Текст книги "Clipped Wings"

Автор книги: Helena Hunting

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

TK met us at the door of my apartment, meowing up a storm because her dish was empty. Hayden fed her and gathered her things while I packed an overnight bag. I was excited about spending the night at his place. Things were changing between us, and this new intimacy was something I wanted to foster. I was finally beginning to accept that what I had with Hayden couldn’t be compared to what I’d had with Connor. My life had been irrevocably altered. I couldn’t make time rewind, and I didn’t want to anymore.

As I came out of the bathroom, the door buzzer went off.

“Can you get that?” I asked. “It’s probably Chris. He keeps hitting the wrong button. Sarah should just give him a key.”

Hayden rolled his eyes and hit the buzzer while I carried an armload of supplies to my bedroom. I dumped them in the bag, moving items around to make it all fit. I heard the muffled sound of conversation and assumed Hayden was talking to Chris.

TK, who had been sniffing around in my bag, jumped off the bed and padded out of the room. “I’m ready!” I called out and followed after her.

Hayden was standing in the doorway, blocking the view of the hall. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he sounded as tense as he looked.

“Is everything okay?” I asked uncertainly.

Hayden turned, his mouth set in a hard line. As he moved, the person in the hall came into view. My bag made a heavy thud as it hit the floor.

“Trey.”

33

TENLEY

Everything I’d done to keep my worlds separate unraveled as the two collided. Panic surged through me. Memories of the months after the crash and Trey’s toxic presence sucked the breath from my lungs. Fear made my knees weak.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, terrified the lies I’d fed Hayden would be exposed.

“I did warn you.” He held up a manila envelope.

“You’re subpoenaing me?”

“That’s a stupid question, Tenley. I told you I would,” Trey replied. He would do anything in his power to ruin the good things in my life, including what I’d found with Hayden.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Hayden snapped and looked to me. “Who is this prick?”

“Your choice of company is rather lacking,” Trey said to me as he gestured at Hayden.

“I’m right here, motherfucker. If you have something to say, you say it to me.” Hayden took a defensive stance, angling his body toward Trey.

If it had been anyone else, I would have appreciated the protective impulse, but with Trey it revealed too much about my relationship with Hayden. I inched closer to the door, hoping to act as a physical barrier between the two men.

“I’m on my way out. Now isn’t a good time,” I said weakly.

“Oh, that’s quite obvious. However, I’m not leaving. I told you what would happen if the paperwork wasn’t returned.” His sharp tone changed, reflecting cold calculation as he graced me with a frosty smile. “You’re not being very hospitable. I’ve been driving for six hours. The least you could do is invite me in.” He addressed Hayden, fake civility in place. “Tenley seems to have forgotten her manners. I’m Trey—”

“Please don’t,” I pleaded.

“—Tenley’s brother-in-law, for all intents and purposes,” he finished.

The floor dropped out from under me. The foundation of my new life turned to rubble with one simple truth.

Hayden’s brow creased. “You didn’t tell me you had a sister.”

“She doesn’t,” Trey supplied.

I hated Trey more than anyone in that moment, even more than myself.

The color drained from Hayden’s face, confusion replaced by dismayed understanding.

“I was going to tell you,” I whispered.

“Oh, for chrissake,” Trey said through a burst of incredulous laughter. “Are you fucking this degenerate? And you didn’t tell him about Connor? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Hayden said through clenched teeth.

He sought to move me out of the way, gunning for Trey, his body tight with rage. I resisted, hands on Hayden’s chest, worried he would rip Trey apart and end up in cuffs. Trey would never win a physical fight with Hayden, but he had the kind of connections that would make Hayden’s life miserable if Hayden laid a finger on him.

Trey was implacable in the way he dealt with others, and he was almost impossible to rile. I’d known him my entire life; he was aware of all my shortcomings. And he knew better than anyone how to cut me off at the knees.

“Hayden, don’t. I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted you to know.”

He stepped back, out of my reach. “Why were you on that plane?” he asked, disconcertingly calm.

“For a wedding,” I whispered.

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

Hayden closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and when he opened them again, they were cold. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

“Please try and understand, you never would have agreed to the tattoo—”

“The tattoo? That’s what this is about? The fucking tattoo?” His anger flared. “You can’t be serious. After everything we’ve been through, after tonight, that’s the reason you didn’t tell me you lost your fucking fiancé? Because I wouldn’t have agreed to the ink?”

“That’s not . . .” I hesitated, not wanting to have such a private conversation in front of Trey. “I didn’t want you to see me differently.” I gave him the words I used not so long ago, when he found out about the accident. It was a facet of the truth. At the time I didn’t want to own how I felt about Hayden because the guilt was too consuming. I realized now it wasn’t going to go away. I was kidding myself tonight thinking I could accept the way I felt about him. It would always be like this; me wanting a person I could never truly have. I would never be whole.

He barked out a laugh. “You’re supposed to be married, Tenley. And from the look of this guy”—he pointed at Trey—“he was pretty straightlaced. How I see you is the least of your issues.”

“As moving as this whole thing is, I don’t have time for the drama. You need to go,” Trey said to Hayden as he checked his watch.

Hayden’s head turned slowly in Trey’s direction. “Are you still here? You know, you’re really starting to piss me off.”

“I can’t believe you’ve traded Connor for this,” Trey said with a disgusted glare. “Are you happy shitting all over his memory? Did you think it would be fun to see how the other half lives? Slum it for a while? Or are you punishing yourself? That’s something you would do, isn’t it?”

“Why are you letting this asshole talk to you like this?” Hayden asked, his voice raised.

I couldn’t process it all. Trey’s arrival, legal papers in hand, Hayden finding out about Connor—it was too much. I didn’t deserve Hayden. I didn’t deserve anyone. My dreams had become a premonition; I was too broken to be loved. I could never give him all of me.

“I didn’t want to hurt anymore.” All the words suddenly jammed in my throat.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Hayden asked, appalled.

He took a step closer until we were almost touching. His hurt and anger enveloped me. It felt like razor blades were serrating me from the inside.

“You should go,” I whispered.

“Tenley, look at me.”

I shook my head, eyes trained on the floor. His finger came up under my chin. Misery ripped through me as I realized this would probably be the last time he touched me. I took a deep breath as he lifted my head. He searched my face for something, some sign that I was still there with him. But I shut down, returning to the numb state I was in when I first arrived in Chicago.

“He’s right, isn’t he? I’m your punishment.”

Remorse kept me tongue-tied.

His thumb brushed along my jaw. “It was never about the tattoo. Not for me.” His hand dropped.

When he turned and walked out the door, my whole world caved in again. The agony his departure unleashed took me down. It was so familiar and yet so different this time. I sank to the floor. I watched Trey’s feet cross the threshold into the room, and the door closed behind him. The lock slid into place and he stood before me. I was lost in grief and guilt. I didn’t have the energy left to fight.

“Always so dramatic,” he sighed. He set his briefcase down and knelt in front of me. Taking my chin in his hand, he forced my head up. “Look at you, such a mess. What did you think running away would accomplish?”

“I hate you,” I whispered, on the brink of tears. I didn’t want to lose it in front of him. It was his favorite kind of ammunition to use against me.

“Maybe right now you do, but when you’re back home and thinking clearly, you’ll thank me.” He let go but stayed where he was.

I should have signed over the house when he’d asked in the first place; I’d have been free of him now if I had. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” Trey asked in a low, angry hiss. “You took everyone from me. And then, after everything I did for you, you left, you ungrateful—” He stopped and righted himself. “I’m going to pack you a bag and you’re going to come home. When you’ve signed over the house, you’ll be free to do as you please. Even if that means running back here to that degenerate loser you’ve been letting fuck you for God knows how long.”

“Hayden’s not a degenerate.” I struggled to my feet.

My limbs felt loose, uncoordinated, my body detached from my mind. Trey stared down at me with absolute loathing.

“Don’t defend him to me. You are defiling yourself, and for what? Some deviant who enjoys corrupting you until you’re no longer fun to play with?”

He dragged me to the bedroom by my arm, depositing me roughly on the bed. He was good at isolating my fears and gouging wounds in my self-esteem. Trey opened my closet door and found a suitcase. I pushed up off the mattress and elbowed him out of the way.

“I can’t leave. I have classes to teach,” I said, wondering how far he would push this.

“I’ve already taken care of that. I spoke to the dean of your program and your advisor on Friday.” Trey headed for my dresser.

“You did what?”

“You’d be amazed at what a little legal paperwork can accomplish. Your advisor seemed very understanding. We spoke at length. He expressed concern over whether or not you were mentally prepared to endure the rigors of the program.” Trey smiled derisively and reached for the top drawer. His audacity knew no bounds. “He seemed rather adamant about keeping you under his advisement. Tell me, Tenley, what exactly is your relationship with your advisor?”

“Who do you think you are, interfering in my life like that?”

Trey turned to look at me, eyes burning with anger. “I’m the person who made sure you were taken care of.”

“You consider shoving pills down my throat and keeping me medicated to the point of unconsciousness care?” I asked bitterly.

It was bad enough Trey had come unannounced, treated Hayden like trash, and threatened me with a subpoena. That he’d contacted my advisor and the dean of my program was such an inexcusable invasion of privacy that I didn’t want his hands on my things.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes. You are. The memorial service is barely more than a week away. You will be there.”

I felt like I’d been backhanded. “Memorial service?” The reality I hadn’t wanted to face came anyway. The anniversary of the crash was only days away.

“Yes, Tenley, they’re meant to commemorate the dead,” he said contemptuously. “Why do you look so shocked? Haven’t you listened to any of my messages? Christ, you really are a selfish little bitch.”

He yanked open the drawer with such force that it came free of the dresser, the contents spilling all over the floor. He fisted a pile of colorful underwear, rifling through them until he held up a black silk and rhinestone-dotted thong at the end of his finger.

“You give off quite the illusion of innocence, don’t you?”

I snatched them out of his hand. “My choice of underwear is none of your business.”

“Consider it my concern over who you choose to wear it for.”

“Also none of your business.” I crouched down and gathered up spilled items, shoving them back into the drawer. There was no point in fighting Trey. I had to go back to Arden Hills, if not to sign over the house then at least for the memorial service. It sickened me to think I’d been so wrapped up in my new life that I’d forgotten all the people I’d lost.

I went back to my closet and pulled clothes off hangers, paying little mind to what I was tossing in my suitcase. When my bag was packed, Trey grabbed it from me and hefted it to the bathroom. Setting the suitcase on the vanity, he opened the cabinet over the sink and swept his hand across the top row, pill bottles raining into the bag. He did the same with the second shelf.

“Anything else you need now that we have the most important things?” he asked, condescension thick.

“I need a few toiletries.” I’d packed the bare necessities for my proposed sleepover at Hayden’s. I wished we’d stayed in his bed. Then I wouldn’t have been here, facing Trey and a past I’d tried to leave behind.

Trey stepped aside, glancing impatiently at his watch as I went about gathering essentials. I wondered if he was worried about Hayden coming back. The selfish part of me wanted him to.

TK meowed at my feet, fur puffed out; her anxiety level matched mine. When I picked her up, her nails dug into my arm, and she hissed at Trey. He gave her a contemptuous scowl.

“TK has to come with me. I can’t leave her here alone,” I said.

“Absolutely not. I’m allergic. That thing is not coming in my car.”

“I’ll drive myself.”

“You’re not getting behind the wheel. You’re barely keeping it together as it is. The last thing I need is for you to cause an accident and end up dead as well.” Trey zipped up my bag and lifted it from the vanity. “You’ll have to leave her here and figure it out later. Maybe your degenerate will take the thing.”

There was a knock at the door. We froze and looked at each other, Trey assessing my next move and me deciding if I could make it to the door before he stopped me. He was at a distinct disadvantage, since he was holding the suitcase. I sprinted down the hall with TK still cradled in my arm. I skidded across the floor, putting my hand out to stop me from hitting the wall. Trey had abandoned the suitcase and was on my heels. I turned the lock and threw the door open in time for it to connect with his face.

He cursed and covered his nose. Whatever his plan had been, he’d failed this time. I almost smiled.

There was a moment of disappointment when it registered that it was Sarah standing in my doorway and not Hayden. But it was better this way. If he came back, I ran the risk of not being able to leave him.

“Tenley! Thank God! What the hell is going on? Chris and I were out and he got a call from—” She stopped short when she saw Trey standing behind me, holding his nose.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, like we were still living in the ’50s, and dabbed under his nose. “Tenley’s leaving. She doesn’t have time to talk.”

Sarah bristled. “Who are you?”

“I’m her brother-in-law. If you don’t mind, we need to be on our way.” He thrust my purse at me.

“Where are you going? What’s this about?” Sarah asked uneasily.

When Trey made to move into the doorway, I put my hand up. “Give me a minute, please.”

“We don’t—”

“Give me a goddamn minute to deal with my life!” I yelled.

“Watch your fucking mouth,” he snapped, but he turned and strode down the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” I told Sarah in a rushed whisper.

“Where are you going? What’s going on? Hayden called Chris, freaking out.”

“Is Chris with him?”

“He just went to Hayden’s. Can you please tell me what’s happening?”

“Trey’s subpoenaed me, and Hayden found out about Connor.”

“Oh shit,” Sarah breathed, “that’s not good.”

I nodded in agreement.

“But where are you going?”

“Back to Arden Hills. I need to take care of things, and now that Hayden knows . . .” I trailed off. “It’s better this way.”

“What? Why? Tenley, you’re not making any sense.”

“It’s not fair. I can’t be enough for him.”

“According to who? That asshole?” Sarah motioned to the closed bathroom door.

She couldn’t understand, and I wasn’t capable of explaining. “I have to deal with the estate. If I don’t, Trey’s going to contest Connor’s will.”

“So let him contest it. You don’t have to go back there. We’ll be here to help you fight it,” Sarah reasoned.

“It’s not that simple. Trey won’t stop until he gets what he wants, and in the meantime I’m stagnating. Besides, the anniversary of the crash is in less than a week. There’s a memorial service. I have to go, Sarah. I can’t escape my past, and as much as I want to be with Hayden . . . I’m no good for him. Not like this. Maybe not ever.”

The bathroom door swung open. “It’s time to go,” Trey barked, his nose no longer bleeding.

I passed TK to Sarah. “Can you take care of her? I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Tenley, I don’t think—”

“Please tell Hayden I’m sorry.”

I pressed my apartment key into Sarah’s palm, wishing things were different. I hugged her hard and then Trey was tugging on my arm, ushering me down the hall. When we got to his car, he corralled me into the passenger seat. Trey slid into the driver’s seat, put the car in gear, and gunned the engine.

My heart was splintering into a million pieces as we passed the backlit sign of Inked Armor. Trey turned right, carrying us away from my home and back to the prison I’d been so desperate to escape. The adrenaline drained out of me, replaced by paralyzing hopelessness. I’d lost everything I loved all over again.

34

HAYDEN

“What the fuck . . .” Chris trailed off as he took in the state of my living room.

“I was a little pissed off.”

The wooden coffee table was on its side, across the room. It might have gone farther, except the corner was embedded in the wall. The drafting table had fared worse. It was in pieces, the contents of Tenley’s folder strewn across the floor. I’d been staring at the mess for the past several minutes, completely unmotivated to clean it up, waiting for Chris to arrive. The chaos seemed apt, considering how I felt.

Chris stepped around the debris and dropped into the chair across from me. “How you feeling now?”

“Still pissed.”

He nodded like he understood. Which he didn’t.

“Wanna tell me what happened?”

“Tenley had a fiancé,” I said, “and he died. Less than a year ago.” What I left out was my relief at his nonexistence, because it meant he was one less threat. It was a horrible thing to be grateful for.

“Shit.” Chris let out a long exhale. “In the plane crash?”

I dipped my chin. “They were on their way to their wedding.”

“Jesus. Tenley told you that?”

Too wound up, I shot up off the couch and stepped over the crap littering the floor. I needed a drink to take the edge off. Chris followed me to the kitchen.

“Her asshole brother-in-law showed up at her door. He dropped a subpoena on her over some estate, and then he tossed that little bomb at me.” I slammed two glasses on the counter and uncapped the bottle. My hand shook as I poured. “You know what the worst part is? If that dick hadn’t stopped by, I still wouldn’t know, and then where the fuck would I be? Blissfully oblivious? A dead fiancé seems like a pretty fucking important detail to keep from me, especially when she’s clearly still involved with members of his fucking family.”

“I’m sorry, man. That’s one hell of a way to find something like that out.”

“I should have expected this. After all the shit I’ve dealt with, I finally have a good thing, and then poof. It’s fucking gone.” I slid a glass toward him and took a hefty gulp of my own.

“What do you mean it’s gone? I get that it’s hard to take, and you’re upset, but you’ll figure it out.”

I shook my head, remembering the way she had looked at me, with those vacant, dead eyes. “I’m pretty sure she broke up with me. It just felt like . . . I don’t fucking know . . . she told me to leave.”

Maybe the end was inevitable. Maybe once the tattoo was done, she would have walked away, having gotten what she needed. Like I was a temporary placeholder for the things she didn’t have anymore. Or maybe Tenley was drawn to me because I stood in direct opposition to everything and everyone she’d lost.

“What if she just didn’t know how to deal with it?” Chris reasoned.

“I don’t think so. She didn’t tell me about her fiancé because she didn’t want me to say no to the back piece.”

“What? According to who? You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“That’s what she said.” I took another sip of my drink and reached for the bottle in preparation to pour another. Chris grabbed it before I could. Whatever. I could get shitfaced after he was gone.

“Is that all she said?”

“She fed me some bullshit about not wanting me to see her differently, but she used that line before, back when she wouldn’t tell me about the crash in the first place.”

I scrubbed my face with my hands. She’d been so terrified that I wouldn’t want her once I found out how extensive her losses were. But knowing the truth hadn’t changed a damn thing. It wasn’t just the lie that got me, though. It was her refusal to be honest, to have faith that I could handle whatever she threw at me.

In spite of all that, I still wanted her. She was the one person I’d been with who got in past all the ink and steel, and when she found out what I was really like, she still wanted me.

Chris capped the bottle and put it away. “Can I ask you something without you ripping off my head?”

“No guarantees.”

He asked anyway. “What are you most pissed about, the dead fiancé or that she didn’t tell you in the first place?”

I thought about it for a minute, struggling to verbalize. “I don’t know. Both?”

“One has to outweigh the other.”

The exclusion of a crucial truth was a sharp pain in my chest. After a long pause I finally replied, “The betrayal.”

Ironic I chose to call Chris instead of Lisa. But I knew what Lisa would say. Chris got me on a different level. We’d been here before; the circumstances had been vastly different, but some of the emotions attached were similar.

He nodded slowly, mulling over my answer. “So you feel betrayed because she didn’t tell you, or because she was in love with someone other than you?”

And that was when it finally clicked. This dead man who had been hers would always be a black shadow between us. Death immortalized people. The less pleasant parts of them washed away, leaving behind a rosy, soft-edged impression of perfection. I was so fucking far from perfect. It hurt in ways I couldn’t begin to explain. I was her rebound. Her spiral down. Her punishment for surviving, just like her brother-in-law said.

“Tenley’s in love with my dick, not me.”

Chris arched his pierced brow. “I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you on that.”

“And you’re speaking from experience?”

Chris gave me a wry grin. “No need to rub that shit in. Look, I can hang out and keep you from trashing your apartment while you get wasted, but all that’s going to do is give you a hangover and a mess to clean up. The problem is still going to be there tomorrow. You might not want to acknowledge it, but this thing between you and Tenley is serious. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been like this about anyone. Are you really going to drop it all because you find out something you don’t like and you don’t know how to deal with?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Look, you’ve both kept parts of your past from each other. And for good reason. No one wants to relive that shit. I get it’s screwing with your head, but I think you need to ask yourself if it really changes how you feel about her.”

“Does it even matter? I can’t compete with the memory of a dead fucking fiancé.”

“It’s not a competition. You can be pissed at her for not telling you, but it comes down to whether or not you’re willing to walk away over it. And personally, I don’t think you are.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited opinion.”

“I thought that was why you called me. If we’re having an honesty session, I’m here because I don’t want to deal with your sorry emo ass if you make a stupid decision.”

Chris had a point. The lie and the betrayal were only a part of the problem. I wasn’t just angry about it; I was hurt. I wanted her to trust me enough to share those parts of herself and her past with me. I might not like the truth, but it was better to know than remain in the dark. Beyond that, I wanted to do for her what she’d done for me; fill the holes in my life I hadn’t realized were there. I wanted to be able to replace the memory of the person she’d lost, and I feared I never would. What an assload of revelation.

Chris’s phone vibrated on the counter. “It’s Sarah.”

I motioned for him to answer it. “Hey—” His greeting was cut off. “What? I can’t—Slow down. Are you—?”

Sarah’s voice filtered through the phone, high-pitched, frantic.

“She did what? We’re coming.” Chris ended the call. “We gotta go to Tee’s.”

It didn’t occur to me to argue. Not with the look on Chris’s face. “What’s going on?”

“She just left with her brother-in-law.”

“It’s after midnight. Where the hell would they go?”

I pushed away from the counter, grabbed my phone, and dialed Tenley, but it went to voice mail. I tried again as we left the condo and bolted down the stairs. We rushed across the street to her apartment. The anger over the belated disclosure evaporated as Sarah came into view, standing in Tenley’s doorway. Her eyes were red, she was sniffling, and TK was curled up in her arms. The kitten let out a forlorn meow and struggled out of Sarah’s hold, bounding toward me. As I picked her up, the heavy feeling in my chest expanded.

“Where is she?” I looked into Tenley’s apartment.

“She went home.”

“What?” I moved past Sarah, inside. My brain refused to process the words. This was her home. The bathroom door was open, the light still on. Her shoes were gone, and so was her jacket.

“She’s going back to Arden Hills. She left with Trey just before I called,” Sarah replied shakily. “I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She wasn’t making much sense. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Her car’s still out back.”

“He drove. She had a suitcase with her. She asked me to look after TK until she came back,” Sarah said. Her pity felt like sandpaper on my already raw emotions.

Unwilling to accept she was gone, I strode through her apartment. Her living room was the same mess it had been before she told me to leave. When I reached the bathroom, I stopped short. Her medicine cabinet was wide open, the entire collection of pill bottles missing. In her bedroom the closet door was open, hangers missing from the middle. One of the dresser drawers was lying on the floor, half the contents strewn all over the place.

“She left me?” That choked feeling got worse, making it hard to breathe.

“She said she needed to take care of things,” Sarah said from the doorway.

“She’s running again.” I put the drawer back in the dresser and gathered up the discarded clothes, trying to create order for the chaos in my head.

“She has to deal with her estate.”

“So she left with that dickface? Couldn’t she have done that here?”

I wished I knew more. It made sense that Tenley had an estate; she was the sole survivor in her family. There must have been things left to her; a house maybe, money. And somehow that dick Trey played a role in things.

“Why didn’t she just tell me the truth in the first place?” I picked up the tank top lying on her bed. She’d worn it last night; I’d folded it and left it there this morning.

“Maybe she wanted to protect herself.”

“From what? Me?”

“She’s petrified of losing you, Hayden. Don’t you get it? All the important people in her life are gone. You gave her a reason to feel something good again. She wasn’t going to risk that.”

“So she left?”

Sarah looked at me with such empathy that it made me want to scream. “She’s in love with you. If she hadn’t lost all of those people, she never would have met you. I think it’s reasonable for her to be a little fucked up over it.”

I hated the look on Sarah’s face, like she needed to treat me with kid gloves so I wouldn’t lose my shit. I was pretty fucking close to the breaking point. I was angry at Tenley for leaving, at Sarah for letting her go, and at myself for walking out the door in the first place.

“She has to come back though, right? She wouldn’t just leave TK and not come back.” I was reaching for a lifeboat in a sea of hopelessness.

“Of course she’ll come back,” Sarah said.

But when Tenley returned, would she be back for me, too?

“I’m gonna go home,” I said. I couldn’t be in Tenley’s space without her.

“You want me to come with?” Chris asked, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Nah, man. Thanks. I just want to be alone right now.”

When I got home, I headed for the bedroom. It was exactly how we left it; sheets a twisted mess, pillows tossed on the floor. Tenley’s half-empty wineglass sat on the nightstand, lip print marking the rim. I couldn’t believe how quickly my life had been turned upside down. It was like coming home to death all over again, except this loss was so different. Tenley still existed, but she was gone. I didn’t know when or if she would be back, and whether she would want me anymore.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran my hand over the sheets. Being with her here had felt right. It had changed things.

My body numbed out, and the shaking started. The dissociated feeling settled in, like when I used to have panic attacks so many years ago. It felt like I was watching events from outside myself. Which was better. It hurt less that way.

Tenley hadn’t been gone more than ninety minutes and I missed her more than I could bear. In the weeks since I first met her she’d managed to break through my armor, getting under my skin. I’d let my guard down.

And I’d fallen in love with her.

That was the deadly ache in the center of my chest.

Chris was right; I wasn’t ready to walk away. If she felt the same way about me, that could explain why she ran.

I pushed up off the mattress and grabbed my keys and wallet, heading for the door.

She could run all she wanted, but I was coming after her. I wouldn’t let her go. Not without a fight.