Please leave me alone.” When I realize that these are the words that I wrote on the inside of his book when we first met, I feel my tears begin again. It feels like that was years ago, in another lifetime. “Just leave me alone,” I tell him brokenly. I flip my high beams on and put my car into gear, driving aggressively back onto the road.
“Helen—Winter!”
I hang up the call and focus on the road ahead of me, trying desperately to see the yellow lines. The high beams are helping slightly, but it is still a struggle. “See?” I whisper to Snowball. “I told you. He’s a worse bastard than I thought he was.”
To be perfectly honest, I was almost hoping he’d say something to give me a reason to turn around. I was praying that there might be some kind of explanation. Some reason for all this that made sense. Maybe it was all a practical joke. But it’s not. It’s real.
“He doesn’t even think what he did was that bad,” I tell Snowball. “That means he’d probably lie to me again in the future, you know? If I let him. If I gave him a second chance. Which I would never do.” I tighten my grip on the steering wheel. “I need to be strong. I can’t be a pushover like my sister.”
Snowball barks at me softly, in confusion.
I shake my head angrily. It upsets me that Snowball’s love for Liam is so unconditional. She can’t even understand the situation enough to give me a sympathetic ear. All she remembers is that his voice was attached to a hand which gave her lots of treats. Well, his hands gave me lots of treats, too. And so did his filthy, lying mouth. But I’m too strong to let myself be controlled by his falsely affectionate handouts. I never want to see his revolting face again. Maybe if I changed my name, it would help to give me a completely fresh start. The great thing about being a writer is that when being who you are gets too difficult, you can just change your identity and rewrite yourself.
Breathing deeply, I try my best to calm down. At least I sent him clear in the opposite direction. Now he’ll never be able to find me.
The GPS says that I am only thirty minutes away from my new home. That’s all. Thirty minutes, and I can finally rest. I blink frantically to try and clear my fuzzy vision. I alternate between mashing my eyelids tightly shut and ripping them open, trying to create a windshield-wiper-effect over my eyes. The storm outside the car has not begun to subside, but it is the strengthening storm inside me that is creating far more difficulty.
I can’t stop my thoughts from spiraling out of control. I can’t stop seeing Liam’s face and hearing his voice. Almost everything beautiful he has ever said or done is replaying in my mind, with a new taint of dishonesty. I can still feel his touch lingering on my skin, and the memory of his body pressed against mine. I can still feel him moving inside me, and it makes me sick. But it makes me even more sick to think that I will never feel him that close again. I let him in completely, so deeply in my mind, body, and heart. It feels like he is still with me now. I feel like I am still breathing him with every breath. He has somehow become a part of me, and I want to rip that part out. I don’t care how critical it is to my survival; I need to escape and leave that part far behind.
With each passing mile, I should feel a little closer to freedom. I should feel a little more healed and protected by the distance. That is how I felt last time, when I ran away after Grayson hurt me. But I don’t feel any of these things. I just feel more and more betrayed. I thought that our love was a heavy chain around my soul, strangling the life out of me. I thought those chains would fall away. But now I realize that it’s too deep-seated; too ingrained in my being.
My love for Liam is a cancer that is quickly disintegrating every vital organ of my body.
It’s starting with my eyes.
I am now passing through a small town, and while I can’t read the numbers on the street signs, I am vaguely aware that I probably need to slow down. I ignore this and continue to grind my foot down on the gas. Snowball whimpers with concern, and I can’t bear the pathetic sound. I bite my lip to suppress the emotion.
“We don’t need him, Snowball. We don’t.”
I can’t tell if the stoplights are red or green. I don’t even care anymore. I have to keep driving. I have to get away from here.
My mascara feels heavy and disgusting as it clings to my eyelashes in clumps, crumbling under the corrosive torrent of my tears. It was once waterproof; waterproof like a canoe meant for small streams, trying to take on the ocean. It feels like my lashes are getting stuck together with toxic glue. I lift my hand from the steering wheel to wipe the gunk out of my eyes. I try to massage them roughly, coaxing my eyes to work in the way one might abuse a malfunctioning piece of technology. I fail to notice that my car has begun drifting into the opposite lane until a deafening horn assaults my ears. My heart leaps into my throat. I am driving headfirst into a pickup truck.
With a sharp intake of breath, I correct my steering and jerk my vehicle back into my own lane—or what I believe is my own lane. I can’t exactly make out the confines of my designated space on the road. I take a deep breath. I should really stop driving. I am in no condition to be out here.
But I can’t stop.
I need this more than I need water. After crying for hours, I am very dehydrated, but I don’t even care. I drink up every drop of distance thirstily, and it sustains me, giving me hope for renewed life. There is nothing else; I need to feel the sensation of getting away. I need to feel weightless and free as the car is hurled forward, slicing through the air. I need to feel like I am going somewhere safe.
But there are no safe places. Not anymore.
A blaring horn is heard as I blast through an intersection, and another car brakes and swerves to avoid me. My heart skips a beat at the so
und of screeching tires, and I look into my rearview mirror to assess the damage I’ve caused. Of course, I can see nothing. My rearview mirror looks hazy and unclear. All I see is darkness. My world is going black.
Snowball barks fretfully, and I begin to breathe far too quickly.
“Come on, eyes,” I whisper, “don’t fail me now.”
I stare forward into the distance, and I am barely able to make out the streetlights. There are large halos of light around each lamp, creating nebulous phantoms that hover before me and block every part of my vision. I know that’s not the way it’s supposed to look, but I can’t blink or squint the bleary lights away. The world looks comical and distorted.
If I keep this up, someone is going to get hurt. I hope that someone is me.
“Turn left in 300 feet. Continue straight for fifteen miles.”
I breathe erratically as I make the awkward left turn into what I think might be a road. I am semi-grateful that we are leaving the populated area and driving out into the wilderness again. Unfortunately, this also means that the streetlights are all gone. All I have are my high beams, which are doing very little to illuminate the dark night.
All my concentration is focused on the road ahead, and each mile feels like an eternity. I just want to get to my new home. I want to put my head down on my soft new pillow. Just a few more miles. A ringing is heard, coming from my vehicle, and it distracts me from the road briefly. I frown as I try to make out the letters of the caller’s name flashing across the dashboard. I squint, but can only see four blurry blobs of light. I should not answer. I will not answer. I cannot answer. But staring at the darkness ahead of me makes me feel so miserable and alone that my heart grows heavy like a stone, sinking in my chest.
I think that even in this blackest of nights, I can find a fragment of wisdom.
