“Imiss you, Ava.”
He sounded wholly miserable and lost and...
And just a little bit wheedling.
The miserable and lost bit... well, that was her wheelhouse, wasn’t it? She could bear her own suffering, but somehow not the suffering of people she cared about. She had to swat back the traitorous reflex to comfort him. He’d done this to himself.
Did one, albeit horrible, act laser love away completely? Just zap it gone, scorched earth and all that?
Or had she truly, really,everloved him?
She knew one thing for certain: somewhere in the wheedling was the guy who was still sure he could get his way by somehow charming her into it. And that alone told her he had no clue, noclueof the enormity of what he’d done to her.
Mac had been the spoiled son of a billionaire, but she couldn’t in a million years picture Mac...whining. His life had fallen apart, publicly and horribly, and he’d rebuilt it bit by bit, from the ground up, the hard way. There hadn’t been a shred of self-pity in what he’d told her about the national guard, but God knows he was entitled to some.
So there were a dozen things she could say to Corbin right now. What she said was, “I don’t miss you. We’re over. For good.”
She pressed the red button and ended the call without another word. And dropped the phone.
She looked out the window. She knew a minute twinge of guilt, because somewhere in there was a sort of acknowledgement: she might well be responsible for the distance between her and Corbin.
She might even have sort of noticed, and... she might not have minded.
The hum of Mac’s lovemaking hadn’t even left her body. Absently, she touched her lips, still tender, and dragged her hand around to the back of her neck.
She was pretty sure that if she hadn’t had sex in two months, it wasn’t because the two of them were busy.
It could be because she’d stopped wanting it with Corbin.
She yearned for comfort right now and there wasn’t a soul she could call about this, but a reflex made her stand up and turn toward the window.
She couldn’t see the light on in Mac’s house. But that sure wasn’t the direction of safety or certainty, either.
She curled up on the bargelike sex sofa, and for the first time in possibly years, she had a good, long, weary, frustrated, sick-of-herself cry, while Chick Pea propped herself on her knees and licked her cheeks.
