IF I Were You

If I Were You- Chapter Two

 Read the first 3 chapters -- available at all major retailers 

Fifty Shades of Grey meets Basic Instinct

 Book 1: If I Were You

Book 2: Being Me 

Book 3: Revealing Us

Book 4: No In Between

Book 5: I Belong to You

Book 6: All of Me (Available 2/2/15)

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 furniture and boxes lining the walls, as well as what looks like well-packaged artwork. A life left behind, forgotten. Who did that? Who left things that they’d clearly cared about enough to neatly pack and organize them, behind? I’m not buying the idea that some rich boyfriend had whisked this woman away to some exotic life. No one who hadn’t seen bad luck, or maybe even tragedy, did this. I’m not about to be a part of adding to this woman’s troubles by selling off her things. Not this woman, I corrected myself. Rebecca Mason is her name. That’s what the paperwork said, and as per the management they couldn’t give me her phone number and ‘it’s disconnected anyway’. 

“I’m going to find a way to contact you, and return your things,” I whisper to the room, as if I’m speaking to Rebecca, and a chill races down my spine. I feel like she is here, like I’m talking to her and it’s downright creepy. Somehow, it makes me more determined to find her.

I sigh with grim realization at what my vow means. I have to invade her privacy and dig through her things to find a way to contact her, a way to return what was left of her life. If she’s alive, I think grimly, hugging myself. 

“Stop it,” I murmur, chiding myself. The Grim Reaper mentality isn’t me. I don’t even like horror movies. The world has enough real monsters without creating fictional monsters.  

There really could be a happy reason Rebecca left her life behind. Winning the lotto. There. Yes. There was a good reason to leave all your things behind. Unlikely, but still possible. Ten million to one or so, I imagine, but possible. So why does the idea do absolutely nothing to dismiss the eerie, hollow feeling of the room?