CHAPTER 5

LISA`S POV

I scroll through our latest text messages.

A photo of us that James had taken using his phone is the last text message he ever sent to me. We had gone to a museum gala in New York City that day when he took a selfie of us on the balcony of the building. His pearly white teeth shine through the camera. His blue eyes gleaming so bright, happiness plastered on his face, I wonder what happened to us.

What happened to our loving relationship that made him want to get rid of me so badly? So bad that he would be willing to throw away what we had built over the years? It pains me so much that he was never willing to fight for us.

I am over it. Completely over it.

 I do not remember the feel of his sultry touch on my skin when we were snugged beneath the sheets during those cold and windy nights.

No.

The way his warm breath, laced on my skin, his sexy body covered in perspiration, and his blue eyes piercing through my heart while he was eight inches deep inside of me is foreign to my memory. The way he would kiss me, biting my lower lip and leaving me breathless—gasping for the much-needed oxygen and he would say: breathing is highly overrated while drawing me in for another breathless, reckless, dirty kiss.

I feel my cheeks heating, my body on fire.

No. No. No.

No, I am completely over him. Shaking the thoughts from my head, I push the stool from the kitchen island and walk out of the house.

Dressed in a white strapless tank top, I feel the sun's rays on my skin. I woke up early today to water the flowers, a habit that my late mother used to do every morning. The flowers in our front and back yard flourished, offering me a heavenly view from my bedroom window. And when she crashed and burnt in that fatal accident, all the flowers dulled and wilted, even when I spent hours and liters of watering them. It was never enough. It was never the same. Milly was the one who would often tend to the flowers when I got married to the Thatchwood and my dad got even worse with Dementia and had to be admitted to the hospital.

Filling the watering can with water to the brim, I walk over to the flowers and water them, uprooting weeds. I continue with the same movement before I go to the flowers in the front yard. The flowers here are more wilted and dull, compared to the ones I have just tended to in the backyard. Bracing myself for two hours of work, I fill the watering can with water to the brim and walk over to the flower garden…

Ahhh…

I hear pained muffled cries coming from the road nearby, behind the plant fence that surrounds our home.

Ahhh… “Someone please help me…”

I hurriedly place the watering can on the ground and rush to open the gate. I scramble with the lock on the gate and once it gives way, I run toward the direction where the pained cries came from.

An old man, dressed in grey lounge clothes is lying on the ground, his broken medical crutches beside him. I move closer and see that blood is oozing from both his nostrils. He is holding his left leg, wincing in pain, his eyes closed.

“Hello, can I help you?” I bend down and tap him on his shoulder.

He opens his eyes and stares at me, his lips quivering.

“Hi, are you okay?” I ask him. I can see his left leg has been bandaged with a medical dressing plaster.

He is still staring at me, blinking rapidly like he has seen a ghost. Different emotions plaster his face, and I can`t quite decipher.

“Umm, I guess I should just go, umm… I am sorry.” I say standing up on my feet. I should have just minded my own business. The man`s stares are beginning to creep me out. Oh, maybe he is deaf. I know nothing about sign language.

I bend down again and try to make some lame-ass signs hoping to prompt this man to say something. He continues staring at me, his dark brown eyes gleaming with recognition.

As I go back to my feet, ready to go back to watering the flowers, he roughly clears his throat, prompting me to turn back. God, he is such a weirdo. Or one of those human traffickers who kidnap you, and sell you, so that you can work in plantation farms. I have watched way too many crime shows for me to allow naivety to take the better part of me and have my ass trafficked to some tea estate farms.

“I am sorry, Miss. You live around here?”

What? Oh, so he speaks. And he is not deaf? And he is asking me whether I live around here. Of course, I knew it. This sounds like your typical stranger pretends to be in trouble, the `nice girl` approaches him and offers help, two days later her blindfold is opened by some mean-looking men and she finds herself in a filthy dungeon. The next day she is picking tea leaves and coffee berries in large plantations, the sun tanning her smooth skin. And sunburns…

I scramble back to my feet, realization dawning on me that these might be my last days of freedom if I allow myself to succumb to naivety.

“I am sorry Miss, I need your help, please. My leg is hurting me and I have diabetes. I just lost my consciousness, oh and my eyesight is also blurry…” He rambles off, trying to also catch his breath at the same time. Yeah, he really should convince me damn good that he is not a fucking kidnapper who disguises himself as an old diabetic man with arthritis. He struggles to get his wallet from his breast pocket.

“Here.” He hands me his ID card and driver's license.

Roger McGrath.

THE Roger McGrath. The owner of McGrath Media Company? The CEO of the largest media house in the entirety of New York is ten steps from my crusty rusty front yard. Yeah, the universe is playing some fucked up tricks on me. What the heck would he even be doing here? He must have gotten robbed and dumped up in this ghetto street. Or he is probably a kidnapper masked up in a McGrath body.

“So you are trying to pretend like you are some McGrath so that you can fucking kidnap me?” I say shaking my head in disbelief. People be going to the down low barrel just to get something of themselves in this damned city I live in.

“You know what, I understand that you haven`t eaten anything in days.” I take twenty dollars from the pockets of the brown sweatpants I am wearing and hand the money to him. “Here, and if you try again to pull some crazy ass stunts in my front yard, I will call the police.”

He does not take the money.

“Please, please. I was just taking a stroll here and I fell on my injured leg. Please help me by calling an ambulance.”

“Are you crazy? You do know that this is America. That will be two thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars?” Yeah, he has to be toying with my head on this fine Monday afternoon. “You know what I am done entertaining you for the very least, sort yourself.”

“Here.” He hands me his credit cards. Five credit cards. “I will pay for the ambulance money. Please just help me by calling the ambulance for me. Please…”

“Fine, I`ll do that,” I say, rolling my eyes.

I get the phone out of my pocket and dial the emergency number.

It better not be a prank…