Let Your Heart Drive
By: Karli Rush
Contemporary Romance
I live in the shelter of darkness.
This darkness holds a secret over me… one that I have come to protect and in return, it controls and
holds me back.
It’s time to start fighting against it and break free. To become the unrestricted woman, I yearn to be. For
this to happen it will take a sixteen-hundred-mile road trip to let go of all that I fear and hopefully
discover that the darkness doesn't lurk everywhere. I stand on the edge overlooking a horizon of
possibilities for the first time. Will I let my heart drive… to where it needs to be?
A unique romantic tale of one girl, one road, and a chance meeting with someone that will change
everything in every way.
Prologue
You know it’s the end of your relationship when your soon-to-be-ex just slams the door in your face… the door of your apartment.
I knock on the pale painted door with the crooked number. I’ve stared at this door—this number for two and a half years, and I’ve never noticed it was so off-center, maybe all this time it was an omen, a sign of things to come, a caveat.
“Hello? Jake? Open the door!” I raise my voice a notch, trying not to disturb the meddlesome neighbors like Ms. Nelson. I know he’s on the other side because I can hear the creak of the floorboard every time, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I bang the side of my fist against the door again, practically touching my lips along the paint-coated exterior, and grind out, “Open. The. Door.”
“Why? You’re the one that said you wanted out, that you were through with us, or did I hear you wrong, Sinead?”
I drop his suitcase from my clenched white-knuckled hand and scowl up toward the ceiling. Praying inwardly that this isn’t how it’s going to end with us. Warring with words between a slab of wood, airing out all our dirty laundry to everyone on this apartment floor.
“I know I said that. But I think you’re misinterpreting something here.” I drop my glare back toward the door, picturing him on the other side wearing that sideways smirk of his, gloating arrogantly and possibly even shaking his head at me as if I’m some kind of fruitcake.
I straighten my shoulders and remind him calmly. “The lease is in my name, Jake. Remember? I was just helping you move from point A to B.”
He laughs. Half of the junk in this apartment is mine, Sinead. Remember? I honestly don’t think you had the time or the talent to pack all my stuff in one suitcase.”
“So, this is it then, huh? I leave with whatever’s inside this suitcase?” I kick it with animosity and add,
“And your car.” I jingle his keys loud and proud in my hand, knowing he’d have a coronary. No one and I mean no one, ever dares to mess around with his precious classic car. During our relationship, there came a time when I was actually jealous of how much time and adoration, he would give his car. Now, it’s one of the many reasons why our relationship will end.
The door swings open, and he stands aside. “Truce?”
I pass by him, meeting his devastating hazel-eyed glare. I’ve known him, dated him, fell in love with him, and sadly fallen out of love with him. I met Jake my first year in college here, and I’ll be the first to admit that I was attracted to his bad-boy appeal, the long auburn hair that hangs roguishly over his seductive bedroom eyes. His Californian style that would have most girls daydreaming about him, plus his ever- clever little quirk he has when he’s wearing that dictating, charming smile of his. The one that I had originally fallen in love with, yeah, that one, the one he’s using on me right now. I can feel myself sinking, and it’s not at all how it used to be. The smile is no longer charming. It’s just dictating, telling me how irrational and childish he thinks I’m acting.
He wants to drown me, to sink me into his underwater seclusion. A place where he thinks he can fix me, a place where I will suffocate to death. And I can’t do this anymore, I can’t drown, not this way, not by his control. The never-ending paranoid surveillance, the agony of wanting to scream inside and eventually let it pour outward until I can hear it resonating from every wall. I have to set myself free from this purgatory, to let myself be who I really need to be. Or I will suffocate if I can’t feel my own feelings or even think for myself.
From the outside, I tried to keep everything together, tried to make everyone believe I had a secure and loving boyfriend to the dutiful family, but yet, on the inside, I had nothing. Nothing but fear, and it ate a hole inside my soul every single day, beating me down until I could see it warping everyone’s face that surrounded me. The looks, the long narrow gazes, the bitter-sweet expressions that hung in their eyes and crept slowly into my heart. And that’s when it started permeating the change in me. I hand him the keys back and tell him, “I don’t need these, and you know what?”
He sits on the armrest of our couch, watching me with bored interest. “What, Sinead?”
“I think I’m done with all the materialistic-ness and make-believe crap that surrounds us,” I explain, motioning around us. From the blown-glass lamps, fabricated handmade bookshelf to the deceiving framed photographs of us.
He chuckles more to himself than for my entertainment and starts to rub the side of his temple like he has a headache from all the stress he’s suffered. “I hate to break it to you, but there are some things you can’t live without.”
I hold up a hand, attempting to halt his twenty-minute narration of why my thoughts are obviously wrong. He follows me as I make a beeline to our bedroom. Ignoring his rant, I direct my path to the nearest closet, and he aims his toward the lit bathroom. Finally, I think I can feel the slightest break in the chains, the chance to finally breathe as I cram my clothes inside a laundry bag. I’m to the point right now that I don’t even care if I’m lumping the clean in with the dirty. I’m leaving on my terms, not his. He can keep this place for all I care. He can pawn my stuff or toss it in the trash. Our relationship had been built on nothing but manipulation, control, and my own dependency. My fear of not letting anyone else close to me. Afraid they would tear me down until I was nothing but hollowed-out bones, just like Jake.
I catch the sight of him out of my peripheral, he’s carrying prescription bottles, and one by one, he pours the tiny encapsulated pills out onto the comforter of our four-poster bed.
“When the pain gets too bad, Sinead, are you still going to handle it on your own?” He drags a hand along the pills dotting the bed and mixes the capsules together. Blending and meshing them until they’re nothing but a rainbow monstrosity. I hastily stuff the last shirt in my bag, and I hide the shock well enough away that he can’t see my true disappointment in him. He used to be a boy with charm, and now he’s just a sadistic man with no trace of remorse.
I grab my purse, noting his cell phone is illuminating with a bright white glow. His cell must be on silent, but her name doesn’t hush or silence my determination. My fingers possess his phone before his does, and our eyes meet. A hesitant pause sweeps across his open mouth as if he wants me to burst into a fit of tears. But instead, I offer the phone to him.
“I’ve known about your extracurricular activity for a while now, Jake. Maybe you should go live with her and find out if she has some debilitating problem so you can ride in on your white horse and save her.”
His jaws work overtime grinding down his anger, I’ve hit a sore spot, and I can feel the heat boiling inside him, the desperate urge to do something before I walk out. I nearly give myself whiplash as I bolt for the bedroom doorway. My things wadded and safely stashed inside a blue mesh laundry bag and my oversized purse in tow. I give him one last glance before I start to slam the front door closed.
“You know I loved you, Sinead?” he yells from the living room, striding toward the door.
How can he say that? What part of his brain clicks on and fires some neuron that would force those words out of his mouth? I know it doesn’t matter, but I still ask anyway, “And when did you decide you stopped loving me?”
He takes a cautious step closer, wary of touching me, and nods. “The moment you close that door.” He tips his head, swaying his hair over his eyes as he indicates the door I’m about to shut. This is how our fight had started, he refused to leave, I packed up his suitcase, and I ended up on the other side, afraid I couldn’t get back in.
Now, I know there’s nothing to be afraid of, and I close the door.
