Between the kiss and the comment, Jamie couldn’t be sure which had shocked him more.
DREW HAD TO try to smooth things over. If Elizabeth was to return home, she’d have to no longer have it in for him so much that she would bring Brent Lawton into the mix.
There was a rather large and sad irony intertwined throughout this whole situation. Elizabeth decried him—hated him—for not having real love for her, yet as their relationship had evolved over the short time they’d been together, he’d discovered that what she now believed about him wasn’t quite true.
Now, he had no illusions about the love he had for her. It was tainted. He had still intended to make the sex happen.
But Elizabeth had done the seemingly impossible; she had managed to crack his armor. Because this woman—and he knew, now, that she was every bit that—had not turned out to be the trashy girl he’d met online; he’d begun to have compassion for her. And then the impossible thing had happened: he’d come to respect her.
He also knew though, that, due to his addiction and his fantasies, he had a skewed idea of what it actually meant to respect a woman. But he’d seen real respect. In fact, he’d grown up with it.
Every day, it had played out before him in his own dad’s actions. That man had always shown great respect for his mom.
He missed the man.
He missed … the man. His dad had known how to be a man, and he had instilled proper manhood into his son.
Drew grew up knowing that he’d model the same kind of respect for his wife when he, one day, got married himself. And his marriage had started out that way.
But then the porn….
And when she left him, he had dived deeper. Before too long, his conscience seemed to have gotten seared. Guilt—the real guilt with shame attached—became less and less a factor in his decision-making. Ultimately, he just gave in to his desires.
There were still times in which his mind tricked him into believing his conscience was still active. But his willingness to sidestep any sort of conviction had convinced him it was merely a ghost from his past.
Drew didn’t know if he had ever really loved himself, but eventually he had come to a place in which he could easily admit the antithesis.
Eventually, his lack of self-worth, combined with his dead conscience, created a soul that thirsted more and more but was never satisfied with anything it was given.
Then Elizabeth gave him a wakeup call to what real women in the real world were really like. Real women did not match the fake desires and actions of the females who acted in porn videos, supposedly loving everything that was done to them—begging their male counterparts to abuse them, then smiling at the camera at the end, “happy” to have gone through such debasement.
No. Elizabeth had turned all that on its ear. He’d started to find remnants of his old self again. He’d been given opportunities to like himself again and to do the right thing rather than the desire-driven thing.
But now … now she was badly injured, sitting against a wall on the other side of a storage room and glaring at him, almost daring him to come close or make any sort of suggestion to try to extricate himself from this situation.
Irony. She hated him because she didn’t know how close she had come to changing him.
He was her deceiver, but she was his redeemer.
He was the pain in her heart, but she was the healing in his.
Almost.
If things had played out the way he’d hoped, they would have enjoyed each other’s essence, not just each other’s bodies. And, in the end, he would have parted ways with her wishing he wouldn’t have had to.
She held pieces of him that he never wanted to take back.
Aside from his parents, Elizabeth was the most important person he’d known since meeting his wife and falling in love.
How could that have happened in such a brief period of time?
He’d gone years believing that his heart was too corrupted to feel anything real again. Elizabeth had not just proven him wrong; she had made him wish he was better than he was … she had made him feel like he could be.
His heart ached. He’d killed what may have been his only chance of being who he wanted to become. Now—if he didn’t go to jail—he believed he’d just regress back to the only wound salve he knew how to apply: pleasure through more perversion.
He hated himself. He hated himself for what he’d done to the two most important people in his world, and both of them were in the same room facing each other.
He needed to say something. Break the silence.
He did have one question that had gone unanswered up to now.
“How did you know … uh … find out?”
“Criminy.”
The response confused him.
“I don’t understand. I said it?”
She nodded.
It dawned on him. “I said it before we met.”
She nodded again.
“I don’t know how to approach anything right now. I don’t want to say anything stupid-sounding. I don’t want you believing that whatever comes out of my mouth—now that I’ve been exposed—is as fake as the name I deceived you with.”
He saw her lips purse again. It meant he was treading on dangerous ground.
He frowned and dropped his eyes to the folded hands on his lap. “Can’t trust a liar, can you?”
He expected her to give him her sarcastic “Nope” again, but she didn’t. Instead, she began to softly cry.
Drew’s heart sank further than he thought possible.
“I wanted you to be ‘Mark Johnson’ forever,” she said, her voice cracking.
He hung his head. He felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. Then he did the most honest thing he’d done in years. He wept.
Chapter 65
9
:37 P.M. and Elizabeth hadn’t returned.
Tara tried calling, but she didn’t pick up. She sent a text, but Elizabeth didn’t respond.
She tried to remind herself that teenage girls frequently lost track of time, and some were just willing to suffer the consequences for being late because they were having far too much fun to cut things short to head back to a boring house.
Brent, too, had tried calling and texting. And Jamie had said he’d tried as well.
Therefore, Tara couldn’t accept what she’d been telling herself.
They had blown up Elizabeth’s phone. If she had been able to respond, she would have.
THE INCESSANT RINGING and text chimes had Drew on edge. He was emotionally torn and unsure.
Someone was trying very hard to reach Elizabeth. Maybe several someones.
Her dad’s a cop. Chief of police.
Neither Drew nor Elizabeth had changed position, though both had shifted a lot trying to find comfortable ways in which to continue sitting.
Elizabeth looked more dejected now than angry. She would periodically look at him with sorrow in her eyes.
What must she be thinking? She’s probably running every scenario through her head as to how this will end. She knows I’m trapped.
Another thought struck. At what point does this waiting game turn into a kidnapping?
It was a kick in the gut.
Another text chime.
Another sad look from Elizabeth.
Drew had to do something, and it had to be now.
“Hey,” he whispered.
She searched his eyes rather than responding.
“I think I need to get your phone and get you downstairs.”
“I can’t walk,” she said quietly.
“And I can’t carry you.”
She sighed, maintaining eye contact.
“You can’t let me go.”
Drew knew what she meant and that this was her chief fear.
“Don’t say that,” he said, lowering his eyes.
ELIZABETH WANTED MARK Johnson back. Drew was …
unknown.
For the past fifteen minutes or so, she had been reviewing what had led her into this situation. She’d been putting the whole blame squarely on Drew’s shoulders, but when she replayed it all from the beginning, she knew that wasn’t entirely true.
After all, where had she first heard the word criminy? A chat program on her laptop, in her room, with her sleeping daughter, with every intention to get naked and tease men.
She’d seen a news story recently, in which a family was mourning the death of their prostitute daughter. Jaden, if she remembered correctly. They talked about her kind heart but explained how she was hurting inside and deeply troubled. She’d left home at the age of seventeen, alienated by conflicts with her family over her increasing drug use. She’d been stealing from the members of her family in order to prop up her habit. Her mom and dad didn’t know that she’d turned to prostitution for the money she needed.
Next thing they knew, their “baby” was dead, murdered and found lying on a sidewalk on a downtown city street of some larger city that Elizabeth couldn’t remember. The parents were beside themselves, especially the mom. She’d said something like, “She was my baby! She did nothing to deserve this!” A neighbor had been interviewed who’d known Jaden too. The man said, “She was always a nice girl. It’s so sad what she had to turn to. Just because she was a prostitute doesn’t mean she was of lesser value.”
But Elizabeth knew she was of lesser value to herself.
To those she had sold herself to, as well.
She’d lost all modesty and self-respect.
And to the men she’d made herself available to, she was just a product to be used and thrown away.
Elizabeth knew that she wasn’t any better than Jaden. She’d been showing herself off to men for free since she was twelve years old.
She’d been tempting men, playing with them, enjoying watching them.
The whole while, she had been saying to them, without words, that she was online specifically to be their plaything. She was willing to take their requests and turn herself into eye candy.
Eye candy?
No. Eye drugs.
She was their addictive substance.
It wasn’t until she sat injured and staring at another injured person in the same room, that she finally came to realize that she’d been a part of Drew’s addiction problem.
Her anger at him had slowly lessened.
She realized another thing. She’d been deceiving men—maybe not Drew, for some odd reason—with false identities and lies about her age.
She was Drew with a girl’s name.
What if she were thirty-something and had never stopped looking at porn and tantalizing men with pictures and videos of herself? Would she become like so many female teachers who were getting into trouble with teenage boys?
Elizabeth didn’t like where all of this was going in her mind.
While she certainly hadn’t asked to be in her current situation, she’d certainly “been asking for it.” Something was eventually going to give. She was always on a path to being hurt and possibly hurting someone else.
She was not innocent.
The whole room was guilty.
Drew shifted and got up onto his feet. He slowly—timidly—walked toward her, his right arm supported by the grasp of his left hand.
He crouched before her. She knew he was hurting, inside and out, but she didn’t know what was going on inside of him. Not really.
Had he wept because he’d been caught and didn’t know how to get out of the situation? Or was he feeling deep regret with regard to how he’d treated her?
He spoke slightly above a whisper.
“I’m going to go grab your phone and your sports drink. I’ll be back in a few seconds, then we’ll get you out of this room. Okay?”
There really wasn’t much else that could happen at this point. Certainly, this was the next logical step that didn’t include harm to anyone.
She nodded.
Drew extended his left hand toward her face, but out of emotional reflex, she moved her head slightly, away from his touch.
Sadness filled his eyes again, and he nodded, withdrawing it.
Drew got up and walked to the door. Opening it, he squeezed through and into the hallway.
Less than thirty seconds later, he returned, bottle in hand. Elizabeth couldn’t see the phone. He’d probably tucked it away in a pocket.
He handed the bottle to her, and she took it.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
He nodded again.
Reestablishing his crouching position before her, he pulled her phone out of his back pocket and handed it to her.
She took it, unsure of what he was permitting her to do with it.
“No calls or texts to anyone, but you can look to see what the messages are.”
She nodded again, accepting the instructions. It was the only safe option for either one of them at the moment.
She unlocked her phone and saw the text messages right away.
Dad, Mom, and Jamie.
She also saw the ones she’d sent to Jenna. Her heart tightened as she remembered how she’d been lying to her family about who she was with and what she’d be doing.
I am Drew Parks with a girl’s name.
As she read the texts, she saw how fear was settling in. She turned the phone for Drew to see.
He touched the screen and read them too.
He nodded.
“What would you do if you were me?” he asked.
The question sent a chill down Elizabeth’s back. Was she supposed to realize that his question indicated that he only had one option? Was he going to do something to hide his crime?
He must have seen fear register in her eyes, because he said, “No, no, no. That’s not what I meant. I mean, I’m really asking. I’m stuck. I don’t know a way out of this. You know all the players involved.”
She started to think through a response, when he added, “I’m pretty scared right now.”
“Yeah, I am too.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He lowered his eyes.
Pity. She felt true pity.
“How’s your shoulder?” she asked. It was the only thing she could think of to let him know that, while she wasn’t exactly on his side in all of this, she was at least not going to be hostile.
He closed his eyes, and she saw tears forming. Her question had been only a small gesture of kindness, but it appeared to be huge to him.
He struggled to respond. “Hurts pretty bad. Guess I ripped something.”
And that’s when her own tears began to form.
“You saved me,” she said softly. Kindly.
“I had to try. I’m the bad guy here, and you were the one about to lose your life. I couldn’t just let that happen.”
Elizabeth thought about responding that it would have been a way out for him. A body that could have been buried and he’d never even end up being a suspect. But it was appearing more and more that, while he was willing to play a role in order to have her sexually, he had never intended to bring harm.
Is there a good man in there somewhere? Is there a chance that Mark Johnson really does live inside of you?
Her attention returned to her phone. “Should I respond?”
“With what?”
“I don’t really know. With ‘I’m sorry?’ ‘My bad?’ With…” She looked Drew in the eyes, her own pleading. “With … I’ll call you soon?”
“Maybe,” he said. After a moment though, he added, “But not yet.”
Disappointment and a bit of fear entered her with his resistance to her suggestion.
She knew he was scared about how any actions of hers could land him in a position with no means of escape.
But how much of a criminal was he? Had he done anything that was actually illegal?
Sure, he had intended to have sex with her, but it didn’t work out for him.<
br />
She had intended to have sex with him too. It hadn’t been his decision alone.
Even if she had been deceived, she was still sixteen years old and volunteering—even eagerly desiring—to have sex with a man who was probably twenty years older than she.
Another thing entered her mind. Something incredibly scary.
What was her family going to think about her?
She wasn’t innocent. She’d deceived them! She had been looking at porn using their Internet in their home! She’d been sexually … deviant … in one of their own bedrooms! The very one in which her daughter slept.
Her life with them was about to come to an end. And it had not even been Drew’s fault. He’d only been the exposing factor.
She closed her eyes and groaned.
“What is it?” Drew asked. “Your knee?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, my conscience.”
“Well, we need to get you and your conscience downstairs.”
Drew reached out his hand, and Elizabeth willingly placed her phone into it. He placed it, again, into his back pocket. Neither she nor Drew knew how to resolve the situation without their lives being ruined forever, so, for the time being, there was simply no good text to send or phone call to make.
DREW STOOD AND reached out his left hand for her to take.
“Grab my hand with both of yours. I’m sure your knee is going to hurt quite a bit, even without you putting pressure on it, so just be prepared.”
She grabbed his left hand and wrist and held on tight.
He pulled her up. His right shoulder was still aggravated from the effort.
Elizabeth faltered as she came upright. She extended her hand up to his forearm and held on tightly to give herself more stability.
“Okay, one hop backward toward the wall so you can balance.”
She did so, but the downward pressure on her right knee from the hop on her left foot brought agony. She felt for the wall behind her and leaned back.
She whimpered in pain.
Drew felt awful for her.
The question now was how to get her down the stairs. What he’d just witnessed let him know that, even if he supported her, she’d suffer immeasurably if she tried to manage even small hops, and the stairs would probably cause her to pass out.
That Dark Place Page 37
