When she stepped outside she felt like she had been thrown back in time. To the first moment she had ever gone to the estate. She felt like a child. Confused, out of place. Like all those years hadn’t happened. A sob rose in her throat. But then instead of giving in, she took a breath. And another. And another.
There had been life before all of this, before him.
There would be life after too.
CHAPTER SIX
Heather was havingso much time trouble concentrating on her work she was starting to worry that she was going to have to tell her author that she couldn’t meet the time frame she had promised to get her notes back by.
She had felt so gray and awful ever since leaving the estate. And having all of the monetary things filtered through lawyers wasn’t helping the way she had thought that it would. Because it felt impersonal and terrible, and she felt like she had been turned inside out. It was all evidence of just how much awfulness had passed between her and Romeo, and…
Her body couldn’t forget. She kept herself awake all night, every night, reliving what had passed between them, and then in the morning she was exhausted, sick to her stomach.
The grief mixed with all of this was just too much to bear.
She was grateful that she was doing mainly remote work, but she also sort of wished that she did go into an office every day, because at least she would be forced to get dressed and interact with people. This was all virtual meetings and chats, and it made it far too easy for her to disguise that she was unraveling.
The missed deadlines would definitely betray her.
Her stomach lurched.
She just felt…
Not like herself. She was an orphan now. That was kind of a terrible realization. She knew that when you were an adult nobody thought of it that way, that’s how it felt. Drifting and rootless.
She had thought that cutting ties with Romeo would feel like a triumph.
She had thought that maybe she would go on dates. Be a normal person.
Right after it had happened, when she was on an adrenaline high she had called Catherine, her roommate from college, and she had told her that she had finally gotten her stepbrother out of her system.
“Well, thank God,” she said. “Now maybe you can have a functional relationship with a nice man who doesn’t want to degrade you while he has sex with you.”
Catherine had been joking, but then it had forced Heather to reflect on the fact that she and Romeo had gotten a fair amount of pleasure out of degrading each other. And then that had sent her into a spiral where she had spent the entire night replaying what had happened. The most intense, soul-searing moment of her entire life.
Why were things so complicated with him? It didn’t make any sense. It should just be nothing. Especially after all that.
She put her glasses back on and tried to focus on her reading, and her stomach turned.
She felt so nauseous and gross this morning. For a while she had been blaming that on her lack of sleep. She always felt gross when she didn’t sleep. But it felt more pronounced now, out of the vague nausea territory and into something a lot more…frightening.
She took a breath, and stood up, trying to stretch and ease the unsettled feeling in her stomach.
A message popped up on her computer, not in her office interface, but from Catherine.
You’ve been very quiet, and I’m starting to think I need to send someone after you.
I’m fine.
Are you?
Feeling a little bit sick today, actually. But I’ve been feeling rough the last month and a ½.
It’s to be expected, I guess.
I guess.
Suddenly, she felt like she was about to lose her breakfast, such as it was, and she ran into the bathroom, where she cast up her coffee and biscotti.
