Chapter 68: A Blow To The Gut (ii)
My hand was on the door handle and it is trembling. My vision swam with tears and the desperate need for air, clean air that wasn’t thick with his accusations and my own suffocating humiliation. Every cell in my body screamed at me to escape this metal box, this conversation... this man.
Adrien slammed on the brakes, hard.
The sudden jolt sent me lurching forward against the seatbelt. A sharp breath hitched in my throat, half shock, half relief. The tires squealed briefly before the car settled, idling roughly by the side of the road. We were somewhere unfamiliar.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t turn to look at me. His hands remained clenched on the wheel, but the white tension in his knuckles seemed to have spread across his entire frame. He was rigid, silent.
The sudden stop had momentarily stunned the panic out of me, but it rushed back in an instant, stronger than before. The silence between us wasn’t calm; it was heavy, dangerous.
My hand fumbled with the door handle, pulling the latch up. The click sounded deafening in the sudden stillness and I pushed the door open.
I stepped out, heels sinking slightly into damp gravel, the door left swinging open behind me. I didn’t slam it. I didn’t even look back.
The air hit me first—cool, thick with the weight of a storm rolling in. The sky, once a warm amber, had turned a bruised gray. Clouds moved like they were holding something back.
"Isabella, wait." His voice was low, tight, but I barely registered it.
"No," I choked out. "I can’t. I can’t be here."
My legs felt like lead, but I continued walking anyways. I needed to run, to put distance between me and him, between me and his poisoned perception of me.