Reality is a devil. No one can outrun it. It always catches up to you.
“Nikki? Nikki?” a young man calls from behind the counter, scanning the small crowd waiting for their orders.
My eyes read his name tag—Jeff. I wonder what Jeff’s life is like. Does he have a family? A girlfriend? A boyfriend? Does he ski? Does he secretly have an obsession with serial killers? Does he—
“Nikki?” he calls out once more before my brain finally registers the name.
You would think that after all this time, I would be better at responding to that name, but here I am, looking like an idiot as I approach the counter. Grabbing the pizza from Jeff, I offer a smile that I’m sure shows my embarrassment.
But he brushes me off without a glance or a word, grabbing the next order to hand out. Everyone else might be offended or upset to be forgotten so easily, but not me, never me. A ghost is what I became all those years ago and a ghost I will remain.
Hiding in the background is a skill that I acquired after three years of practice. And I walk out of the pizza parlor with the same permanent sinking feeling that lives in my gut, one that will stay with me until the day I die. Or the day he does.
Because every face has his eyes. Every shadow has his profile, his figure. Every laugh is an echo of the past. Every scream is my voice, and every minute of my future is stolen.
One day, no matter how hard I resist, death will come, and he won’t come knocking. He will come with rage and fury that would make the Devil jealous, and when he sees fit, he will kill me and bottle up my screams as a keepsake.
My feet carry me out of the building in precise steps, one after the other. Taking a deep breath, I turn toward my shop, Nikki’s Coffee. My free hand slips into my pocket and grabs my keys, fiddling until it wraps around the one I need.
As I approach the door, my phone starts ringing, and I slide the key into the top dead bolt and unlock it, ignoring the sound going off in my pocket. I repeat the same steps on the next two dead bolts and let myself inside. My phone quiets at the same time the door seals shut.
Silence envelops me, calm, reassuring, deafening silence. Most people can’t stand it. They have to sleep with a TV on, a radio on. They have to have some form of buzzing around them to drown out their thoughts. It gives them a sense of comfort. But this is my comfort.
Silence is my friend. It protects me.
I walk toward the restrooms and unlock the door to my loft, pulling out my phone. Chloe’s name pops up next to Missed Call.
Chloe is my best friend, my little trust fund baby, who moonlights as my hero. I got out of Oregon as fast as I possibly could. I drove to what I thought would be the quietest town I could get to at that day and time. I watched her enter her house alone and thought she might be able to point me to the homeless shelter or at least give me a place to crash for the night.
But when I showed up on her doorstep, quite literally, bruised black and blue, she didn’t bat an eye, and she immediately took me under her wing. She seemed to sense my fear and desperation, and she saved me. She is the sole reason for me being where I am right now, both physically and mentally.
She didn’t hesitate; she ushered me inside and refused to let me leave until I opened up to her. Trust me, I tried to leave. I was terrified that I couldn’t trust her, that she might know him. That she would believe him because of who he was. But she didn’t, and she didn’t care who he was or the power and position he still held. She risked everything to help a stranger she owed nothing to. She became a stranger I would owe everything to. She gave me a chance at life again.
After I enter my loft, I lock the door, which takes longer than you might imagine. I start at the top with the chain lock, moving downward to two dead bolts, a swing bar, then a custom barrel bolt—ten inches in length—and last but not least, the open bar barricade. Which is a fancy term for a two-by-four, held in place by two metal brackets.
Ding. My phone rings in my pocket. It is Chloe’s text, which always follows a missed call.
She is a bit older than me. She’s twenty-nine, and I’m twenty-two. Our relationship bounces between a mother and daughter to sisters to best friends, depending on the situation. At times, it can be confusing, but I swallow the discomfort because I owe her everything. This coffee shop might have my fake name on the door, but it has her real one on the lease.
The same goes for my car, my phone, my debit cards. I don’t exist. I am merely an extension of Chloe Dupont.
It was her idea for the coffee shop. She wanted a business adventure of her own, outside of what her family does, and I was the perfect built-in worker.
The Duponts are filthy rich. They own Zonama, the largest online retailer. I’m not talking millions. I’m talking billions. They influence the entire economy with their platform. It’s equal parts impressive and intimidating.
Why they had picked Duluth to headquarter in surprised me. Why not pick, like, California or a major US city? But Chloe said that her dad wanted to keep it in a smaller town, and no one questioned his decision. Apparently, he had spent a lot of time here when he was younger and wanted to move back.
I’ve only met her parents one time. They were nice and incredibly down-to-earth despite the empire they had built and the wealth they had both been born into.
Ding. The follow-up reminder that, two minutes ago, I got a text.
Chloe: Hi! Did you eat tonight?
I type out a quick response.
Me: I just got home with pizza! 🙂
Chloe: Good. Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning! XO
Without sending a response, I lock my phone and set it on my kitchen counter. No other texts or calls will come through tonight. Unless they’re from Chloe. I know that for a fact. Because there is only one contact saved in my phone—hers.
I pour myself a glass of water, quickly scarf down three slices of my pizza, and then store the rest in my fridge for later.
My bed is calling to me like a siren. With my mug of water, I swipe my phone from the counter, and in less than five steps, I’m at the edge of my bed, pulling the comforter back and climbing in.
I don’t think the loft was ever intended to be used for a living space, but Chloe had a vision when she saw the place and turned her vision into a reality.
Her brother, Derek, is a surgeon. He works constantly, but he still managed to find time to do the majority of the physical labor while Chloe decorated the small studio apartment with the softest hues in pale and earth tones. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple—she picked every color of the rainbow. And somehow, it still looks put together and simple.
She was also the one who insisted I dye my hair the pale pink it is right now. My natural color is comparable to the brown hues of dark chocolate. And I had never done a color outside of going a little lighter or darker brown, outside of my one slipup. So, going pale pink is something Trey would never expect, so different from my usual routine.
It took much longer than I’d expected to get from my dark brown to this shade of pink. And I vividly remember the anxiety and bone-deep fear that coursed through me as Chloe’s hairdresser dyed my hair. The fear that he had instilled in me if I broke any of his rules.
I’d made the mistake of shaking things up when I was still with him, opting for a red hue in my hair.
I paid the price for that mistake. I learned two lessons that day: Trey Roark didn’t want to love me; he wanted to own me, shape me, and mold me into whatever he desired. And I learned to never make the same mistake twice.
My fingers danced over the doorknob before twisting it, and I walked into the entrance of his home. Nerves coursed through me.
What if he hates it?
I’d decided to add some red highlights and a reddish glaze over my hair. Along with the color shift, I let the hairstylist cut a few more inches off than she normally did. Instead of hitting below my breasts, my new hair stopped right at my collarbone.
“Hey, babe. I have a little surprise to show you,” I sang through the house.
Trey was probably still holed up in his office. He often spent long hours there.
I was right.
Five feet down the hall, the office door opened with a fierce force. An angry Trey strolled through, eyes on his feet. “This day could not get any fucking worse.”
Hoping he liked the change, I cleared my throat, attempting to grab his attention. But when he looked up, my heart cracked, broke. And so did any shred of Trey I’d thought I knew.
He looked at me with disgust, like the mere sight of me caused him physical pain.
When he spoke, his voice was furious, ragged. “What have you done to yourself? I just told you how horrible my day was, and you thought this would make it better? Stupid. I like your hair brown, and you know that. Are you intentionally trying to piss me off?”
I fiddled with the healthy ends of my hair, my heart beginning to race faster and faster with every step he took toward me. “I-I thought a change would b-be fun.”
My breaths were coming in and out in short bursts. Trey wouldn’t physically hurt me. Sure, he’d said things some might find mean, cruel even. He was an emotional guy who always said things he didn’t mean and always made up for it later.
I heard it before I felt it. The smack of flesh on flesh. My cheek caught on fire.
He had slapped me. Hard.
His scowl deepened. I still couldn’t believe he had just hit—
Another smack. My other cheek burned hotter, and a stream of warm liquid ran down my face.
“I don’t like your hair like this. You look like a cheap whore.”
Smack. Burning hotter than the last.
“Why would you try to make my day worse? I liked your hair before. My girlfriend will not look like a slut with this fake red.”
A harder smack. My lip split.
“You will not stray from what I like. Next week, you will get this fixed. And I do not want to see a strand of your hair resembling what it is now.”
Smack. Harder. Smack.
I remained frozen in place, unable to move. Both out of shock and out of fear.
I anticipated the next blow, but it didn’t come. But he wasn’t done yet.
His hands closed over my throat, and in the blink of an eye, he slammed me into the wall behind me, squeezing harder by the second.
He leaned his forehead against mine as he said, “Baby, you know I didn’t want to do that, right?” His grasp softened until he was just pinning me against the wall with barely any force. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. I’ve just had a really bad day. You know I love you.”
As fast as it had all seemed to happen, it ended. And when his office door closed, the pain settled in. I immediately questioned if what had just happened was a figment of my imagination, if it was just a bad daydream.
My shaky hands found my tender face, and it was soaked. My fingers drifted to my throat, and when I swallowed, there was pain that burned like fire. With my lips quivering, I walked out of his house in silence. I listened for the slightest creak of a board or turn of a knob.
But thankfully, silence remained.
And by the following Friday, my hair was dark brown once again, courtesy of Trey making the appointment himself. I was also gifted flowers and a new diamond bracelet that I found on his kitchen counter when I let myself in that evening. Along with a note that read, I’m so sorry, honeybee. I didn’t mean to go as far as I did. I never want to hurt you. I love you. I hope you can see that. It will never happen again.
That was one of the many lies he told.
Because it did happen again. It happened when he hit me so hard that I went unconscious, when he kicked me so hard that it broke some of my ribs, when he grabbed my hair so hard that it ripped skin from my scalp, when he threw me down the stairs and I ended up in the hospital from the terrible “accident.”
Lie. Lie. Lie. Endless lies.
Which was why I had to get out, escape. And there was only one way he would let me leave.
His own words were, “You are mine. Always mine. No one else will love you or touch you. Till death do us part.”
So, I died in every sense that mattered.
My parents buried an empty coffin, but they didn’t know that. They thought I was inside, starting to rot away. They mourned me, as did Trey in his own sick, twisted way. My friends cried and then eventually moved on with their lives—I assume at least.
Everyone in my life thought I had died, everyone but me. No loose ends. That was the only way it would work. And it did. It worked.
But I can’t take a chance. One slipup, and he’ll find me. I know for a fact that if I had stayed or if he ever found out that I was alive, he would kill me.
The day they buried my coffin, Nikki Satinn was born, and Morgan Dove died.
And that is the way it will stay.
