Chapter Thirty-Three
T alon pulled up in front of my apartment complex. Scanning the parking lot, he threw the Challenger in park. “Need me to come up and get you settled, darlin’?”
“No, thank you.” I spotted my Jeep a few parking spaces over.
“You got keys?”
I shook my head. “Don’t need them.” I’d dropped or lost mine enough times to have a spare hidden. Suddenly more tired than I’d ever been, I pushed the car door open.
“Hey.” Talon stopped me.
I glanced back at him. The streetlights shone on his face, highlighting his angular jaw, and for the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t look like an easygoing surfer. He looked like a hardened Marine. “What?”
“Playboy ain’t a bad man. You could do way worse, just sayin’.”
“Whether he’s a good man or not is irrelevant.” I was done with men who didn’t want me, or were only with me out of obligation or worse, pity. I was better than that.
“Fair enough. Take care, darlin’.”
Since it was probably the last time I’d see him, I reached over and gave him a quick hug. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Returning the hug, he chuckled. “Nothin’ doin’, darlin’, nothin’ doin’. All in a day’s work.”
“This is your job?” Making house calls and saving women from peril?
He laughed. The sound, rich and honest, filled the interior of his car, then spilled out into the night as if it couldn’t be contained.
“No, darlin’, I’m retired.” He winked, like it was an inside joke. “But seems as if the man upstairs wants more outta me than just catchin’ waves and livin’ the good life. I get called into action every time one of Patrol’s men, or women, needs medical attention.”
“Patrol?”
“Luna.”
“Why do you call him Patrol?”
Talon’s expression sobered. “Best Marine sniper I ever met. No one died when he was on patrol, me included.”
Wow. Nothing like the reality of war to make your own problems feel insignificant. “Thank you for your service.”
This time his smile was reserved. “You are entirely welcome.”
“So you really are a doctor?”
“Nah, I just play one on TV.” He winked again. “Now get, I gotta get home to my women.”
“Women?” As in plural? Wow . I felt thoroughly out of my element.
Talon chuckled, but his hand went to his heart, and happiness spread across his face. “Yeah, two to call my own.”
Intimidated, my cheeks heated. “Take care, Talon.” I got out of his car.
“You too, darlin’.”
I closed the door, and it wasn’t until I walked in to the foyer that I heard his Challenger pull away.
Exhaling, trying to calm my nerves, I looked over my shoulder and fidgeted as I waited for the elevator. Too soon I was on my floor and retrieving my hide-a-key from a neighbor’s potted plant outside their front door.
I wanted to be home. I wanted it more than anything right now, but I knew before I even inserted the key that it wouldn’t feel like home ever again.
I was a different person the last time I was here. My whole world was different now. I had deaths on my conscience. My soul had taken a beating. My pride was damaged, and my heart was more wounded than when I thought of a mother who’d given up on me.
Everything was different.
But when I pushed my front door open, the smell of home hit me. Incense, the soap on the kitchen sink, the perfume I wore for client meetings, coffee—it all greeted me, and for a single moment, I breathed it in.
Then I stepped inside, shut the door and turned on the lights.
I was right.
Nothing was the same.
For the first time, I was looking at my apartment the way Brian had seen it. It wasn’t my beloved safe space full of nonexistent memories and homey comfort. Dishes in the sink, ratty fabric hanging on the walls, too many scarves thrown all over the lamps, shit all over the bookshelves that wasn’t books—it was a mess.
Everything was a mess.
Me, my apartment, my life, my heart, my mind.
I snapped.
Energy I didn’t know I had surged, and I was rushing into the kitchen to grab trash bags. Amped on frantic adrenaline, anger and guilt, I stormed to my bedroom and began ripping every colorful, ridiculous piece of clothing off hangers and stuffing them in trash bags. Three bags later, I was on to my drawers, pulling out all my stupid flowered, printed, colorful underwear and bright tank tops and T-shirts and shoving them in trash bags.
Dragging the bags to the front door, I didn’t stop there.
I took them all to the elevator, then carried them to the apartment complex dumpster. The bin already full like it usually was, I dumped the bags next to the dumpster and made my way back upstairs.
Two feet inside my place and my gaze landed on the pile of clothes I had on a side chair near the TV that I never sat in. A dumping ground for discarded clothes and laundry I hadn’t yet folded, it gave me the same itch.
Grabbing a fresh bag, I was walking toward the chair when a knock sounded at the front door.
Startled, my entire body froze.
Acute fear crawled up my back and spread like ice in my veins. There are no gangbangers left, I told myself. No one is after me. I am safe, I am fine , I silently chanted the affirmations as the knock sounded again, crippling me with panic.
Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God .
“Genevieve,” Sawyer called through the door. “It’s me. I have your things.”
I sank to the floor in the middle of the living room.
No. No, no, no, I couldn’t see him.
Panicked, not thinking straight, I didn’t tell him to take a hike, and I didn’t tell him to go pick on some other woman he wanted to screw, then treat like shit. I didn’t even reply. I was too busy struggling to pull enough air into my lungs as my heart crushed in on itself.
“Genevieve.” He knocked again. “I see the light. I know you’re in there.”
Oh dear God, please go away.
When I continued my panicked silence, he upped the ante.
“Open the door, Genevieve. Now ,” he ordered, putting all the dominance in his voice I knew he was capable of.
Open the door, I told myself. Get your suitcase, then close the door. You don’t have to talk to him. Clean break. Get your shit and move on.
I stood and the plastic trash bag in my hand crinkled, and it hit me.
I didn’t want my stuff.
All that suitcase had was colorful bras and silly little girl T-shirts and ridiculously printed leggings. Happy clothes. For a girl who had been trying to fake it ’til she made it . But I wasn’t her anymore.
So I sucked in a breath.
Then another.
I didn’t have to answer that door.
Not to him. Not ever.
Being as quiet as possible, I opened the trash bag and moved toward the chair.
“All right, fine,” he said through the door. “If you’re not going to open the door, I’m coming in.”
I froze.
A key sounded in the lock.
I unfroze.
At warp speed, I tiptoe-ran all the way down the hall, making it into my bedroom before I heard the front door open, then close.
“Genevieve?”
I spun in panic.
Heavy footsteps sounded across the entry hall, then I heard my keys being dropped on the kitchen counter. “I have your suitcase.” A small thud sounded on the tiled floor.
As silently as possible, I flew into my walk-in, pulled the door halfway shut, and crouched down low in the back behind hanging dresses I’d thankfully left alone. Then I did what every self-respecting coward does. I hid.
My heart beat so loudly in my ears, I could barely hear his footsteps as he came down the hall.
The distinctive sound of my bedroom door being pushed open across the carpeting ricocheted around in my head, fighting with the sound of my own quickened breath.
A second later the closet door made its tiny squeak of protest as it was pushed open.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I held my breath.
One heartbeat.
Two…
Three…
Oh God.
Four…
The floor squeaked as his footsteps retreated.
His boots hit the tiled hallway, and I bit my cheek as tears welled.
The front door opened, and everything went still. Then three long seconds later, my front door shut.
Suspended in anxiety, I waited.
One minute.
Two.
Five.
I pushed the dresses aside and got up.
The second I stepped into my bedroom, I smelled him.
Sandalwood. Soap. Musk. So much musk .
My feet moved me toward the entryway.
There sat my flowered suitcase.
But it wasn’t alone.
On top of the printed suitcase I used to think was cheerful and fun, but now only looked pathetic with its broken wheel, sat my bright yellow purse, the one I’d had stolen when the Escalade was carjacked. The night my life changed forever. The night a man told me to have dinner with him at three o’clock in the morning.
I broke down in tears.
Big, ugly, soul-aching tears.
A minute, an hour, a lifetime later, they stopped to make room for a crushing headache.
I took my garbage bags and went after the chair, but I didn’t stop there. The wall hangings, the scarves, the knickknacks on the shelves, the dishes in the sink, all of it went into garbage bags, and when I ran out of bags, I used boxes.
Like a crazy person, I dragged it all to the dumpster in the middle of the night.
Then I fished a tablet I hadn’t bought out of the offensively cheerful flower-patterned suitcase, and I emailed every single current and pending client, giving them a competitor’s contact information.
Then I did the only thing left there was to do.
I pulled out the divorce papers, signed them, and walked them down to the mail drop in the lobby.
Nothing of my old life left, I crawled into bed.
My body spent, my mind shot, I prayed for sleep.
It didn’t come.
Making my way to the couch with my comforter in tow, I turned on the TV and mindlessly stared at it until the sun came up on my new life.