Forsaken by Keary Taylor Read Free Book Online

ran a hand down my
hair, pausing briefly on the back of my neck where he knew the
branded X was. “I can’t make any promises or guarantees right now,
Jessica, other than that I love you more than I can possibly tell
you.”
    Despite his words, my insides finally
crumbled and I hollowed out.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    ALEX
    I coughed as a cloud of years and
year’s worth of dust billowed around me. I was thankful this was
the last of the carpet as I carried it out and threw it onto the
flatbed trailer I had rented. It was a good thing I didn’t need to
breathe or I would probably be getting very sick. If I could still
get sick that was. Who knew what kind of stuff was living or had
lived in the thirty-year-old carpet.
    The blank walls stared back at me as I
walked inside and I felt an odd sense of excitement. I was enjoying
myself a lot more than I ever would have expected. I’d patched all
the walls since Jessica and I had gotten home. Now with the old
carpet removed I was ready to move onto the next phase of the
remodel.
    My mind wandered as I applied gallon
after gallon of paint to the walls. It had been a mistake to go
down to California. It had changed everything.
    I felt completely torn, now knowing
that Jessica knew I had planned on proposing. I was relieved that
she knew. She should never doubt how much I loved her. And yet it
made me sick that she did know. She would always think about what
was supposed to happen but now never could.
    Jessica would hardly talk anymore. She
moved about her daily activities. She still went to work, still
attended Emily’s yoga class, still checked in on Sal. But she
wasn’t there. She’d checked out and I didn’t know where she had
gone to. But I knew I was the one who had sent her
there.
    I thought back, to where this had
really all began. It was amazing how astronomically your life could
change in just one day. It had come crashing down the day I had
gotten the phone call while I was in Africa. The two most important
people in the world to me were dead, their lives gone out in just a
blink of an eye.
    There had been hundreds of faces at
the funeral. Endless faces came up to me and gave their
condolences. Some I knew, and yet I couldn’t specify a single
person who had been there. They had all been a blur. And all I
could think about was how I was finally alone. A true orphan. My
mother had abandoned me as an infant, my father long dead, and now
my grandparents were gone too.
    I couldn’t stay in that house. I saw
them all everywhere. My grandfather sitting at his desk, my
grandmother in the laundry room. My dad laughing from his bed. The
lake had called to me.
    And then I met this crazy girl on the
stairs. I’d actually been a little worried she really was going to
hit me with the baseball bat.
    There was something about Jessica,
even from that very first moment. She was so different from anyone
I had ever met. I wanted to be with her constantly but didn’t want
to come off as a creep. And then I heard her scream that
night.
    She told me about the nightmares,
about angels.
    I had been filled with such
conflicting thoughts after I left the next day to go back to
California. I couldn’t really believe the things she had said. What
she had told me was impossible, or so I thought. It sounded crazy.
Angels and nightmares, and about them being more than that. I hated
to admit it but I had thought she really might have been crazy.
Those kinds of things didn’t exist; angels weren’t real, despite
how convinced she seemed otherwise.
    But I also knew I was starting to
develop these intense feelings for her. I wanted her company again.
I needed to see her, to make sure she was okay. I wanted to protect
her. From what, I wasn’t really sure.
    After I had come home and found out
what had happened to Sal, the scale had been tipped. I couldn’t
help it, seeing her so broken and open. I still wasn’t sure what to
think about the whole angel/nightmare situation but I knew my life
would