Breathe, my loves. We're going to get through this!
To him, losing control hits harder than losing his wife.
And after almost a year of living on a precariously slipping slope, he ultimately loses it all.
And once his sense of control has left his body, he learns there is nothing stopping him from getting what he wants.
He wants his wife back.
And not the wife that left him almost a year ago, no. He wants the woman he met in the coffee shop all those years ago. He wants the woman who melted under his touch, who fell at his feet at his words. He wants the doting wife, the one who held his arm for public events, and smiled beautifully in pictures as if being his wife was the proudest achievement in her whole life.
That's the wife he wants now.
Not the one whose eyes flinched and head bent downwards at the sight of him. Not the one who knew never to say no but remained cold and lifeless in their bed.
He's determined to get to her, the real her, again.
He just has to wait a little bit longer.
He has to get a grip on himself first before he begins to make his way to a little town called Forks, Washington.
Yes, he found her. It didn't take long, or much digging, to find what he could of an Emmett McCarty, owner of the auto body shop not too far from where they lived. Combined with the news of the missing red truck sold to a fleeing housewife and the date on which it all happened, it wasn't difficult for him to connect the dots.
The ultimate piece of information was when he found out who Emmett McCarty's girlfriend is.
The one and only Rosalie Swan.
He knew better than to approach her, though. He knew he was being watched; he knew his every movement was being told and documented to whoever Rosalie talked to on that phone of hers.
So, he hired someone else.
Who connected a rental property to a cousin of Emmett McCarty - and, according to the pictures that were sent to him from the PI he had hired out in that godforsaken town out there in the Pacific Northwest, a big, red truck sits silently in the driveway.
Everyday for almost a year.
But he has to wait.
Because the news of her, his wife, living a completely separate life without him has severed all forms of self-control completely, and he's wise enough to know when he can trust himself.
Tonight is not one of those nights.
He knows he must stay at home, in their empty house, and wait.
So instead of getting in the car to begin to make his way to Bella, he sits on their back porch with a bottle of whisky and an angry, broken heart. He fumbles over what he wants to say to her, practices keeping the bitterness out of his words when he pictures seeing her face after all this time.
It's hard not to be bitter as he thinks about the way she left him.
He knows her sister must have helped her - even though she acts like nothing is wrong whenever he sees her. He can't approach her and ask her at this point. It's been far too long for him to ask now, so she must remain off-limits.
Who else would know?
It's not like Bella had any friends -
He drops the glass of whisky when it hits him, cursing himself for not realizing it sooner.
Alice. The one who loved the plants.
She'll tell him how she helped Bella escape.
He'll make her.
And a few days later, after he's studied her new outdoor exercise pattern, he feels a little bit more of that self control slip away, his blood pumping through his veins as he watches the petite woman fall to the ground in the woods beneath the clutches of his hands around her neck.
Sometimes, he thinks as he disappears into his car and soon past state lines, losing control is the only way to get what you want.
"JUST TRUST ME!" The author shouts, covering her head from the tomatoes being thrown at her from her readers. LOL. Seriously - just trust me. We've been together for 95 chapters, and I would never betray you now.
Also - my new story, Unspoken, is officially LIVE! Come follow along with me - it's not a Drabble, so while I may not be in your inbox daily with that one, you'll have longer chapters! Hopefully I'll see some familiar names from here over there :)
See you tomorrow!