The sex was frenzied. Raw. I felt tears squeeze from my eyes as I thrust inside her and she pulled me in like I couldn’t get deep enough.
She was everything. Everything. I’d found the one thing that was limitless. I’d found the love that poets wrote about.
Only it was a tragedy.
She gasped under me and her back arched and I was right behind her. Then we just lay there, panting at the ceiling, tangled in each other.
“Don’t you ever think I regret you,” I whispered. “I could never regret you. I would trade fates with you if I could. I’d give anything.”
I moved to look down at her. “Please, Vanessa. Just say you’ll try. Take the medications, do the clinical trials…”
Her eyes went sadder than they already were. “Adrian, maybe you should see someone. A grief counselor. I could go with you…”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s not going to help.”
Nothing was going to help.
“It will. They can help you deal with how you’re feeling.”
I shook my head.
“I just don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.
She looked up at me, beautiful, her hair on my pillow like a halo. “Nobody knows how to do this, Adrian. You need help to get through it. Please.”
I shook my head again. “I can’t do what you do,” I said, my voice thick. “I can’t act like none of this is happening. I can’t pretend to be happy.”
“I don’t pretend to be happy. I just refuse to be sad.”
If she knew how much I loved her, she’d know this was never going to be possible. My despair was multiplying like cancer. It was consuming me and eating me whole. It put shadows on everything. It stuck to the windows and light bulbs. It blocked the vents, sucked the air out of the room.
And I didn’t know how to forgive her for not making any effort to stay.
* * *
I lay there holding her until she fell asleep again. Then I went to work without waking her up. I was late, but I didn’t give a shit. Becky had been blowing up my phone, probably wondering where I was.
I didn’t even know how I was going to get through the day. All I knew was that I looked forward to the distraction. I wanted to think about something else, even just for a little while.
When the elevator doors opened on my office floor, Becky pounced on me from out of nowhere. “Adrian—”
“Whatever it is, can it wait until later?” I asked tiredly. “I can’t right now.”
“No!” she whispered, jogging next to me. “Marcus is, like, super pissed.”
I pushed open the glass doors into our office. “Pissed about what?”
“The cops didn’t give Bueller a sobriety test until three hours after his arrest and—”
She didn’t get to finish. Marcus’s voice boomed across the office. “How nice of you to finally join us.”
I stopped and stared at him with bleary eyes over the desks. He looked furious. His cheeks were ruddy and he had a sheen of sweat on his brow. I registered almost absentmindedly that he looked the human version of a heart attack.
Just like I probably looked like the human version of a broken heart.
I kept walking. I ignored him and everyone’s eyes on me, and I made my way to my office and shut the door with Becky standing outside. If he wanted to give me a dressing down, fine. But he could do it in the privacy of my office, not in front of our team.
Marcus came charging in behind me. “The Breathalyzer blow on the Bueller case was invalid. You would have seen this had you bothered to watch the bodycam footage yourself instead of passing it off to John. This whole damn case could have been thrown out weeks ago. You missed the call from the police station when Keller was rearrested so he was interrogated without counsel, you didn’t get the medical records for the Garcia trial and now we have to file for another extension. I should fire you right now.”
It was almost shocking to know that I had anything left to feel, but my stomach dropped.
He glared at me. “You’ve had your head up your ass for weeks. I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s not going to be this firm’s problem.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t be sorry. Do your fucking job. Or pack your shit and get out of here. These are people’s lives.”
He stormed out of the office, and I felt the hushed quiet outside my door that meant everyone had been listening.
I sat heavily in my chair.
Becky came tiptoeing in a few moments later. She clicked the door gently behind her and stood quietly, looking at me with pity.
“So what does my horoscope say about today?” I asked tiredly.
“It says it’s gonna be shitty.”
I laughed dryly and stared back at her with what I knew were red, grief-stricken eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I just found out Vanessa might have the gene that carries ALS.”
Becky looked confused. “Didn’t you know that?”
“No. I didn’t know.”
She blinked at me a second. “How? It’s, like, the cornerstone of everything she does. She talks about it like twenty-four seven.”
“I know,” I said wearily.
She studied me. “Well…does it matter to you?”
“It matters to me that she might die, yeah.”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean would it have changed things. Would you have not fallen all in love with her if you knew?”
I scoffed. Like I ever had any choice.
“I was done for the minute I laid eyes on her,” I said.
I meant it. And losing her was going to kill me. And if she wasn’t willing to fight, the countdown for my end had already begun.
Everything I loved was coming undone. My universe was unraveling, one strand at a time.
I couldn’t save Vanessa. I couldn’t even convince her to reconsider her options. Grace would be gone in a few months. I’d managed to fuck up my job. I’d lost control. All of it. The tornado was flinging bits and pieces of my life in every direction and the mess was getting larger by the minute, too big to clean up.
A frantic, primal self-preservation instinct clawed around inside of me. An urge to fix it, make it right. Stabilize something.
But there was only one thing I could fix. I could backpedal the damage I’d done here. At least this I could put back in order. This was in my control.
“What do you need, boss?” Becky asked like she could sense my shift in resolve.
“I need you to make a discovery request from the Minneapolis PD. I want the bodycam footage for the Bueller case.”
I sat up and clicked open my briefcase. “I need you to call everyone in here. Order takeout for dinner and get me the Keller, Bueller, and Garcia files. We’re pulling an all-nighter.”
CHAPTER 28
TAKE THIS QUIZ TO SEE IF HE’S GHOSTING YOU!
VANESSA
Adrian didn’t come home last night. Or the night before that or the night before that. I mean, he did—sort of. He crawled into bed at 2:00 a.m. Then he’d get up and leave again at 6:00. He’d reply to my texts with one word.