Page 113 of Mommy

I’m sure his words are supposed to reassure me, but they don’t. Not at all.

As if I cared about that, as if that’s what concerned me. I know they wouldn’t get to actually take her, but doesn’t he see what would still happen to her? Not from our perspective, but from hers?

Does he not see that for his plan to work, we would have to leave her? We would do exactly what the scum who owned her before us did. We would tie her to a tree and leave her there.

I remember the tremble in her step the day we found her all too well, it shivered its way into my bones and now I’m supposed to do that to her again?

“You’re insane.” The words are out before I can stop them, a mortified whisper that hangs in the air between us like a threat.

I can see Derek’s face harden, the muscles turning to stone before my eyes.

“We would save a lot of dogs by doing that,” he says, his voice dropping to a low rumble.

“But we would sacrifice her!” I don’t have the same energy he has. I’m not controlled and my voice comes out as a strangled scream. It turns into something I don’t think I have ever heard from myself. Anger and fear turn into one on the tip of my tongue, spewing past my lips in a hateful combination.

“No, we wouldn’t!”

Now, he has raised his voice too, the bellow of his baritone forcing the tears back into my eyes.

Stop it.

My heart pleads with my voice, but my lungs still fuel the ugly words.

“That’s disgusting. You can’t make me do that.” I say, putting all my defiance and hate into the words that go rampant through my body.

“Good thing, I’m not asking you!”

My teeth press together, my lips becoming a thin line as they join in.

The first tear makes its way into my lashes and I know that it won’t be long before the next follows. And once that has happened, it won’t stop. I’ll cry myself dry, so I take all the energy I have left to process what he said and answer him.

“You know what? We can do it all.”

There’s nothing I can do to stop him. On paper, Posie is his, and in the end it’s his decision what he wants to use her for. I was just here, riding along as long as the tide of happiness carried me.

I think we finally returned to shore. And that means, it’s time for me to wake up from the dream I’ve lost myself in.

None of this was real.

Posie isn’t my dog.

This house isn’t really my home.

Derek isn’t really my anything.

And my life here has been nothing but an illusion. A game I got so used to, I had forgotten that I was just playing along.

There are no real I love you’s, and Derek isn’t really asking for my opinion. This was fake, I was just dumb enough to allow myself to think that it could turn into something real.

Chapter fifty seven

Derek

“You know what? We can do it all.” Ivory’s voice shakes, the words coming out pressed as if at this point she is only soldering on instead of speaking her mind. Tears still line the light blue of her eyes. “We’ll leave Posie in a park to catch the bad guys. I’ll marry you, I’ll have your fucking kids. I’ll be just what you want. Because what I want never really mattered to you anyway.”

The words hurt. Every last one is a punch in the gut. Because—they are ultimately not a lie.

Shit.