Emotionally raw and exhausted, I curled up on the couch with some silly sitcom on the TV and started to drift off.
I came awake with a start as the world fell away from under me.
“You’re okay,” Harrison said. “Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked as he pulled me against his chest.
“Sheets smelled like you,” I admitted, still too asleep to remember I didn’t want to admit things like that to him.
The admission had him tensing.
“I’ll put you in the other room.”
Then he was turning, walking, carrying me away.
“Why do you care?” I asked, leaning my face against his bare shoulder.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he admitted before dropping me down on the mattress.
Then he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I sat up, fully awake, feeling a sinking sensation in my chest.
Why?
Because he was finally over his infatuation with me?
Like I’d been wanting?
Like I’d been waiting for?
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I grumbled, feeling the wetness dripping down my cheeks.
This had to stop.
I needed to spend the next day planning, then just invest the damn money. Watch the stocks, adjust as necessary, and get Harrison the fifteen percent he wanted from me.
Then he’d sign the papers.
And I never had to see him again.
I was just going to have to pretend that the idea of that didn’t make my heart feel smashed to pieces in my chest.
It was a good thing I was practiced in the art of bluffing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next five days passed in shockingly uncomfortable silence.
I slept in while he got ready for work.
When he came home, he made dinner or ordered in, never saying more than a handful of words to me. Then, usually, he went for a run, swim, or to the gym, only speaking to me to tell me that he was leaving.
I tried to convince myself that it was better than us actually playing house. I attempted to keep myself busy by obsessively watching the stock market, especially what was going on with my Idiot Fund.
After the sixth day of distance, I started to get this weird churning in my stomach each time I walked into the common area, some part of me expecting (and inexplicably dreading) to see a familiar folder full of documents I’d given Harrison twice. This time, signed.
But it didn’t surface.
I was trying to figure out what to do with my day when there was a ringing sound somewhere in the apartment.
