But I felt him.
I felt his eyes on me. I felt him everywhere.
The trip to the break room was a mistake. He was a mistake. I chased a monster. I fell for him. And he gobbled me up and spit out my soul, hollow and lifeless.
As soon as I got to the break room, I pressed my back against the wall out of sight from him or anyone else. Drawing in an uneasy breath and chasing away the emotions that threatened to steal my composure, I closed my eyes and blew out that breath in tiny increments. “Let him go, Liv … let him go,” I whispered.
I remained in the break room for nearly thirty minutes until I got the nerve to walk back to my office before anyone questioned my absence. Again, I buried my face in the screen of my phone as I approached Tim’s office and the two men parked outside of it.
“Livy?”
I turned a few feet before reaching the man I needed to avoid. Tricia approached me, jerking her head toward Slade. “Didn’t you have a question for him?” She smiled at Slade. “Alex, right?”
My gaze fell to my feet, next to my heart that had been on the ground since the day he appeared from the dead.
When I didn’t hear his response, I assumed he gave her a nod.
“Livy thought you looked familiar. Right, Livy? She was dying to know where you lived, hoping to make a connection.”
I wasn’t dying to know, but I was dying as she exposed me right in front of him. I forced my gaze up to meet his. His neutral expression gave away nothing.
Clearing my throat, I formed a pained smile. “At first … you looked familiar. But now that I get a closer look, I realize it’s not you. And his name wasn’t Alex. And he wouldn’t be standing where you are. He’d be inside one of these offices. You see … he was on his way to law school. I always imagined seeing him in a suit for the first time at graduation. But he never graduated. Or maybe he’d have worn a suit to a job interview for a prestigious law firm like this one. Or at his wedding.”
My chin tipped downward again for a few seconds before finding the courage to gaze into those haunting eyes again. “Did you wear a suit at your wedding?” I whispered past the suffocating emotion gridlocking my throat.
He didn’t get a chance to answer. Tricia laughed. “Okay, now you’re sounding weird, borderline harassing the guy with too much information about your friend that’s not him.” She rested her hands on my shoulders and guided me toward my office.
“Gray …” he said, stopping my footsteps along with Tricia’s.
She turned, but I didn’t.
“I wore a gray suit to my wedding. White shirt, pink tie. It was raining that day … felt symbolic of my mood … of my life. A friend married us. Two witnesses, no family or other friends. I’ve never worn that suit again.”
“Alrighty then. Interesting story.” Tricia chuckled and she released my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “I stand corrected; he’s the weird one.” She brushed past me. It took a few seconds for my legs to resume carrying my body to my office.
That night I attempted another bottle of wine, a white one. I didn’t like it either. Maybe I wasn’t a wine person or maybe alcohol wasn’t the answer. Exercise seemed like the more palatable and healthy option, so I took Jericho for a run to the park with his tennis ball and a launcher. A few smaller dogs were there, but they left soon after my beast of a dog started fetching his ball. I needed something like fetch to keep my mind occupied—a repetitive task that would keep me on track and not thinking about him.
Even when he wasn’t at work … he was there. His ghost invaded my new place of business. I still saw him standing in my living room every time I glanced at the red wine stain that didn’t come out of my rug.
When I tossed the ball again, he invaded my life again, walking toward me. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be real. Then Jericho ran to him, again, and I knew he was real in the most painful and cruel way imaginable.
Alive … and married.
“Hi,” he said, sauntering toward me with the ball that Jericho dropped for him. My traitor dog right at his side.
I rubbed my lips together. That was the greeting he got from me—an obscured expression.
“Did you really know … that the gun wasn’t loaded?”
He heard me that day. He heard what I said just seconds before he died. Before I thought he died.
I owed him no apologies. I thanked him for saving my life—twice—and he married someone else. We were even.
“No,” I said with confidence.
“You thought I was dying, so you lied?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and flipped out a hip. “Sorry … are we keeping track of lies? If that’s the case, you lose. Don’t even get me started on all the lies you told to cover your ass. Including the one where you were hired to protect me. So yeah, I thought the gun was loaded. I pulled the trigger to kill the man who was hired to kill me. Call it lack of trust or self-preservation, I don’t care. But you can’t fault me for that.”
“Your dad killed my dad.” He narrowed his eyes a fraction.
“Your dad raped my aunt. So fuck you, Wylder … Slade … Alex … whatever the hell you’re calling yourself.”
He winced.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Ah … I see. No one ever told you that your dad was a rapist? Well, wake up. You turned us into a war over the sins of our fathers. But my father killed truly bad people. He didn’t rape women. He didn’t take out innocent family members as revenge. But that’s in your blood. Revenge is the reason your father raped my Aunt Jessica. He called it training, but that’s not training. That’s just a sick, fucked-up mind.”
After a few long moments of no reaction, staring at the ground between us, he slowly lifted his head. “Well, now you know.”
“Know what?” I canted my head to the side.
“Why I didn’t come for you.”
“Don’t,” I said in a thick voice as I shook my head. “It was our love story. Not my dad’s, not your dad’s. I loved the monster. I came back for you. I. Came. Back. For. You. And for five years you let me believe you were dead. You …” I swallowed and told myself I would not cry. He didn’t deserve any more tears. “You didn’t love me back.”
“I took a fucking bullet for you!” With his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, he leaned forward, shouting the words in my face.
“You…” the tears did their own thing, not caring whether he deserved them or not “…married someone else. It hurt less when you were dead.”
He nodded slowly, pain stealing his practiced no-fucks-given face. “Well, you’re the one who didn’t follow my instructions. You’re the one who must have called for help. Had you just done what I fucking told you to do, maybe I would be dead.”
“Oh …” I coughed a laugh. “And that’s a good thing? Saving you was the wrong thing to do?”
“I was an assassin. A man died where they found me that day. I had two choices … prison or a new life. New name. New everything.”
“Choices?” I shook my head. “How do you choose anything but prison?”
“Ask your dad.”