If I Were You Read Free

morning.” She eyes her watch and
squeals. “In two hours.”
    She shoves something into my hand. “That has the key to my
apartment. On the kitchen table, you’ll find the journal and the key to the
storage unit. If it’s not cleared out in two weeks, it has to be rented, or
it’s auctioned off yet again. So take it and sell the stuff. The money is
yours. Or let it go. Either way, it doesn’t matter.” She grins. “Because I’m
eloping to Paris, then honeymooning in Italy!”
    Protectiveness fills me for Ella. I don’t want her to get
hurt and I’ve never even heard her say she loves David. “You’ve only known this
man for three months, sweetie. I’ve only met him once.” He always,
conveniently, got called away when we’d been planning to get together.
    “I love him, Sara,” she says, as if reading my mind. “And
he’s good to me. You know that.”
    No , I don’t know that, but while I try to find the
right way to say it, she is already reaching for the door. “Ella-”
    “I’ll call you when I arrive in Paris, so keep your cell
handy.”
    “Wait!” I say, shackling her arm. “How long will you be
gone?”
    Her eyes light up with excitement. “A month. Can you believe
it? A whole month in Italy. I’m living a dream.” She hugs me and gives me a
kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call and when we get back we’ll have a reception.” Her
eyes soften. “You know I wanted you with me for this, don’t you? But David knew
I had no family. He wanted to whisk me away so that it wouldn’t be painful.”
She pokes at the tuckered spot that always appears between my brows when I
frown. “Stop making that face. It’ll be wrinkled when you get older. And I’m
fine. I’m perfect, in fact.”
    “You better be,” I say, attempting my best teacher voice,
but my throat is too tight to do much more than croak out the warning. “Call me
as soon as you arrive so I know you’re safe, and I want pictures. Lots of
pictures.”
    Ella smiles brightly, “Yes, Ms. McMillan.” She turns and
rushes away, giving me a last-second wave over her shoulder before she rounds the
corner. She is gone, and I am fighting unexpected tears I don’t even
understand. I am happy for Ella but worried for her, too. I feel...I’m not sure
what I feel. Lost, maybe. My fingers curl around her keys, and I am suddenly
aware that I have just inherited a storage unit and the journals I swore I
wouldn’t read again.
     
     

 

    Chapter Two
     

     
    And then, the moment I know I will die remembering. The
moment when the steel of a blade touched my lips. The moment that he promised
there was pleasure in pain...
    Those words written in the journal replay in my head early
the next evening, the same day of Ella’s rapid departure. They haunt me to the
point I feel downright icy every time I think of them. They are why I’m here,
standing inside a temperature-controlled storage unit the size of a small
garage, that at some point I assume the journal writer leased. Thankfully there
is a dim light and the neighborhood is good. I stand here, unsure of what to
look at first, uneasy about digging through a stranger’s things.
    …the moment he promised there was pleasure in pain.
    Unbidden, the words replay in my head again. I shiver, and
not just because the journal is explicitly arousing. I shouldn’t be aroused.
Not by painful pleasure and bondage. I refuse to be aroused. I am worried
about this mysterious woman. Besides, I am my father’s daughter, just as my
mother had been my father’s wife, which translated to his puppets who didn’t
dare walk in the same shadows he did. My mother had escaped him in death, and
I’d chosen to leave him out of my life since. Despite five years without him, I
remain all too aware that the lingering effects of his heavy hand are far too
present in my life.
    I grind my teeth at the memories. I have no idea how my mind
has gone to places I try never to go. Forcefully, I refocus on the neatly
stacked