I’d driven us to a beat up hotel in the middle of LA and used cash and a fake name to check in as I didn’t want to leave a trail. We took breaks, but both of us had sore asses by the time we got there. Riding on a bike for nearly six hours was brutal.
I took off my hoodie and placed it on the oblong dresser, turning around to face Carly. Rage filled me at the sight of the purplish bruises on her face. Maddy really had gone too far. I wish I’d knew she was that crazy when I first met her. She seemed like a nice and pretty young woman.
Boy was I wrong.
I knew the bitch was up to something when Shadow said he’d heard nothing out of her.
“It’s a long story,” I replied.
“Come, sit down.” Carly gently patted the mattress. “We’ve got time.”
I didn’t really want to talk about Maddy, but after what Carly went through, I felt she deserved an explanation.
I walked over and sat down beside her. “We met at an Anonymous gathering several years back,” I said. “When I first saw her, I thought she was strikingly beautiful, exotic-looking and I was drawn to her.”
“More beautiful than me?” Carly asked, interrupting. Her tone had a twinge of envy, but I knew she wasn’t totally serious.
“Please,” I snorted. “Anyway, we chatted a few times and then became friends. It was unlike me, but over time, our relationship progressed and I began to slowly believe I’d finally found someone who could satisfy the void inside me.”
“Why did you feel that way?”
“Well, like I said, for the first time in a while, I met a girl who was fascinating enough to hold my attention and it seemed we had a lot in common. She was a hacker around the same age, loved martial arts just like me and . . .,” I searched for the words, “I don’t know. I just think it was that I could actually hold an intelligent conversation with her, unlike the countless girls I’d been with.”
“But just as I thought I was beginning to overcome my obsession, I began to see that Maddy as she really was. She was damaged goods.”
Carly raised a curious eyebrow. “What do you mean by damaged goods? I know the bitch was crazy and all, but why did it take you so long to figure that out?”
I looked up at the ceiling, my mind on the past. “Mentally ill people have a way of hiding their illness from others, Carly, and making themselves appear perfectly normal. And Maddy, well, she hid hers well, very well . . . at least for a little while.”
I sighed and continued. “As time went on, and she became more and more possessive over me, the cracks started to appear.”
“For example, whenever I would go out to do anything, didn’t matter what it was or where I went, she would interrogate me as soon as I got back, demanding to know where I’d been or what I’d been doing. That shit was really fucking hard for me to handle, and I was always guilt-tripped into accepting her behavior, because she supposedly had been through so much and I obviously had a reputation.”
“I started to think maybe I should just cut my losses and move on, but then she would begin telling me these awful stories and I would just stay out of feeling sorry for her.”
“Like what kind of stories?” asked Carly. She stared at me intently, engaged in my tale.
“Well for one, she would tell me that she’d been fondled as a child by a family figure that she trusted so she found it hard to trust anyone and that was the reason why she was so suspicious of me. I bought it for a while, but I’m pretty sure that was a lie to manipulate me.”
Carly was nearly falling into my lap, she was leaned in so close. “So what happened next?”
“The final straw came when Maddy told me that she was pregnant. At first, I didn’t believe it. I always used protection — I’d be the first to admit that I wasn’t ready for a child. I mean, I know it’s not a one-hundred percent guarantee, but I thought it unlikely. But Maddy was adamant that she was pregnant and even showed me a positive home test.”
I took a deep breath and continued. “That confirmation completely shattered me. I mean, fucking destroyed me. Here I was, in my early twenties, life just starting out, still in love with you, and now I was going to be a father and permanently chained to a woman who I knew for a fact I didn’t love.”
I grimaced, remembering the awful emotions I’d been saddled with at the time. “It felt like a death sentence. But despite being horrified and wanting out of the situation, I was willing to accept it.”
“I can’t believe you put up with that mess for so long, it’s totally unlike you,” Carly remarked in disbelief. Then she held up a hand and scowled at me. “Hold up! You told me the other day that you never knocked anyone up.”
I nodded. “I didn’t. And I’m getting to that, if you’d let me. So, yeah, not long after, some guy arrives at the door demanding to see her. At the time I was thinking it was just one of her exes that she always would claim beat her and treated her so badly, but come to find out, it was someone she was screwing on the side.”