Cora ushered our new intern out of my office, muttering about taking him to meet the team. I thought I was safe when I pushed the box off the edge of my desk, but Cora turned back right on cue to see the perfect piece of jewellery fall straight intothe rubbish receptacle that I so desperately wanted to accept but couldn't. The box clanged in the empty trash can.
I held her eyes, reading the shock there.
“Asshole,” I murmured. “Enjoy your day, Lewis. Please close the door.”
Then I put my head down and kept working on files I didn’t read, not registering the door click shut behind them. My mind fixed on the man who sent me the present he knew I wouldn't take but tempted me anyway.
Asshole, indeed.
CHAPTER THREE
Three days to Anniversary
SIA
A rhythmic pounding interrupted faceless, voiceless dreams of mirrored darkness in the quiet hours before sunrise. The same footsteps always woke me. It was the constanttap tap tapof light footfalls on wet tarmac—he never ran on the damn sidewalk—that kept me awake, just. I drifted comfortably without fully rousing, knowing I'd hear his steady rhythm again in another twenty minutes or so.
Ward always ran past my townhouse twice each morning—three times if work frustrated him more than usual.
This was his therapy, and I piggybacked along for the ride. I wondered if he knew I woke each morning, or if he cared. Ward probably never started with stalking in mind. This had always been his habit before our lives diverged on their separate paths. Like me, there were some things he refused to stop just because we didn’t share a roof or a bed each night.
The city stood quiet. Only shift workers on the road and a few other services were out in the hours before dawn. No one else circled my building or the few surrounding blocks, which made his footfalls all the easier to identify. Even still, with others present, I would have known.
For the man I was supposed to hate, who I knew hated me right back, his nocturnal habits had always been a source of comfort for me.
I tried to close my eyes and go back to sleep, but the thing I craved most eluded me. No footsteps slapped the blacktop past my home. The sky lightened. I studied the white ceiling of mybedroom searching for flaws, but there were none. Every part of my townhouse was immaculately kept. Appointments popped up in my calendar I never made but were due anyway. Somehow, he alwaysknew, as though he kept tabs on everything I did.
My mood broken, I threw back the weighted blanket—another Ward Bishop gift that I hated that I loved and used so often—and flung myself into my morning routine.
Workout until I sweated myself clean. An oxymoron, but I believed in getting those toxins out. The toxic that stayed inside my heart, too. I added an extra ten minutes of stair climb inside the townhouse until my legs jittered, either from lack of sleep or disturbed sleep.
Thanks, Ward. Asshole, I added mentally. No way would I sully my home with his name. Spritz plants that refused to die even when I gave them what I forgot to provide for myself. Coffee. Shower. A quick breakfast as I caught up with emails. Coffee refill.
I planted my butt and ran through the day’s meetings, marking off the needs and wants, knowing most if it wouldn’t actually goto plan. These were my best work hours, where tasks actually got done before the insane office chatter took over.
The moment my second mug of coffee sat empty I packed up and shoved my feet into my lilac trainers. They were also a gift, albeit one I bought for myself the day I took the promotion to the head of HR for the Jericho Chimeras. That job was everything I’d wanted. It gave me greater autonomy, a sense of self satisfaction, and the freedom to work the hours I wanted—which was pretty much every hour in the day.
Something Ward and I had in common and one of the reasons we never worked.
Because we never saw each other.
We loved the idea of each other. Both hard working—tick. Both loved hockey, because he was a player back when wemarried in every sense of the word. Not that he ever cheated but gods did the hockey girlies love the boy aquarium. And Ward, with his steely stare and never smiling, hard ass face, unflinching and chiseled and so fuckingedible, had always been a fan favoriute.
And me working at the club helped. Right up until the day he hung up his hockey stick and took the job coaching the Chimeras. Which he did damn well, and was why he still lived for the club, taking them to playoffs every year without fail and a majority of championship rounds. A handful of wins.
More than most coaches and teams could ever boast in a decade.
That job—plus our proximity in the workplace—ruined our marriage.
And we let it.
I trotted to the door, knowing I’d be early for the day by club standards, but late by my own. The parcel slot was jammed open, a black wrapped package shoved part way through it. I huffed at the sight, knowing exactly what happened here, and why I never heard that second lap of reassuring footsteps. Why my perfectly peaceful morning routine was disturbed.
Because it was anniversary week, and Ward’s version of lovebombing me had started.
I grabbed the package and pulled, but the damn thing refused to pass through the hole. Unwilling to damage my mailslot, I yanked the door open and grabbed the gift, tearing the black plastic wrapping off. Ward hadn’t secured it with his usual hostage grade level of tape, and I was surprised when the garbage bag bits—he hadn’t even used bubble wrap this year—floated to my foyer hallway in a swath of plastic confetti.
“Dropping those skills, husband,” I muttered, sending a covert glance out to the street, though I know he won’t have stayed around to watch the carnage of me opening his gift.
