Page 6 of A Captive Situation

No! No. I couldn’t have security escort me out. That was a whole new type of low. I wasn’t quite there yet.

I didn’t think . . .

I’d leave, do my regroup thing, and well, maybe not approach Graham at his job.

I swept out of the lobby and headed down the street.

I didn’t totally leave.

I left the building, but I wanted a glimpse of the life my cousin had because he’d made something of himself. Whereas I ... I’d completely and totally fucked up my life.

My hands began shaking. I could not slide back there, to what brought me here, whatreallybrought me here, so I crossed the street at the nearest crosswalk, and got a sandwich from a nearby food truck. After that, I camped out across the road.

Correction. I was munching on a hero. That’s what the brochure said they called them here.

So far the receptionist hadn’t spotted me, but I was ready to bolt if I needed to. I wasn’t normally a mess like this, but my god, half of my life had just been pulled out from under my feet.

Focus.

Focus, Sawyer! New mission. Fix the aunts. Starting with yourself and Graham.

Everything aligned again inside of me. My feet found solid ground. I had a purpose in life again.

Pulling up Graham’s Instagram, I focused on the pictures of him and his husband. They enjoyed traveling. Paris. Arizona. Redwoods. Japan. They went all over, and I checked the timestamps. All those places were posted within the last two months. They were big travelers.

It was helping. Some of the madness in my mind was fading.

I lost track of time.

My mouth was almost watering at the thought of all that traveling.

Coming here to New York was the most I’d traveled in my life. My parents weren’t adventurous like that. If we traveled at all, it’d be Glacier or hiking. We were big on hiking, or my dad and I were. Mom, not so much. Then Beck was always studying.

He said we didn’t have the money for traveling.

So I kept working.

He wanted a house.

So then there were mortgage payments for that as well.

And I kept working.

Pain sliced down my insides, but dammit. I needed to start dealing with what happened.

Swallowing a lump that formed in my throat, images flashed from that time in my life.

I loved college. It’d been fun. I liked going to class. I liked having the dreams of my degree, what kind of job I could do with it. Where I could work, if I wanted to travel with my job.

That’s where I met Manda. She was on the same floor in my dorm. And after going to a fraternity party, we met Beck and his friends. It’d been flutters-at-first-sight for me.

God.

Beck. He had charisma. He was good looking. He was charming. When he smiled at me, I melted.

What a fucking joke I turned out to be.

Here I was, still in New York. Still hadn’t done what I came here to do.

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