Falling In Love With You Again

2

I gasped, dropping my luggage as a pair of thick, calloused arms wrapped around my neck, pulling me violently into the shadows of an alleyway. Two men dressed in dark slickers with black tactical masks pressed against their faces dragged me toward an idling, unmarked black van.

"Help! Somebody help me!" I screamed, my raw throat tearing with the effort.

Then came the slap and the kick. The strike knocked my head sideways, sending me crashing onto the wet asphalt. Before I could catch my breath, a heavy boot slammed into my ribs, knocking the wind completely out of my lungs.

I gasped for air, writhing in pain as they shoved a foul-smelling rag into my mouth, gagging me, and tossed me into the back of the vehicle like a sack of trash.

"Shut up!" the driver barked, plunging the van into gear.

"Please... please..." I tried to muffledly sob through the gag, my hands tied tightly behind my back with zip-ties. "I don't have money... I only have three hundred dollars... take it... please let me go..."

The man in the passenger seat turned around. Through the dim light of the dashboard, I saw his cold, emotionless eyes.

"This isn't about your money, lady," he said, his voice flat and clinical. "You can thank Flora August for this. She paid us a very generous advance to make sure you disappear permanently. Said you were a threat to her new life."

Flora.

The name hit me like a physical blow. The betrayal was complete. James had destroyed my spirit, and now the woman he replaced me with was taking my life.

We drove for over an hour, winding up narrow, treacherous mountain roads into the wilderness. By the time the van screeched to a halt, I was completely exhausted.

My ribs throbbed with a dull, excruciating pain, my body was shivering uncontrollably from the cold, and every ounce of hope I had left in this world had evaporated into the dark night. I was ready to die. My heart was already dead anyway.

The side door flew open. The rain was torrential up here, whipping against the trees like a chorus of ghosts. The moon was entirely hidden behind pitch-black storm clouds.

The second man, whose badge on his dark jacket read 'Vance,' reached into his waistband and pulled out a heavy black handgun. He looked at me for a long moment, a flicker of brief, hollow pity in his eyes.

"Nothing personal, kid," Vance muttered, grabbing me roughly by the arm and dragging my limp body out of the passenger seat. "Just doing a job."

They carried me to the edge of the jagged, rocky cliff. Below us, hundreds of feet in the abyss, the furious black waves of the ocean crashed against the jagged rocks with a deafening, terrifying roar. The wind howled, biting into my exposed skin.

I couldn't even fight them. I just looked up at the black sky, water pooling in my eyes, mixing with the rain.

The gunshot rang out, tearing through the quiet roar of the storm.

A sudden, sharp heat blossomed in my chest, but strangely, I felt no pain. The impact knocked me backward off the edge of the precipice. Time seemed to slow down as I plummeted through the cold, empty air.

The wind roared in my ears, tearing at my clothes as I fell deeper and deeper into the endless abyss.

As the icy ocean water enveloped me, slamming into my body like concrete and pulling me into its dark, crushing depths, a single, burning thought pierced through the numbness of my dying mind:

Please... God, if you can hear me... give me one more chance. Give me the strength to survive this... and I will make them all pay.

Then, the freezing darkness took me, and everything went silent.

******

Two weeks after the storm, the ocean finally surrendered what it had claimed.

On a gray, desolate stretch of beach a few miles down the coast from the jagged cliffs, a lone fisherman spotted a shape tumbling in the shallow surf.

It was a bloated, unrecognizable body, tangled in seaweed, its dark long hair matted with sand and salt. The brine and the tide had erased every feature, leaving behind only the cold, silent shell of a person.

By mid-afternoon, local authorities had cordoned off the shoreline. It wasn't long before search teams recovered a waterlogged leather suitcase and a small purse washed up farther down the coast.

Inside the purse sat a soaked passport bearing the name Cheska Anderson-McHolland, a bank card, and three soggy hundred-dollar bills.

Beside it, tucked inside the zipper of the suitcase, were a few worn dresses and a bound leather diary, its pages swollen and bleeding ink.

The moment the name on the passport was verified, the story exploded. Media vans swarmed the perimeter, telephoto lenses aiming for the body bag being loaded into an ambulance.

Within hours, news tickers across the nation broadcasted the shocking headline: Secret Wife of Rising Star James McHolland Found Dead.

In the dimly lit, sterile basement of the Manhattan Designated Medical Examiner's Facility, the air was thick with the sharp smell of formaldehyde and overwhelming grief.

Cheska’s family arrived first. Her mother’s heart-wrenching screams echoed down the tiled corridors, a sound so raw it made the attending officers look away. Her brother held his weeping mother up as the examiner slowly pulled back the white sheet.

The body on the cold stainless-steel table was unrecognizable, a tragic sight obscured by time and the merciless sea.

But on the side table sat the damning proof: her passport, the wet bills, and her dripping diary, open to a page where her handwriting still faintly read James.

It was all too unreal. A nightmare they couldn't wake up from.

Ten minutes later, the double doors swung open, and James McHolland stumbled into the room.

He was trembling, his face devoid of color, his eyes bloodshot and wide with sheer disbelief. When Cheska had walked out into the rain two weeks ago, he had convinced himself she was just throwing a dramatic tantrum, hiding out at a friend's house or a cheap hotel.

He had even called her family a few days later, cold and impatient, demanding she contact his lawyer to finalize the divorce settlement and give him "closure."

He had never expected this. He had never expected to find the girl he grew up with laying motionless on a cold, metallic slab.

"No... no, no, no," James rasped, his voice cracking as he collapsed to his knees beside the table.

He reached out a trembling hand, clutching the edge of the metal table, his tears splashing onto the floor.

Looking at the lifeless form before him, a suffocating tidal wave of memories hit him all at once, her tender smile under the high school bleachers, the way she used to hold his hand when he was terrified of auditioning, the warmth of her head resting against his chest.

He had loved her. Once, she had been his entire world, his anchor, his heart.

Why? What had gone wrong? How had he let his own vanity, the alcohol, and the blinding lights of fame corrupt him so completely?

"Cheska... please, baby, wake up..." he sobbed uncontrollably, pressing his forehead against the cold edge of the slab. The horror of what he had done slammed into his chest with crushing weight.

He had shoved her out into the cold. He had humiliated her, hit her, broken her spirit, and driven her into the night. It was his fault. Every bit of it was his fault.

A few days later, they buried her under a relentless Manhattan rain.

The funeral was small, dark, and drenched in sorrow. Once the mourners and her grief-stricken family had slowly dispersed, James remained.

He stood alone in front of the fresh mound of earth, the cold downpour soaking through his expensive black suit.

Clutched tightly in his shaking hands was Cheska’s favorite oversized hoodie, the worn, faded sweater he had given her right before their college graduation. The fabric still smelled faintly of the rain and her sweet, gentle perfume.

James fell to his knees in the mud. He wrapped his arms around the hoodie, pressing his face into it, and screamed into the gray sky. He wept until his throat burned and his chest felt entirely hollow, begging the empty air for a forgiveness he knew he would never deserve.

He begged her to come back, to yell at him, to slap him, to just be alive. But the rain was his only answer.

That night, James staggered into his empty penthouse, dead drunk.

The heavy oak front door slammed shut behind him. Flora was waiting inside, sitting on the sofa in a sleek black dress, swirling a glass of wine. She smoothed her skirt and walked over to him, her tone soft yet calculated.

"James, honey..." Flora began, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "I know this is awful, but we need to talk about us. The media is going crazy, and we need to coordinate our public statements about the movie premiere next week—"

"Get out," James interrupted, his voice low, gravelly, and deadly cold.

Flora blinked, taken aback. "What?"

"I said get the hell out of my house!" James roared, his eyes wild with grief and hatred as he pulled away from her touch. "Leave me alone! Just go home!"

Flora scoffed, her face twisting in annoyance, but seeing the unhinged break in his eyes, she grabbed her coat and swept out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

Silence descended upon the penthouse, a heavy, suffocating silence.

James dragged his feet toward the master bedroom. He opened the door and stood on the threshold, staring at the grand bed. It was the same bed where they had once built their dreams together, where they had laid for hours whispering about their future.

Everywhere he looked, he saw her ghost. He heard her soft laughter echoing off the walls, saw her sitting at her small writing desk, and felt the phantom warmth of her home-cooked meals lingering in the air.

He fell onto the mattress, crushing his face into the pillows. Reaching blindly across the sheets, his fingers brushed against a soft, faded stuffed bear, the first anniversary gift she had ever bought him, tucked quietly into the corner of the bed.

James pulled the teddy bear tight against his chest, curling into a tight ball in the middle of the empty bed. He wept until his body ran dry of tears, falling into a dark, haunted sleep with her memory wrapped suffocatingly around his soul.