"Okay. I'll try to get back as soon as I can. I love you." He leaned down and kissed my forehead before I was finally left in peace.
Luc had hovered a lot more over the past few days. He worried but I wasn't sure what he was worried about. I wasn't sure what he thought would happen. It was my father's funeral tomorrow, but I wasn't sure I was ready to watch him be lowered into the ground.
I needed to get away from everything. I needed to be alone. Living this life had removed me from my Dad. Surrounded by money and wanting for nothing felt like a betrayal to Dad and everything I was raised with.
It was like I was on autopilot when I started to push clothes into the bag I’d once brought with me when I first moved in with Luc. I started slowly but then I picked up the pace, pulling things out of the closet and drawers. I paused at my passport before I threw it into my bag as well. It wasn’t likely that I would need it, but who knew. I had enough money from when I had worked to get a flight. It might not be far, but it would be somewhere. Somewhere away from memories of Dad. Somewhere away from all the mess.
All I had done was cause issues from the moment I walked into Luc’s life. If I kept going, I’d lose everyone. We’d reach a point of no return and then what happened? Where would that leave us? I’d have destroyed everything just because I selfishly and incorrectly believed that I belonged here. Everything that had unfolded in the past few weeks had proven to me otherwise.
I ran down the stairs with my bag in hand and stopped in the hallway. The mirror that hung on the wall showed my reflection. I wasn't sure who I was right now. Dark circles under dead eyes set in a sunken face. Walking towards it, I gently raised a hand towards the glass and hesitated when I saw the ring on my finger.
That was a symbol of a promise I’d made but could no longer keep. I wrenched it off my finger, damaging the skin, but I barely registered the pain and placed it on the table. All that had happened since I’d arrived was problem after problem. Maybe Xavier had been right to dislike me. He was Luc's father. He wanted what was best for Luc just like my Dad had wanted the best for me.
I pulled the pad of paper and pen that sat on the table towards me.
Luc.
I didn't know what to tell him.
I'm sorry. I need to go. I need time and space. This isn't you so please don't blame yourself. I love you but I need to figure out what's going on in my head. Look after yourself.
Love always, Mia x
I picked my bag up off the floor and left the house without looking back.
Chapter Sixty Six
Lucas
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate everything you’ve done for her,” Xavier said as we walked back into the house.
The day had consisted of me making sure the final arrangements for Hector’s funeral were in order, ending with a trip to the church. Dante held the fort at work as he had been doing since I found Mia that night, so Xavier accompanied me. I needed someone to be there so that I didn’t lose my cool if orders hadn’t been followed the way I had given them.
Mia had sunk in on herself. I’d lost the vibrant woman with her fiery spirit, and as frustrated as I was that she barely wanted to say two words to anyone, I understood. I knew what it was like to lose a parent when you didn’t expect it. The grief she felt had been something I experienced years ago, and it would be a lie to say it had ever left. Grief of that magnitude didn’t leave, you just learned to live with it. You stopped allowing it to have as much control. Mia wasn’t quite there yet, but I’d do everything in my power to help her through this.
"Let me just go check on Mia," I told him. She was never far from my mind but that had only increased. I took the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door to our room. "Princess?"
The room was a mess. The doors to the closet were open, drawers on the floor but Mia wasn’t here. I stepped in and checked the bathroom.
"Mia?"
Realizing she wasn’t there either made the panic start to set in. I searched through the chaos of the room to see that her bag was gone and there were clothes missing. Frantically searching through the drawers, I found her passport was missing and my heart sank.
I ran back down the stairs to see Xavier still stood in the hallway. "She's taken some stuff," I said. "I don't understand. I don't know where she would go. Her passport's gone!"
I knew Mia hadn't taken any of this well. So much had happened, and now with Hector's death. There was a distinct difference between my experience and Mia’s. When my Dad had died, we were on good terms. To lose a parent when you weren't even speaking, after being close for so many years, must have cut so much deeper.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket. Mia couldn't have gotten that far. She had a few hours head start at most.
"Luc," Xavier said. When I turned to look at him, he stood there and Mia's engagement ring glinted in the light as he held it between his fingers.
Ripping it out of his grasp, I asked, "Where did you find this?"
"It was on the table." Xavier gestured to the table in the hallway and I strode over to it but there was nothing else there. The notepad was blank. No other things that belonged to her. Mia had taken her stuff and left her ring.
There was a time when I worried that Mia would leave me because of what my life was, but I thought they were past all that. I thought she had wanted to be a part of my life for good, but she'd left without a word.
I pulled my phone out and called her, but I could hear it in the kitchen. I needed to find her. She wasn’t thinking straight. She wouldn’t leave me like this, without a word. I went to push past Xavier in a bid to find her, but he caught me by the shoulders.
