UNTIL LOVE SETS US APART ( JENLISA)

Chapter 13

Lisa POV

Jennie... Jennie, Jennie, Jennie......

I had been rolling her name around in my head for days, like a coin on a table, the sound of it familiar by now, but no less painful every time I thought of it. I wanted to be with her so badly, but I knew that I had to give her space. Perhaps she would come back to me by her self? Or maybe she was done with me, my face and this place holding the memories of a rawness that she didn't want to face up to again.

Irene had been in touch a few times since our last date, when I had broken things off, but I had chosen to ignore her for the time being. I knew there was something up with her and her family and I didn't want to have to deal with whatever it was right now. I had enough going on already.

Rosé had been very busy of latest and I had been avoiding her. She saw something in me when I had told her Jennie had left, and I didn't want to restart that conversation. But if I was being honest with myself, I was worried that I would use Rosé as a way to track her down, to find Jennie and connect with her again, when I knew that what mattered now was giving her the space that she had made it so clear she needed.

I assumed she had returned to her family. That was what had to have happened. But that didn't make it any easier for me to handle her vanishing. I just wanted to see her one more time, to ask her if there was anything that I had done wrong, some mistake I had made that had scared her away. She didn't owe me an explanation, but I knew that I was going to be second-guessing our entire relationship for as long as I lived if I didn't get something in the way of a reason behind her leaving me so abruptly.

And it felt as though things had been going so well, too. That was the hardest part. If I had sensed her drifting away from me, had felt her moving on to a different part of her life, then that would have been different. I could have encouraged her on then, have under stood what had driven her away from me. But as it was now, I felt like my life was catching its breath, waiting to continue the next sentence, as though the penny hadn't dropped after her leaving me. I knew I wanted her back, so badly it made my heart ache, so badly it kept me up at night for hours. But I had no idea how I was meant to do that. If I was meant to do it at all...

I was sitting at my desk at work, still thinking about her, knowing that I should have been focusing on the project before me that I was meant to be taking care of. I was giving the go-ahead to a new campaign for a fresh client, and it was important that we got it right to guarantee them coming back for more. But all of this felt so distant and unimportant. And, in that moment, I knew I had to see her - just one last time before I let go - if I had I any hope of moving on with my life.

I managed to get through the rest of my day by promising myself that as soon as I got home, I would allow myself to start trying to find her. Not idly, as I had been doing, but truly. I would locate her, make sure she was safe and that she was happy, and then I would be able to move on. Once I had said goodbye and given her everything she needed to build the life that she so sorely deserved to have.

When I arrived back at my penthouse, I opened my laptop on the couch and stared at the blank screen for a long time. How was I meant to come across her again? I had to as sume that she'd left to her parents' place, so I decided to start there.

Searching her name, I managed to come across an appeal for information that had been released four years before, around the time that she had first gone missing. The picture showed her parents, drawn and pale and exhausted, standing outside what I assumed was their house - a small, humble place, but well-appointed for what it was. I squinted at the picture, downloading it and pulling it up on a program that would allow me to get a closer look, and enhanced the edges and the details until I came across something that would guide me to where I needed to go.