Betrayal with Me (Spin-off)

[12]: Vanished

A/N: So I have the entire story plotted out in my head and I think this is going to be a fairly long novel.  Hopefully, I don't bore you with it.   Also, sorry for the slower than usual updates, I kept getting distracted with movies and other things around my house.  Eek! Thanks for reading!

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[Scott's POV]

         You don't know what you got until it's gone.  Is that the cliche?  I think it is.  I use to laugh at people who use these types of asinine comments, at the absurdity of them.  I mean, who says these types of things?  I would laugh at them, at what I viewed as their stupidity.  But now I am one of those people, because the cliche couldn't fit more in my life than it did now.  It has been 173 days since I have last seen her.  That's 5 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days.  And everyday, I die more inside.

        I wake up the same way I have for these close to 6 months now, my head resting atop my office desk.  An empty whiskey bottle in one hand, and her picture in the other.  Every morning I can smell the stale scent of alcohol on my face.  Everyday, I wake up hoping it had all been a nightmare, but it never was.  I would then seek comfort in the only place I found salvation, at the bottom of a liquor bottle.  And so it became routine now.  Wake up hungover, and spend the rest of the day working on the next mornings hangover.  A depressive cycle, but one I didn't plan on giving up.

        I had lost her, the woman made for me, my better half.  And all for what?  I could put all the blame on Drew and Giselle, but they didn't make me do what I did to her.  I could have stopped punishing her.  She made one mistake.  For that one mistake, I punished her thousands of times over.  I kept telling myself she deserved it, that she had it all coming to her.  That night almost a year ago, a dark passenger had hitched a ride with my soul.   I had allowed his dark thoughts and wants to override all sense of reason.  And if I were honest, I wanted someone else to know his company as well.  So I had invited Elise without her knowledge, I had recruited her to accompany the journey.

        What happened to me, that I would allow myself to do those things to her?  What had I become?  This wasn't the man my parents had raised.  I wasn't influenced to be this type of man, by any one around me.  It must have been in me all along.  I was born with a bad seed inside of me, that I cultivated and allowed to prosper.  I deserved her wrath and retribution.  I deserved to live with this guilt of knowing I was a terrible, pathetic man.  I didn't deserve anyone's love.  Who would love a man like me? I took the love I was freely given, and dismissed it.  Telling myself that my love was worth more than theirs.  What kind of sick demented mind would think that?  Me, that's who.

        For nearly six months, I knew that it was all my fault and my fault alone.  But even with all that, I still craved Elise.  I wanted the opportunity to beg her on my knees to find the forgiveness that I never showed her.  Knowing that she was everything I wasn't, good.  She was capable of doing things that I could only dream of, but I had blinded myself.  I still keep hoping she will pop up one day, on the porch.  Or that I would find her somehow, even though I hadn't yet.

        That night, so many nights ago, I had started the search I still continue today.  After reading the note, and feeling sorry for myself.  I sat up from the bed, dried the tears that had been flowing freely from my eyes, and tried to form a plan.  Thoughts of where she had gone, and how I could find her bounced around in my head.  Could she have gotten far in the span of a few hours?  I didn't know, but I knew someone whom might know.   I reached into my pant pocket to grab my cell phone, when I realized I must have left it in the backseat of the car in my haste to reach Elise.  Quickly, I walked the fifteen or so steps from our bed to the bedroom door.  Exiting, I walked through our house.  The quiet was unnerving to me, there wasn't a sound.  It was as if its very life essence left with Elise, as if everything ceased to exist.  I hated it.