I’m afraid I’m going to fall down from weakness and dizziness, but I force my eyes to stay open as I maneuver back across the street and let myself into my room. I have to hurry to the bathroom because I have to throw up again.
I want Julian.
I don’t care that he kicked me out. I want him. I want him to hold me and kiss me and tell me that it’ll be okay.
Nothing is going to be okay.
I can’t do this by myself. I’m hurt, I’m scared. I’m so fucking sad. Life without him isn’t worth living at all.
I manage to take a couple of pills, not even seeing which ones I’m taking, and then I crawl back into bed, so exhausted from the trip across the street and seeing Elliott.
He looked genuinely concerned, but I can’t have him going back to Julian to tell him where I am. He said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again.
I believe him.
He will kill me. I just wish I knew what I did that made him hate me so much. It can’t just be because I had lunch with my father.
That’s ridiculous.
“Don’t hate me,” I mutter, sounding delirious to my own ears. “I wanna go home. I just want to go home.”
I turn my hot face into the pillow, enjoying how cool it feels on my skin, and cry myself to sleep again.
It’s the only way I ever sleep at all.
Thirty
JULIAN
It’s beenweeks since I stayed here at the mansion, and I need to check in on things before I have a realtor come out here to list it.
I can’t live here. She’s embedded in every inch of this house. Her music, her laughter. Jesus, I can still smell her.
And it makes me ache.
I should storm over to her father’s house, demand he hand her over to me, kill the fucker, and bring her back here. Paddle her ass for betraying me and then fuck her into submission.
That actually sounds really good.
If no one had been hurt because of her little stunt, I might be able to find a way to work through it, but damn it, my men died.
Because of her.
Frustrated with myself, I push my hands through my hair and then notice the sun sparkle off something on the floor. When I get close, I see that it’s her necklace, and I scoop it up and roll it around in my palm.
The one with the listening device in it.
She must have dropped it when she fell. The chain is broken from her father ripping it off her neck.
I could hack into it and hear her voice.
I fucking miss her sweet voice. I feel like a complete idiot for not hating her guts and wanting her to suffer.
I want to feel those things.
But I don’t.
Without overthinking or beating myself up about it, I walk back to my office and turn on all my equipment, then pull out the device that will scramble the one in the pendant and get to work hacking into the software attached to it.
