All Chapters of The Bound Collection: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Throughout the three-hour drive to Tennessee, I couldn't help but notice Gray's frequent glances in my direction. I was beaming and overly excited. It wasn't the location we were visiting that had me amped up as much as it was the two of us going somewhere with no distractions. He'd been distant, and any time it had happened in the past, all it took was time alone together to get us back on track. I'd tried not to bring up the fact that he wasn't as available as he normally was or make a big deal of it. He loved that I gave him space and freedom to live his life, to process things on his own without pushing him into a corner, or requiring him to share his feelings. He'd felt trapped with Abby, and I made sure I didn't do the same. I knew he loved me and wanted to be with me. But he'd been in a committed relationship of some sort since the beginning of high school, and right now, he wanted to spread his wings. Hang out with his buddies. In some ways, he was regressing emotionally, but s

My friends coped with drugs, and I was an emotional disaster-meeting up with them was likely not the best idea. But neither Scarlett nor Jenny would ask questions. They simply welcomed me when I walked through the door. Without hesitation, I proceeded to get completely blitzed, soothing my spirit, and effectively settling my mind. The more I inhaled, the funnier everything became until we had convinced ourselves we should go on tour as a comedy trio. In reality, most of the crap we were cackling over wouldn't have made sense to anyone with half a brain cell still intact and who wasn't equally intoxicated, but it felt good to laugh. This right here had always been my draw to marijuana-it always held the ability to make me laugh. I hadn't so much as looked at anything illegal in months, at Gray's request, but I felt light as air and quickly remembered why I'd never wanted to turn down a joint. As the weeks went by, I spent more time with Jenny and Scarlett, and as a result, my drug us

The swing of the pendulum had hit our relationship again, and it seemed to right itself over the upcoming days and weeks. We had been spending more time together, and the sex had been out of this world. But now that he was around more, he noticed I was tired all the time and occasionally came home with a glassy look in my eyes. If he watched, the tells were the same, and all there. He had to know I was smoking with Jenny and Scarlett. I wasn't doing coke-I'd kept that promise-but he had said nothing about either. I was still riding his guilt train. Had I stopped to think about it, I would have realized it was self-destructive. At some point, he would call me out, he'd be compelled to say something, and he would confront me, but I was betting he didn't think he had the right to question anything I was doing after the shit he'd done the last few months. The eye for an eye mentality was wrong all the way around, but he continued to give me passes, and I continued to take them. Tonight

There was nothing like a paper gown to make a girl feel really feminine and special. The sarcastic bitch in me had her head reared high today and was in rare form. It was bad enough I had to sit naked wrapped in a sheet of paper on a table, but I had never understood why OB/GYNs made a woman wait for an eternity in this get-up before coming in to examine the patient. It was like they got off on humiliation...mine. I had to pee in a cup because apparently, my peeing on a stick wasn't good enough to confirm my pregnancy. They repeated the same stick test themselves. They also took blood, for what I wasn't privy to, and let me listen to the heartbeat. Now here I sat, naked except for my paper comforter, waiting. I hated being idle. As far as I was concerned, if you left me in a room for an extended amount of time with nothing to do, you should have expected me to rifle through your drawers-all of them. That's exactly what I was doing when the nurse walked in. She laughed at me. I returned

My friends had been trying to get me out of the house, and I'd been successful at avoiding them, even for my birthday, but somehow, Scarlett talked me into going to De Shield's down the street from my apartment. I figured I needed to eat, and it was a casual hole-in-the-wall, so I didn't have to put on anything other than a tank top, jeans, and Docs. It took no effort, which was good because I wasn't putting forth any. Glancing in the mirror, my cheeks were pink, and my hair looked better than it ever had, thick and shiny. Gray had been right; it was much darker than it had been a couple years ago. It fell in soft, loose curls around my shoulders and down my back. I opted to pull it up into a ponytail for simplicity as my doorbell sounded.When Scarlett and I walked in the restaurant chatting, I instantly stopped speaking when we rounded the hostess stand. I couldn't have prepared myself for the sight I saw as the girl showed us to our table. Not fifteen feet inside the door sat Gray