Come for Me

by Ford, Mia

  A little smile plays on my lips, he’s the only thing right now that makes me feel anything like good. I miss him already. I much prefer being in his presence than Bryan’s. He makes me feel comfortable and happy. It’s like the last few years have vanished when I’m with him, I felt more like myself than I have done in a long while.

  “I have dinner,” I cry out, hoping that Bryan is in a better mood now. “Shall I bring it through?”

  He doesn’t answer me, so I free up one hand to open up his door. As soon as he hears me he hangs the phone up rapidly and he slams it down on his desk. It’s immediately obvious that I’ve done the wrong thing.

  “What the fuck, Savannah? Is there something wrong with you? I’m working here…”

  “Sorry, I just thought that you wanted dinner. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

  He kicks his chair back until it slams against the wall and glares at me. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

  “Okay, look I’m sorry.” I place the plate down and try to defend myself as best I can. “I’m just trying to do what you want me to. Sometimes I can’t get it right, however hard I try.”

  “Oh, don’t be fucking pedantic. You’re an asshole, Savannah.” He throws his hands in the air, frustrated. “Honestly, I’m fucking sick of being stuck with you. It’s ridiculous. How the hell did I end up in this position?”

  I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because I’ve seen Jayden today and I’ve been reminded that my life could be different, whatever it is I feel brave enough to actually say something today.

  “You were the one who persuaded my father to set us up, remember? You asked to marry me.”

  Spittle flies out of his mouth, I can see that he’s utterly desperate to say something to me and to be honest I want to hear it. I’d like him to say something honest to me. When he’s nice, he’s fake, when he’s angry, he’s nasty. I don’t ever get to see the real truth of him. All this time and I don’t know who he is.

  “Don’t you ever say something like that to me again.” He looms closer to me. My heart balls up in my throat as he closes the gap between us. He’s just so much bigger than me. “You have no idea what happened.”

  “Then enlighten me.” I shrug my shoulders. “I want to know.”

  His face turns such a funny shade of purple I half expect the truth to come out, but as always Bryan regains control of himself at the very last moment and he shuts himself down. Instead, he hooks his hand under the plate and he flips it up so the food spills everywhere, splattering all over me at the same time.

  “It barely fucking matters anymore why we’re married, does it? We just are and that’s the end of it.”

  “So, we’re just accepting now that there’s no reason for us still to be here? We don’t want to be married?”

  “We?” He snorts nastily. “Fucking we? No, there’s no we, you don’t get a say in this.”

  “So, I just have to live my life as is without complaining at all?”

  “You have never had a right to complain. Why would that change now?”

  He looks at me disgusted and makes me shrink in on myself. He’s repulsed by me and I feel that way about myself. Maybe for different reasons but the end result is the same. I hate myself as much as he does.

  “I’m fucking getting out of here.” He grabs his jacket. “I need to get a drink now and I can’t look at your fucking ugly face for another moment longer. I want all this cleared up before I get back.”

  He stomps away and slams the door so hard it nearly shakes the whole house. Once he’s gone, my shoulders slump forwards with sadness. I feel defeated, stunned, sickened. We’ve had many rows, but that one feels like the worst. Perhaps it’s because it’s just happened, or maybe it’s the words yelled.

  “I have to get out of here,” I murmur to myself as I start picking up the mess from the floor. “This is…”

  My words trail off as I spot something I haven’t seen before - not that I spend a lot of time in this office - there’s a stack of papers, one of which looks like it has blood on it. If I didn’t have all these suspicions with Peter, maybe I would have turned a blind eye to this because I wouldn’t want to know. Not because I’m uncaring but because I’ve had it drilled into me that it’s none of my business.

  But now it could involve my son, so everything is my business.

  I slide the papers out with my pulse racing and I run eyes over it. It’s hard to know what any of it means, I don’t know much at all about his business, but this seems all wrong. Money transactions that are absolutely massive, and that involve names I vaguely recognize, plus one which I know very well. One which spikes bitter anxiety everywhere, all over me.

  My dad.

  “Dad?” A sickness swirls in my stomach. This feels all wrong. And who’s blood is plastered across it? That’s weird too. I want to call my father, to ask him what his role is in all of this, but we don’t have that kind of a relationship. Not since he pushed me onto Bryan, taking me away from the man I really wanted, and even less so since Peter went missing. “Oh, Dad, what the fuck are you involved in?”

  I feel like the life I’ve always known is a lie, none of it makes sense anymore. I regret every single day that I lived it with my eyes closed. Maybe I deserve all of this, this might be what I get for being so weak.

  Well, people can punish me however much they want, but my boy doesn’t have to suffer.

  Now, more than ever, I need to get him back.

  “Oh, Bryan.” I stare towards the door he slammed through not too long ago. “We are going to talk about this, you won’t get away with it. Just you wait and see.”

  8

  Jayden

  “Beer, please,” I grunt at the bar maid who’s too young and pretty to be in such a dive. I don’t know why I’m here really, it’s just the nearest place I could find. “Whatever you have on tap is fine.”

  “Oh dear,” she coos while getting me my drink. “Now that doesn’t look like a very happy face.”

  I roll my eyes and wipe my hands across my face as distress gets the better of me. “No, well it hasn’t been the best week to be honest. I feel like I’m constantly banging my head against a brick wall.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, that sucks.” She slides a glass to me. “Anything I can help with?”

  I chuckle at the mere idea of bringing someone else into it. I’ve been trying my hardest to do research without giving myself away, the last thing I want is for Bryan to work out what I’m up to - not that I’m sure he knows anything about who I am - and to kick my freaking ass. It’s hard to get info though. Ridiculously so.

  “Well, that depends,” I reply wryly. “How much do you know about everyone in the city?”

  “Ooh, you’re like one of those private investigator guys.” She leans in closer. “Who you looking for?”

  I run my eyes over her face trying to work out how trustworthy she can be. I don’t know anyone here and even since Savannah left me I don’t know how good my judge of character is. I would love to ask someone though.

  “Come on, cutie.” She pinches my cheek and laughs. “I won’t tell anyone. It’s boring here, I just want some fun. I promise you can trust me. If you can’t, you know where I work, right?”

  “I might not survive it if you prove untrustworthy,” I reply, wanting her to know how serious this is. Or might be, I still haven’t quite worked it out yet. “Do you know a man named Bryan Janssen?”

  Her face falls, for a moment I wonder if it’s because she doesn’t recognize the name, but then she leans in a little closer. The next time she speaks I can feel her breath tickling over my cheek.

  “That man is an asshole, like the worst of them all. I absolutely hate him.”

  “You do?” I sip my beer slowly. This could be a dead end, I can’t get too excited. “Why is that?”

  “He’s married, you know that, right? He has, like, this really nice wife. She’s sweet and pretty. Or so I’ve heard, I don’t actually know her, but he’s like shoved h
er down. Crushed her spirit.”

  “Yeah, I actually know his wife.” I gulp loudly. “She’s… someone I know. Someone… a friend.”

  “Ah, I see. So, you probably know that he cheats on her all the time then. He’s an asshole, right?”

  “He does?” Savannah never told me that. Perhaps that isn’t as important as her child. “I see.”

  “Yeah, and one of the people he fucked behind her back was my friend. My roommate, actually. Her name is… wait, I can trust you too, can’t I? What I tell you won’t go further than this?”

  “My lips are sealed. I won’t say anything, I promise. The cheating isn’t what the issue is here.”

  I half expect her to ask me what the issue actually is but thank goodness she’s so desperate to tell the story of her friend that she doesn’t dive in on my point. I breathe out a sigh of relief as I get away with it.

  “Okay, so my roommate, Tiana, got a job at his company. She was working in the accounts department. When she spotted some of the other employees fudging the numbers, she spoke to Bryan, all concerned, like, and he told her not to worry her pretty little head about it. He made up some bullshit reason about why it was necessary, and because she’s a bit of a dumbass she fell for it.” She rolls her eyes dramatically. “I told her she was an idiot but she wouldn’t hear it. She was charmed by him. Then she ended up fucking him for a while until he fired her last week. He got bored of her, I guess. She had served her purpose.”

  “Woah…” None of this paints a very good picture of a man I already hate. I try not to fall into the trap of believing him wholeheartedly just because it’s what I want to hear, but it’s hard. “That’s nuts.”

  “I know. And while they were screwing she fudged the books just like the others. Idiot.”

  “Do you know why? What were they up to? What did they want to hide?”

  “Wait, you aren’t a cop, are you? I don’t want to get Tiana in trouble.”

  “No, not a cop, just a concerned friend, honest.” I nod slowly. “Not here to get you in trouble.”

  “A friend to his wife?” I nod. “Did you hear that she didn’t even want to marry him? Her father made her, or something equally fucked up. Like we’re in the nineteen twenties or whatever. He proudly told my friend that story as well. Honestly, it’s like he’s proud of what he’s done. What a fuck up, huh?”

  “Why would he be proud of it? Why did he even insist on it? That’s so weird, right?”

  “She’s rich, right? She comes from a wealthy family. Poor woman, she’s so stuck.”

  I remember Pippa, Savannah’s college roommate, telling me something like that, but I was too hurt at the time to really hear it. All I could clearly see was that Savannah had gone. My brain was blocked off to anything else.

  “Wow, that’s really awful, isn’t it? I don’t know what to do now.”

  “You want my advice?” I stare expectantly at her. “Get your friend out of there sooner rather than later.”

  “But.” I shake my head thoughtfully. “What about the kid? She can’t just…”

  “What kid?”

  I give her a confused look. “Peter. The child who was… who might have been killed in a car accident.”

  “Oh, I don’t know anything about a child. Tiana never mentioned on that, I don’t think Bryan ever spoke about it. Or maybe he said they couldn’t have children, I can’t remember now.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, it’s not even an option I’ve considered. But what would all this be for if there wasn’t a child? Savannah doesn’t seem like herself at the moment but I couldn’t go as far as to think she’s having a mental breakdown. But would I be able to immediately recognize one if I saw it? They come in all shapes and sizes, I do know that no one suffers them the same. This might be all just too much for her now. Or perhaps she’s always had an underlying condition and something has sparked it. Anything could have happened. I can’t pretend to know her as I did ten years ago. I probably didn’t even really know her then, I just idealized her.

  “Seriously, dude, I cannot stress this enough. Just help your friend. Get her away from him.”

  “Trust me, you have no idea how much I want to do that, but I’m afraid it isn’t my place.”

  “Ooh, do you love her?” Her eyes light up and she leans on the bar giving me a wide eyed smirk. “This could turn out to be a very interesting night after all…”

  * * *

  “So?” I demand to Tommy down the hand set of my cell phone. “What do you think about that?”

  He’s silent for a while, which I suppose is to be expected considering everything I’ve just laid on him.

  “Do you really want to know what I think, Jayden, because I’m not sure you’ll like it?”

  My heart sinks, he’s right I only want to hear good news, but that’s exactly why I rang him. I need some truth bombs landed in my lap. If I don’t, I’ll get carried away and that will lead me into heart break.

  “Yes,” I practically whisper. “Tell me what you think about it all.”

  “It’s crazy, that’s what it is. I haven’t heard anything like it. She calls you out of the blue after all these years with some crackpot story about her kid going missing and her husband being in on some plot.”

  “But what about to girl in the bar? The one that said about all the cheating and stuff?”

  “Yeah, it’s probably true. He probably is like that. That’s why Savannah wants revenge. And don’t forget the girl from the bar said that there wasn’t any kid in the first place.”

  “No, she said that she didn’t know if there was any kid.”

  “Right… which is weird. Her friend worked there and there was no mention? She’s lying, Jayden.”

  “But she was all messed up about it. You didn’t see her, she’s been struggling for ages…”

  “She’s lost her freaking mind. If there was a kid, he was killed in an accident and now she’s lost it. It’s quite typical for a rich and a bored housewife to lose it anyway. That’s like, a statistic I’m sure.”

  “No, that’s a generalization. A stereotype, that isn’t what’s happening here.”

  “You can’t see it because you’re doing the one thing I told you not to and you’re falling back in love with her. It seems to me that you’ve always been blinded by Savannah and this is just more of the same. You should come back here, get your sorry ass back to work and get back to the real world. All of this is madness.”

  I chew down on my bottom lip, considering this. It would be so easy to chalk this up to insanity, to tell Savannah that her child is definitely not alive anymore and to extract myself before I sink too deep, but I already know that will never happen. Not a chance in hell, I would never be able to forgive myself.

  It was hard enough when she left me. No way I can do it the other way around.

  “But, if you are going to stick around, which I’m sure you are, then you really need to watch your back. This situation is either way fucked up - a big old lie, in which case you need to worry about the motivation, or dangerous.”

  “I should find out more about the husband, don’t you think? See if he is a dangerous man.”

  “Just because he’s messing with his numbers doesn’t necessarily make him dangerous, but it is troubling. When certain people have secrets, they’ll do whatever it takes to keep them. Don’t be a casualty of that.”

  “You honestly think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I rub my head. “I think I do too.”

  “I just care about you, Jayden, that’s all. I’m scared this woman will hurt you.”

  I am too, I really am. This time I think I have more than my heart on the line, but still I won’t let it get in the way, still I want to do what I can for Savannah. I just can’t help myself, she makes me act nuts.

  “I’ll look after myself, don’t worry, Tommy. I’ll keep you in the loop too.” I smirk as I make a joke that’s much too dark really. “Someone needs to know where I am!”

  “Ur
gh, it would be so much easier if your parents hadn’t moved to France. Why were they so selfish?”

  I laugh loudly, glad that Tommy gets my sense of humor. “I know, right? Anyway, I’ll speak to you soon, I better get some sleep. I have another long ass day ahead of me tomorrow so… yeah.”

  “Night, buddy. Take care of yourself. I’ll be thinking about you.”

  I hang up the phone and sigh, exhaustion completely floods me. I don’t think this is going well, it feels completely awful. To be honest, I just want it to end.

  9

  Savannah

  I probably shouldn’t have another drink, I know I shouldn’t. My head is spinning and I feel all sick inside but my fingers are pouring another one anyway. It’s like I’ve lost all control of myself. How am I supposed to act all normal like nothing is going on when my husband is into something dodgy? Potentially dangerous? Now that I’ve seen the paper in his office, not that I understand it fully, I’m scared some criminals will come bursting through the door at any given moment. I need the drink to calm me the hell down already!

  “Ooh!” I jump, my heart thundering against my sternum. “What was that?” I’m sure I heard a banging sound. “Is anyone… is anyone there?” Am I slurring my words? “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  I don’t know what I’m doing, like anyone who’s here to harm or rob me would answer? ‘Oh yeah, sure here I am” Just come to steal some shit, I hope that’s okay!’ No, that won’t ever happen, but there’s still a chill running up and down my spine. I can’t stop it. I fold my arms across my chest wishing that Jayden were with me. Holding me, hugging me, taking care of me in the way that only he can… with his strong arms and his muscular body…

  “Fuck!” I jump as Bryan’s voice rings through the house, stunning me to the core. “Savannah!”