I had it. I destroyed it.
“I’ll think about it.” I am sincere when I say it, but I don’t know how to do anything else. Since I left college, all I’ve done is this. I was recruited when I was nineteen. For a decade and a half, this is the only life I have known.
“Come to L.A.,” she says. “Let’s…talk about this.”
“I need to wind this op down.” And I’m not ready to stop stalking the woman who has taken up a permanent spot in my soul.
“Dom,” she cries out, “I need you to get your head out of your ass and get a control of this situation before you lose yourself for good.”
“Daisy, I’ve got to go,” I whisper.
“Dom—”
“Please.”
That word does it.
“Fine. But if you don’t get back to me in two days, I’m coming down to D.C.”
“Daisy,” I warn.
“Deal with it,” she says in her power-boss voice.
The line goes dead.
I glance at my phone as the backlight blinks out, and then goes dark.
I return my gaze to Enya’s window, knowing she can’t see me, knowing she wouldn’t want to. And that hurts more than anything else ever has, even that damn bullet.
7
TWO LINES
ENYA
It’s been a month since Nick disappeared from my life.
Thirty days of silence. Seven-hundred-and-twenty hours of replaying every memory and wondering which parts were genuine and which were his mission.
And now, fourteen days of knowing something is off…with me. I don’t want to admit it, not even to myself, but my body is whispering a truth I’m almost afraid to hear.
I’m late.
I’m never late.
My breasts ache.
I’m exhausted, no matter how much I sleep.
Smells hit me wrong.
Yesterday, I nearly gagged while arranging lilies. Lilies? My favorite flowers.
My heart knows before my mind lets it surface.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself as I lock up the shop and head upstairs. “Okay, we’re not panicking. We’re just…going to…pretend everything is fine. Yep. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Cass is waiting in my apartment, sprawled on my couch with a sketchbook in her lap and a half-finished portrait of a cat wearing sunglasses.
