“What?” I ask, so quiet you can only hear it because the house is silent.
Chapter 22
Waking up, I feel more rested than I’ve been in ages. When I open my eyes, the clock reads eight in the morning. I don’t know when the last time I slept this late was.
Will must have turned off my alarm.
The ache from last night is still there when I bend over to pick up my boxers from the floor. I head into the bathroom to do a quick version of my morning routine before I go to find Will. He’s probably downstairs, watching Netflix again.
His fascination with the TV makes me smile, but it dies quickly when I look at myself in the mirror.
My hair is a disaster, and my lips are swollen. It would be obvious to anyone that I was thoroughly fucked last night. But oh well. The kids aren’t home right now.
I go through the motions of my morning routine, brushing my teeth, washing my face. I wonder, briefly, when I reach for my razor, if Will would like me better without the mustache I’ve kept for years.
It started as a joke with Jess years ago. Wondering what I would look like with it. But I actually thought it made my face lookbetter. But Will’s always made fun of me for it. Maybe he would prefer me clean-shaven.
I leave it for now so I don’t startle him with a new appearance the morning after we slept together for the first time. AndIlikeit. The razor goes onto the shelf it belongs on, and all is well, until I reach for my daily blood pressure pill and—
There’s a gap.
The cabinet behind the mirror has become a catch-all for pills in this house. Somewhere Ollie can’t reach, just out of sight enough that we forget to clean it out.
But I know exactly what’s missing.
An orange bottle, prescribed to Jess after a minor procedure two years ago. She only took one after it made her sick. I’ve been meaning to get rid of them, but never got around to it.
And now, the bottle is gone.
The morning after Will spent the night in my bed.
I close the medicine cabinet as my cheeks heat up, looking away. I don’t want to see the face in the mirror. What he’s done to me. But I can’t escape the heartache as the reality of what he’s done comes crashing down.
I force myself to get dressed in my pajamas from last night, thrown across the floor, and I force down the nausea I feel creeping up my throat when I think about his intentions last night. He sat there and watched a movie with me, he kissed me like that, he fucked me—
All so he could steal from me?
The twinge in my ass from last night makes itself known going down the stairs, and I have to stop, clutching the railing as I breathe through a panic attack.
How could he do this to me?
I thought he cared about me.
I’m such an idiot.
I find him in the kitchen when I reach the bottom of the stairs, and it smellsreally good.He’s made breakfast. Bacon, eggs, toast, all laid out on the island with him standing behind it in hisboxers. And yesterday, if I had seen this, I would have thought I’d walked straight into a dream.
Right now, I think I’m living a nightmare.
“Hey,” he says, gesturing toward the food. “I was gonna bring all this up to you. Breakfast in bed. That’s what boyfriends do, right?”
Boyfriends.
How stupid does he think I am?
“So go back upstairs, and I’ll be there in a second. I just need to—”
“Will.”
