JUSTIN

I haven’t really left my house in weeks, since my interview with Ellen. I know I should not have said what I did. It is our private business but for some reason I couldn’t control it. Ever since I told everyone on Ellen about Arianna, the media has had a field day, in disbelief that a girl could turn me down. I’m not God. I cannot make her love me even though I wish I could, or at least I did.

I have been doing everything I can to keep myself distracted form thinking about Arianna but it seems almost impossible the more I try. I try to just drive around town, and I think about our high speed chase. I go write, and it is all about her. I watch TV, and there seems to be media coverage about me, Arianna, or both all over the place, and so on.

Right now I am cleaning up my house and rearranging furniture once again, because it seems to be the only thing that distracts me for longer than five minutes. I am in the middle of moving one of my couches when my doorbell rings. I sigh as I go to answer it.

I open the door and my jaw hits the ground, but it quickly closes and tightens up. “What do you want?” I ask through clenched teeth. “Come to rub it in? Got a wedding invitation?” I glare at him.

“You need to shut the hell up.” He tells me.

I roll my eyes. “Don’t come to my house and make demands. That might work in your territory, but this is mine and you have no rights here.” I tell him.

“I want to kill you so bad but I can’t.” James says as he tightens his fists.

I just walk away from him to go back to my rearranging. “Why can’t you?” I am curious what his answer will be.

“Arianna would have my head on a platter,” is his reluctant answer.

“I’m sure” I reply shortly. “Why are you here? We both know you hate me, and the feeling is mutual, but you’ve won. You got Arianna. You don’t need to rub it in.” I tell him trying to just end this conversation.

“She’s not herself.” He tells me in a huff.

“Well I don’t know what you want me to say. I refuse to be a relationship counsel for you two, so you are wasting your time.”

“She won’t even work anymore.”

“You’re here because she doesn’t kill or torture people anymore? Man, you must be devastated.” I say sarcastically.

“You may have hated her lifestyle, but you still loved her and you accepted it because you know it is a part of who she is.” James tells me.

 I just roll my eyes as I throw my hands up, “yeah and we all saw where that got me. Tortured almost to death for loving someone who chose to save another man in the end. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone and forget all that” I walk towards my door and open it to give him the hint that he is not welcomed in my home.

He just crosses his arms. “Is that what you think happened? Is that the reason you think she chose how she did?”

“Obviously. You got to leave to freedom while I got to stay behind and be tortured. She couldn’t stand the thought of you being left behind to feel that pain.”

At this point, James starts laughing hard, and this definitely pisses me off more. “You truly are an idiot. If she had really loved me, she would have let me stay. She knew that’s what I wanted, but she couldn’t do that. She chose you to stay because you were safer there.” He tells me and I just give him a confused look, but I don’t say anything. He shakes his head but continues. “She wanted you there because she could watch over you and hopefully steer the pain more towards her. It killed her to see you go through that but she knew there was no chance for you in ‘freedom.’ She was right, too. As soon as I got outside, I was ambushed. I am trained though. I got hit pretty bad but you didn’t see that. You would never have made it through alive, plus I had to go rally up more men or we never would have made it through like we did.” He continues on with his explanation. “They would have killed you in seconds and then possibly us soon after, had she chosen to keep me. She chose you to stay because she loves you and through you’d understand that she did it because she could keep you alive and would rather have you in pain for a short while then dead for forever, but you didn’t let her explain this.” He finishes.

I had listened to everything and tried to talk myself out of believing any of it but I couldn’t.

“You’re a fucking idiot and because you’re so selfish, Arianna continues to put herself in danger, among others, because she’s reckless now. She goes out and just barrels into situations with no plan, she refuses to listen to me, she has pulled away from her two closet friends, which suits meme fine but she needs them, and she sits around wondering what she could or should have done to make things different with you. I suggest you get off your high horse and talk to her before she does something we all regret, mainly her.” He demands.

“What’s that suppose to mean?” I ask, not sure what I want to know.

“She’s going to get herself killed or she’s going to lose control and hurt or kill someone she doesn’t mean to. She pointed a gun at Tabbetha the other day.” He informs me and shock registers immediately on my face.

“She wouldn’t.” I try to convince myself.

“She did.”

“Well I don’t know what you expect me to do. She’s a killer. I don’t think I can do or say anything to change that, and I don’t want to be around that.” I say quietly, more to myself than him.

“Well you need to figure all that out by yourself. Do you love her enough to see who she truly is or do you only see part of what she does? You have to make that decision. Now that I am completely disgusted with myself because of this whole conversation, I’m leaving.” James tells me and finally moves to the door. “I just came to let you know. She saved your life.”

With that he leaves me to my racing thought about everything that I thought I knew.