I’m relieved about not having to face Kendrick.
But I’m still angry.
And underneath all of it, in the place I don’t want to look too closely at, there’s a question I can’t answer.
If someone fights your battles for you to protect you, is that love or control?
And does it matter if the person doing it has scars that match yours?
I don’t know.
I don’t know anything except that my chest hurts and my eyes are burning and somehow, impossibly, I miss him already.
Shit.
34
Nico
The weekend is a special kind of hell.
Friday night I pace my penthouse until 3 AM. Saturday I try to work. Fail. Try to sleep. Fail harder. Sunday I stand at my floor-to-ceiling windows watching the Hudson turn gold and pink at sunset and think about calling her every five minutes.
I don’t call. I give her some space.
Every instinct screams at me to go to her. Show up at her apartment. Fix this. Control this. Make her understand.
But that’s exactly what got me here in the first place.
So instead I sit with the discomfort. Let it eat me alive. Let myself feel what it’s like to want someone I can’t force into existence.
Callahan checks in twice. Once Saturday afternoon. Once Sunday morning. “Just confirming everything is all right, sir.”
“A-okay,” I tell him both times.
Thessaly leaves food I don’t eat. The containers stack up in my refrigerator.
Bree’s toothbrush is still in my bathroom. Her jacket still draped over the chair in my bedroom. I don’t move them. Can’t bring myself to touch them.
Thank god she hasn’t sent anyone to pick them up.
That has to mean something, right?
Monday morning. My office. The chair across from my desk is empty.
More importantly, Bree’s desk is empty, too. Has been since Friday when she walked out and I let her go.
Which was the right call.
The not-being-a-stalker move.
Doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I check my phone for the thirty-fifth time. No messages. No missed calls. Nothing but the silence I deserve.
Piper called earlier to inform me, with barely concealed satisfaction, that Ms. Dawson had called in sick.
“She sounded terrible,” Piper added. “Really broken up about something.”
