Chapter 137: Sleepless night

The next morning, Mia walked out of the laundry room carrying the small bundle of clothes she’d just taken out of the dryer, she padded barefoot and wet-haired through the silent living room and into the room where she’d spent a nearly sleepless night last night.

It was ten o’clock in the morning, and judging from the sound of rushing water in the next room, she assumed Neil had also slept late and was now in the shower because he had woken up late just like her. She hadn’t been able to sleep through out the whole night until it was dawn, and now she had woken up with a terrible headache, that throbbed her head whenever she bent down.

She went through the route of blowing her hair dry, then she brushed it and pulled on the trouser and sweater she had worn three days ago when she drove to Novaria. That morning seemed like weeks ago, because it was the last time everything had been normal in her life.

Now nothing was normal anymore, least of all her feelings about herself. She’d been taken against her will by an escaped convict—an event that would have made an ordinary, decent woman hate her kidnapper and despise everything he represented. Any other woman would have fought Neil at every turn while simultaneously trying to foil his plans, escape from his clutches, and get him recaptured and sent to prison where he belonged! That’s what a good, decent young woman would do.

But that wasn’t what Mia Harrison had done, Mia thought with bitter self-disgust. No indeed. Instead, she’d allowed him to kiss and touch her; worse, she had liked the feeling and didn’t want it to stop. Last night, she’d pretended to herself she only meant to comfort an unfortunate man, that she was merely being kind as she’d always been, but in the harsh light of day, she knew that was a complete lie!

If Neil had been some other man, she wouldn’t have flung herself into his arms and tried to kiss away his unhappiness. Nor would she have been so eager to believe he was innocent! The truth was that she’d believed Neil’s ridiculous words of innocence because she wanted to believe him, and then she’d "comforted" him because she was disgustingly in love with him in the past.

Instead of escaping and getting him recaptured at that rest stop yesterday morning, she had lain in the snow and kissed him, ignoring the very clear possibility that if she were to scream for help, Neil might not be able to shoot all the truck drivers down before they’d escape and get him captured.

For the past five years, she had carefully evaded any sexual advances of any other men, including Owen, her fiance by making him believe that she wanted that to happen after their wedding, while hypocritically congratulating herself for making him wait. Now, however, the truth was glaringly and painfully obvious: She’d never been sexually attracted to any other men, and now she understood why. It was because she could only be attracted to the first man she’d ever loved, a murderer.

Other men, who were decent didn’t turn her on, but a dangerous, violent, temperamental Adonis obviously did.

As those realizations dawned on her, she froze momentarily before she began to hear voices from her past rang in her ears; voices of people cursing at her for what was never her doing.

"Did you think you can ever come clean of this, Mia Harrison? No, you can’t, you are a murderer as much as Neil Wayner! You told him to kill Diane and Alaric and your poor mother! A nurse at the hospital you were admitted in reported to the authorities about your mom telling you to stay away from the gray eyed man, but you refused. And when she must have insisted, you sent him to kill her so you could be with him! You are a devil in the shape of an angel, may the Lord punish you and may you rot in the pits of hell along with your lover!"

"You killed them! You are to blame for Neil Wayner’s crimes, you should be sentenced to prison along with him to rot in there!"

"Oh look who is here, the devil herself. Don’t let her use her sinful hands to touch any of your things before she’ll put her curse on it. Her poor mother must be so disappointed in her!"

Mia squeezed her eyes closed, trying to shut out the painful memories and voices from the past to concentrate Instead on Rayne’s voice and Owen, who’d agreed to marry her and had worked hard to help restore her image in society. "It’s not your fault, Mia," they would assure her whenever she started to blame herself for things she knew nothing about.

And whenever she hated herself for harboring any feelings for Neil, Rayne would always say, "It’s fine to love the man you thought he was, don’t beat yourself up for something that is out of your control."

Mia braced her hands on the dresser and bent her head thinking about those words. "You were wrong, Rayne..." she whispered brokenly.

She realized the ugly truth now, she wasn’t just attracted to the man she thought he was, Instead, she was attracted to Neil Wayner himself regardless of what he’d done and who he was. He had fascinated her from the moment she saw him on the rooftop of Ivy Grove library, and he had again now. And the revolting truth was that she’d wanted to go to bed with him last night, and he’d also known it then.

Mia knew that was the real reason why he had been angry and disgusted with her when she called a halt to the lovemaking— he’d been angry of her cowardice and her insult of indirectly calling him a sex-deprived animal. She’d wanted to go to bed with him as soon as he began kissing and touching her.

And as all those realizations settled on her, she couldn’t help the self-disgust that overwhelmed her at once. She was ashamed of herself for daring to want a murderer, a short-tempered psychopath. She had to leave him before she’d end up doing something she’d forever regret in the future.

Make up your mind, Mia... Slowly, Mia lifted her face and gazed at her reflection in the mirror while a new strength, a new force, built inside of her. She hadn’t yet done anything that was completely inexcusable. Not yet.

And before she did do something to betray herself and her upbringing, she was going to get the hell out of Neil Wayner’s clutches! No, she corrected herself grimly, she was going to get the heck out of his life and get him out of hers completely!

Today. She had to get away today, before her weak will and fragile moral crumbled in the face of his dangerous appeal. If she stayed, she would become his accomplice in fact, and when she did, she would sink beyond social and moral redemption. With an almost hysterical strength, Mia vowed to get away from him today no matter what.

Walking over to the bedroom wall, she pressed a button on the wall and the dark, one-sided glass wall, revealed the outside world. She glanced out at the gray, ominous-looking morning with soft snowflakes descending. Overhead, heavy snow clouds were piled high and the wind was howling through the pine trees, rattling the roof.

As she stood there, mentally trying to retrace the route they had taken up to the mountains, a few snowflakes blew past the glass and she grimaced inwardly at the sight. In the past days, she had seen enough snow to last her a lifetime! She wanted to go home and relax her exhausted nerves.

Mia lifted her head, startled by the sudden sound of the television. The man who had caused her all this misery was obviously dressed now and in the living room, probably waiting for the news to be shown again.

For a minute she considered trying to lock herself up in this nice warm room until he finally left for wherever he was going, but that was impossible and impractical. She’d still have to eat, and even if she locked the door, she couldn’t do anything about the windows. Moreover, the longer she stayed with him, the less chance she had of convincing the authorities and the citizens of their country that she hadn’t been a willing accomplice nor the bedmate of a murderer.

With a nervous sigh, Mia faced the fact that the only route to freedom and to restore her respect in society, was outdoors, across this unfamiliar snow-covered mountain. If only she could figure out a way to take back her car keys from him, that would have been much better than to walk on foot and freeze to death. But If she was going to escape on foot, which seemed likely, the first requirement was for her to find warmth. She had to make sure she would be warm through out her long journey.

Turning away from the glass wall, Mia headed for the large walk-in closet, hoping to borrow some of his warmer clothes. A few moments later she uttered a little cry of joy at her luck. Near the back of the closet were what seemed to be one-piece snowsuits for adults.

They were two of them, both black, as usual of a man who was obsessed with dark color, but one was much smaller, and when she held it up to herself, she knew it would fit her perfectly. Tossing it over her arm, she returned to the bedroom and began searching through the contents of the drawers of the nightstand. A moment later, she suppressed another laugh of delight as she brought out a long-sleeved, long-legged set of thermal underwear from the drawer, like the snowsuit, it was of her size when she put it on.

However, she struggled afterwards to button her trouser over the thermal underwear, and once she finally did the button, the trousers were so tight she couldn’t bend her knees, but Mia barely noticed the inconvenience. Her mind was on the best way to deceive Neil into relaxing his guard long enough for her to escape and, if she had to leave on foot, to trick him somehow into not coming after her until she had an excellent head start. For that reason, she delayed putting on the snowsuit for the time being. At present, it seemed far wiser to make him think she was simply going outdoors for a few minutes to get some air.

"You can do this, Mia." She assured herself determiningly.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read