Piecing Together Sydney (A Sydney West Novel Book 3) (16 page)

Sometime later, Amelia snuck in and curled herself into my bed with me.

“What’s going on?” I didn’t bother opening my eyes, but I did move a little so she had room.

“Bad dream. Plus, I thought you could use some company.” She moved around, fluffing pillows and getting under the blanket.

“Mmm, yeah…” I fell back asleep, keeping a hand on the blanket. She was known for stealing the entire thing.

The wedding was in two weeks. Next month, I’d be Mrs. Sydney King and the last year of my undergrad college career will begin soon. For now, I needed to focus on being a bride-to-be and not letting anything ruin Jason and me. He was the best thing to happen to me, and I’d be lost without him. He had become such an important person in my life this past year, as if he had become another organ as needed as my heart. Without that important piece, I’d flat line.

I woke up around noon. The bed was empty, no Jason and no Amelia. I yawned, stretching my arms over my head. The house was too quiet. I traded my nightgown for a pair of jean shorts, a bra, and a white babydoll tee with the words “I’m never alone when I have books” going across the chest.

The scent of coffee hit my nose on the way down the stairs. I went into the kitchen and found Jason alone, leaning forward on the island with a mug in hand while watching something play on his phone.

“Hey, baby! Where’s Amelia and Hunter?” I passed by him to get a cup of delicious black coffee.

“They went down to the beach for lunch,” he said, sounding annoyed.

I turned away from the coffee pot and took a sip of the best stuff in the world. Jason didn’t move. He didn’t face me or seem that happy I was around.

Maybe he was hungover and my voice hurt his head?

“How was your party last night?” I closed the distance between us to kiss him, but he took a step back, looking at me as if I told him I wanted to drink his blood.

“My night was good, but I think you had more fun at yours.” His words were sharper than a dagger.

I put my mug down on the island across from him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

He slid his phone over to me. “Play the video, and you tell me.”

The phone stopped a few inches from the edge. I pushed it up a little and gave Jason a what-the-fuck look. He nodded toward the phone. For some reason, I felt nervous. I bit my bottom lip and hit the play button. The video was shaky and dark, as if it was filmed in a bar or a nightclub.

“I don’t see—”

Jason cut me off. “Keep watching.” His voice was stern, lifeless.

My gaze went up to meet his. His eyes were like cold steel. The video’s music sounded familiar. I looked down once more as the camera zoomed in on a couple. They were dancing and laughing. Holy shit! That was me and that buff dude last night at my party.

“Someone stalked me and filmed this? What the fuck?” I moved the phone back to him.

Jason frowned and pushed it back toward me. “Keep watching, Syd.” He was being short with me.

I swallowed the fear crawling up my throat and did as I was told. The video cut off at the dancing and jumped to the point right after Gaby pushed me onto that same guy. His hands were all over my back and ass. We were making out sloppily, and it was rather disgusting as he seemed to try to eat my face. I didn’t remember it like that. E was worse shit than I thought. Damn Gaby for this! How dare she…wait…she’s in the video. Amelia would’ve never filmed this. She stepped in and rescued me. Kylie wouldn’t have done it either. My chest grew tight with fear. Someone
was
stalking me.

I had enough and hit stop. “Jason, this isn’t what it looks like. My friend, now ex-friend, Gaby spiked my drink and—”

He grabbed his phone and finished his coffee. “I don’t want to hear it, Sydney. I know parties get out of hand. Hell, I had a stripper last night, but when she went to give me a lap dance I turned her down.”

Panic raised my blood pressure. I was being burned from the inside out. “I only wanted to dance and drink with my friends. I had no intention of making out with any guy or doing anything else for that matter.” I reached for his hands, but he pulled away. “Baby, don’t you believe me? Amelia had to help me out because everything was blurry and swirling.”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s bad enough I thought something like this would happen. You still have that party girl in you.”

“Jason, guilt ate into me all night because of that slip up. Amelia is my fucking witness!”

“Funny, Amelia never mentioned any of this. Said you two had some fun and cut it short because it wasn’t your scene anymore. Who am I to believe?”

Damn, Amelia was covering for me so he didn’t learn about the mistake with that tool, and a video ruined everything.

“I was drugged, though. Gaby put E in my drink. I would never lie about that.” I bowed my head. All I wanted to do was curl into myself.

“I’m going out for a bit. Need to clear my head. I’ll see you tonight.” He pocketed his phone and moved toward the living room.

Desperation flooded my system. “You can’t leave on this note! We’re stronger than this. I came home. I didn’t do anything wrong!”

He glared at me, and the look on his face was heartbreaking sorrow underneath his anger. Like a little boy who witnessed his mother stabbed to death. “I want to believe you, Syd. I really do, but with everything else going on, I’m on edge. I still love you. I just need to think.”

I couldn’t do anything. My heart was on the floor for the millionth time as he disappeared out of the house. His Jeep started, and he left me.

What the fuck just happened? Why didn’t he believe me? Did I really give him that much doubt about us? About how much I loved him and would never dare sleep with another man again? Hell, I wanted to take another shower remembering that guy last night being so close to me.

Coffee seemed mundane to me now. I left it on the island. My go-to was some Jack and sitting on the couch while the TV played a rerun of
Friends
. After a few shots, I laid back and closed my eyes.

It could’ve been minutes or hours later when Amelia and Hunter returned from the beach. The first thing she did was feel my forehead, waking me up with her cold hands.

“What’s up?” I asked, sitting up.

“Something terrible had to happen for you to abandon your coffee.” She looked around. “Where’s Jason?”

The pit in my stomach sunk deeper. Would I always feel like this? Was it my life now to be unsure and always torn apart?

“He left to clear his head. Someone taped me with that guy last night and sent him an edited video.”

“What!” She sat down next to me and patted my hair down as if I was a child. “Who? What was on it?”

I licked my dry lips and looked over at the TV playing a fast food commercial. “Me and that dirtbag dancing, then it cuts to me on top of him. We’re kissing, but there’s no footage of how I got there or what happened in the end. The way it cuts off is like we did…worse…” I blinked back tears.

“Shh, Sydney. It’s okay. We should file something against Gaby for doing this to you. That little bitch.” The look in her eye was more terrifying than any horror film I’d seen.

Hunter placed his hands on the back of the couch. “Don’t worry, Syd. He had a lot to drink last night, and with everything going on with his family, I’m sure he’ll calm down. You didn’t mean any harm.”

Well, at least Jason’s best friend was on my side. That had to be a good sign.

“Thanks. Can we watch movies until he comes back?” I laid my head on Amelia’s shoulder. “I want to escape reality for a while.”

Amelia wrapped an arm around me, giving me a side hug. “Of course. Can you pick, Hunter?”

“Sure.” He walked over to my massive collection and browsed for something.

Amelia cooed and kept hold of me like a spooked cat. I moved my head onto her lap as she ran her fingers through my long hair. She was going to be an amazing mother. Jealousy pinged in my chest knowing a baby was going to soon steal away my best friend. Only half kidding.

We watched all the
Lethal Weapon
movies and no sign of Jason. Not a peep online, nor a call or a text. Hunter tried contacting him, and nothing.

The night came and went and still no sign of Jason. I didn’t sleep, kept tossing and turning. Amelia threw up a few times in the night and came in to check on me. I told her I was fine so she could get some sleep. She didn’t need to worry about me. She needed to worry about her own wellbeing.

The wedding was in a couple weeks, and the groom was nowhere to be found.

A quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton ran through my head.

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

I felt disoriented and dizzy. I couldn’t lose my love. Not after everything we’d been through.

Sleep avoided me. I had this gut wrenching fear something was wrong. That there was a sinister reason why Jason wasn’t coming home or calling. That he couldn’t, something prevented him from doing so.

You’d rather him be in danger than fall out of love with you?

I grabbed my iPod and turned to Emilie Autumn for an escape from my thoughts. I didn’t want him to be hurt or anything. It was just a feeling deep within my core. Jason wasn’t acting like himself lately, but there was no reason he wouldn’t come home or contact anyone. I’d even called his mom and sister earlier. No word from him.

No one could disappear. Maybe he was at an arcade avoiding the world for a bit? I hoped he’d come home tomorrow and I could hold him in my arms again. It was strange sleeping alone now. I hugged Scooby-Doo to my chest and cried as music filled time and space around me.

The next day, Jason never came home. Everyone kept calling him until his voicemail was full. He never texted back, and there wasn’t a peep on social media. It was as if he fell off the face of the earth.

“Sydney, it’s been twenty-four hours and we still don’t know what happened to him. Maybe we should—”

I waved Hunter off. “Let me call him again. He could be out of range.” I dialed Jason’s number again and got the same robot woman voice saying the mailbox was full before she hung up on me.

“Fuck…” I said under my breath, letting my phone slip out of my hand and onto the couch.

Amelia sat by me, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Sweetie, this isn’t like Jason. It’s been a full day. We need to call the police and report him as a missing person.”

I bowed my head. Deep down, I knew she was right, that everyone was right. Jason was a missing person, but maybe if I didn’t say it out loud, it wasn’t true.

“I guess…” I said above a whisper, picking at my nails to keep from falling apart.

Amelia got up and dialed the police. As she told them the situation, I got woozy. “I’m going to lie down. Let me know when they’re here.” I went upstairs to my bedroom before anyone replied.

Again sleep evaded me. If Jason never showed up, would I ever dream again? The bed felt too big. I was lost in a sea of sheets and pillows. At least I could lie down and close my eyes and not have anyone bother me or give me a look of pity. Soon enough, I’d probably go numb to it all. Though I prayed they’d find Jason.

That they’d find him, and he’d be alive.

Alive and not run off with some girl.

Shit, my thoughts were wild.

***

Amelia knocked on my door. “Syd, the cops are here and they’d like your statement. We already gave them ours.”

I sat up and used my hand to shield the light she allowed in. The sun had set, making my room nice and dark. “Fine. Let me brush my hair. I’ll be down in five.”

“Okay. Do you want me to stay with you?” She took a step into the room, giving me a grim smile.

“No. I’m fine. You can go back downstairs.” I forced myself up and went into the bathroom. The door clicked shut as she left. I grabbed my brush and smoothed out what the pillows did to my hair. My reflection was of someone I didn’t know. I’d seen the red eyes all the time from lack of sleep due to partying. This time they were different. I had bags under my eyes and the blue coloring faded from my irises, almost to a dull gray. My right eye had a twitch. No point in fixing myself up more, the police probably expected me to look like crap.

As I went down the stairs, I saw two officers standing in my living room with black uniforms and talking amongst themselves. The female cop looked up and nodded to her partner.

“Hello…” I said, unsure what to say to a cop inside my house.

“You’re Sydney?” the woman officer asked, turning the page in her notebook.

Unfortunately. “Yes.”

“I’m Officer Snow and this is my partner, Officer McGuire. Could you tell me the last time you saw your fiancé, Jason King?”

“Last time I saw him was yesterday afternoon in the kitchen.”

She nodded, writing it down. “How was he? Angry, distant…?”

I shrugged. “He was kind of upset.”

Please don’t ask why.

“How come?”

Of course she had to ask.

I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. “Someone sent him a misleading video of me during my bachelorette party. It appeared as if I did something…bad, and I swear I didn’t!” I felt my eyes widen as I tried to convince the cops I didn’t cheat.

Officer McGuire gave me a long look. “Okay…did he say where he was going?”

I hugged myself. “No, just that he needed some space, but he said he’d come back that night for dinner. He isn’t the type to disappear. I mean, no one has heard from him.” I motioned to his sister, mother, best friend, and Amelia in the kitchen.

Officer Snow nodded. “Yes, we already heard their statements. You don’t think it was a kidnapping?”

My eyebrows met in confusion. “No, we’re not millionaires.”

“You’d be surprised. Does he have any enemies that you know of?” She went on.

I glanced to my right in thought. There was never anyone who threatened him. He was a college student majoring in IT. He never screwed anyone over that I knew of. Yet he was gone all the same.

“No. His father recently came back into his life, and that really affected him, but not to the point of running away from us.”

“We already spoke to him and his other son,” Officer McGuire said, scratching his chin.

My heart pinged remembering Jason’s brother he never knew about.

“So nothing else?” Officer Snow queried, placing the end of her pen in her mouth.

I shook my head. “No…wait.” I swallowed, not wanting to say it, but they needed to know. “He ran into an ex of his. She wanted to talk, and he heard her out. He said the past was behind him, but maybe not so much with her. I’m not sure if that helps.”

“What’s her name?”

“Lizzie…” Damn he never told me her last name.

Hunter stepped out of the kitchen. “Her name is Elizabeth Haverson. She’s crazy, but I doubt she could take him. She couldn’t even hold her own on a surfboard.”

Officer Snow turned toward Hunter. “What broke them up?”

Hunter stuffed his hands into his pockets. “She cheated on him with another friend of his. He flipped out and cut them both out of his life. He never saw them again, at least not until recently. Lizzie has been spotted a couple times this summer.”

“Okay, we’ll look into it. In the meantime, we’ll put a bug on the phone in case someone calls. Let us know if you think of anything else,” Officer McGuire replied. His radio crackled. He turned it down so we didn’t hear what it said.

The cops took off, leaving a card behind if we wanted to give them anything new that we forgot. I watched a ton of shows about this stuff. Now we had to wait. But what should we do? Sit around watching stupid movies as Jason could be tortured?

“We should print posters and ask people if they’ve seen him.” I grabbed my laptop and turned it on. “I have a program that can make them. Then we’ll print one and make copies at—”

Amelia wrapped her arms around me. “Syd, I don’t think that will help. People in LA don’t remember faces these days. He’s not a lost dog. Maybe we—”

I shrugged her off. “I fucking know that, Amelia. But I can’t just sit here. We need to do something. Drive around and look for him. He’s not going to appear here just because we keep thinking of him.”

She stepped back into Hunter’s embrace. Kylie sat in my rocking chair frowning and not meeting anyone’s eyes. She’d been cruel to her brother, and now he was missing. She probably felt guilty, but I couldn’t comfort her. Jason’s mom moved closer to me, giving me a hug.

“Sweetie, I know you want to help. Let’s rest for today, and tomorrow we’ll do fliers. All right?”

All my energy drained away. I was as empty and useless as a shattered bottle of whiskey.

“Fine.” I sniffed. “Might as well put our wedding plans on hold. Can’t move forward without him.” My heart sank to the floor.

Amelia reached out to me, but I ran past her. “Leave me alone,” I shouted over my shoulder.

I locked myself in my bedroom. I checked under the bed for the bottle of Jim Beam I hid there, but it was gone. Damn Amelia, mothering me at the worst time possible.

I cried on Jason’s pillows, holding Scooby close to my chest. People knocked on the door to check on me, but I told them to go. I turned down food and everything else.

Amelia called my mom, and I still wouldn’t open the door to talk to her. She said that my mom was coming over tomorrow sometime. My mom was willing to get a last minute airline ticket to comfort me. That should’ve warmed me somewhat, only the numbness had begun.

Love ruined people. I always knew it, yet I let it in. Now I was damned.

***

Amelia and Hunter made copies of the flier I made last night. Jason’s mother and sister were passing out the fliers in Malibu with my mom. The three of us climbed into my Charger and drove to downtown LA to get more attention. The ride felt longer than usual. Deep down, all I felt was somberness, slowly turning into a vast emptiness.

I parked by the curb and paid the meter. Amelia walked around the car and gave me a hug. “Do you want me to stay with you, or do you want us to—”

“We can separate. I’m okay, really. We’ll cover more ground alone.”

She nodded. “Sounds good. We can meet back at the car in an hour.”

Hunter wrapped his arm around Amelia’s waist. “This is going to be depressing.”

Amelia elbowed him in the ribs. He moaned and rubbed his side. “Let’s go,” she said sternly to him.

They walked down the road and parted ways at the intersection. Hunter crossed the street and went over to the train station. His mission was Hollywood Boulevard. Amelia was papering nearby streets, and my mission was the area around where I parked. I gathered my supplies and walked along the sidewalk, looking for a place to stick my missing poster of my beloved Jason.

A few feet around the corner laid a telephone pole. The pole’s wood was cracked and splitting from years of fliers being stapled to it. I grabbed a piece of paper, holding it in place with my right hand, and lifted up the stapler. Next to my poster of Jason was a poster of a missing bike.

Great, the love of my life is missing and so is someone’s bike. This is promising.

Tears stung my eyes. I swept them away, releasing the poster I hadn’t stapled yet. It blew away into oncoming traffic.

Fuck my life.

Despite the ice pick in my chest, I pulled out another poster and forced myself to staple it to the pole. I took a step back and stared at Jason’s handsome face. The picture we were using was one I took while we were fooling around in my dorm. He sat on me as I laid on my bed. I grabbed my phone and took a quick shot of him. Jason was smiling to the point his dimples were showing. Those silver eyes glowed with laughter.

Now it’s being used as a missing flier. The blade in my chest dug deeper, hitting bone. Would Jason be gone forever? Would we have candlelight vigil for him every year like those parents did for that missing girl back home?

I pulled myself together and moved on. There were a few coffee shops on this road and they all had billboards. Business cards for various services littered them, and so did a flier about German Shepard puppies for sale. I eyed the sign by the billboard stating you had to ask an employee permission to post. That was going to be fun.

There wasn’t a line. I went up to the counter, clenching my flier like it was a lifeline. The girl working turned around from the coffee maker and flashed me a smile. “What can I make for you today?”

“I was wondering if I could post this on your board.” I showed her my depressing flier. She looked at it and then me, pity coated her green eyes.

“I’m sorry about your friend—”

“He’s my fiancé.”

She licked her lips and looked past me at a new customer coming in. “Oh, that’s horrible. You can post it. Hope you find him.”

I turned around, letting the new customer have the counter. “Thanks,” I said over my shoulder.

She was already with the customer. I no longer mattered.

***

If one more person looked at me as if I lost a baby to a horrible accident, I was going to pull out all my hair. Actually, I liked my hair. No, I was going to punch them in the throat. People thought it was nice to wish me luck or whatever with finding Jason. All I wanted was silence. Just look at the damn poster, and if you’ve seen him, call the number. That’s it.

The last coffee house on the block was yet another Irish Brothers. I pinned my flier and joined the line to order a tall black coffee. A girl sitting at a table to my left flicked back her long black hair, drawing my attention. I narrowed my eyes at her. That bitch was none other than Lizzie.

I bit my bottom lip, debating what I should do. Stay in line and order coffee, then leave. Order coffee, then walk by Lizzie’s table. Or flat out confront her.

Blood was all I could taste. Before I could decide what to do, Lizzie got up. She brushed past me with her coffee cup.

“Hello…Sydney is it?” she purred, tossing her cup away.

“Yes. What do you want?” I crossed my arms over my chest. She was an evil snake in the grass. I had to be careful, yet all I wanted to do was cut that bitch.

“Just saying hello to a familiar face.” She looked over at the board and tsked her tongue. “Pity about Jason.”

My lip curled in disgust. “How do you—”

She leaned in close to me, smelling my neck. “You smell pretty good for a girl who just lost everything.”

I pushed her away. My neck felt like she had burned me with acid. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Why are you even here?”