Free The One by Violette Paradis Page A

Jason
appeared on the other side. He did not look happy.
    “Jason!” I reached out to him but he kept his
eyes fixed on me and his jaw clenched. I pulled back my reach and instead
stepped out into the suite with him. “Let me explain.”
    “Explain what? That you were making out with
another man?”
    “No, I wasn’t making out—”
    “Oh really? Because that’s what it looked like to me.”
    “Jason, let me explain.” I put my hand out and
grabbed his arm but he pulled away.
    “There’s nothing to explain, Sophia. I saw you
with him.” There was a hurt in his voice I had never heard before. “I can’t
believe you did this to me.”
    I shook my head. “I didn’t.”
    He stared at me like he was staring into the
depths of my soul. For some reason, the silence was worse than anything he
could say.
    “Don’t lie to me, Sophia.”
    “I’m not!” The desperation was apparent in my
voice.
    “I never thought that after all we’ve been
through, that you’d hurt me like this.”
    “I wasn’t trying to hurt you—”
    “Goodbye Sophia.”
    “Jason, no!” It was only as I reached out to him did I notice the suitcase in his
hand. He stepped into the elevator and pushed the button in time for the doors to
close between us. I tried to reach out to him one last time but the doors were
closed and he was gone.
    “Fuck!”
    I realized I had been holding in my breath
that whole time and I finally let it out. More hot tears streamed down my face
and I began sobbing uncontrollably. I looked around the empty penthouse suite.
    “Jason.” I said out-loud. “Jason.” My
words echoed back to me as painful reminder of the empty suite. “Destroyer?”
    The dog was gone too. That’s when my heart
really sunk. Refusing to believe any of this was actually happening, I ran to
the bedroom, hoping that I was hallucinating and that I would see Jason curled
up on the bed with Destroyer, but all I saw was an immaculately made bed with a
note on it.
    A note.
    I almost didn’t want to read it, because
reading it would make everything real and I so desperately wanted to wake up
from this nightmare.
    As if time slowed down, I walked cautiously
towards the bed. Looking down at the note, I wiped my tears away. The note was
written in Jason’s scrawled handwriting.

 
    I need a break. Stay in the penthouse suite as long
as you like. Jason.

 
    Completely numb, I stared at the words until
they no longer held any meaning. There was no “see you soon” or “love” before
his name. Just ‘Jason’ , and that’s what hurt the most.
    The ink spread as my tears splattered onto the
note, obstructing the words. It didn’t matter anyway because those words were
tattooed on my mind, along with Jason’s hurt expression.
    How did this happen?
    I sat down on the lonely bed and stared off
into nothingness as I crumpled the wet note in my hand.
    What now? I wondered. What now?

 
 

~Chapter 2~
    After the initial shock wore off, I cleaned
myself up and decided to take action. At first I thought about calling him but I
knew there was no way he would answer a call from me after storming out like he
did.
    He didn’t want to see or speak to me. The
thought sat heavy in my stomach like a lump of coal.
    After pacing back and forth six hundred times,
I got too antsy to stay in the penthouse suite any longer. Getting into my car,
I drove to his workplace downtown. After riding the elevator up to his floor, I
saw his secretary.
    “Oh hi Sophia!” Dana’s chipper demeanor faded as she saw my tear-strained face. “You here for Jason?”
    I nodded.
    She gave me an apologetic expression. “He’s
not in right now. He said he was going on a work trip.”
    “Do you know where?”
    The secretary shook her head and shrugged.
“He’s always flying here and there. I’d call him for you but he asked me not
disrupt him. He was very strict about it.”
    “Oh, okay.”
    “Hey, are you okay?”
    “Huh?”
    “You look really — rough