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Riggs, who still hadn’t contacted me. With every passing day without a word from him, I anticipated that my wretched hope he’d seek me out would’ve evaporated. It never did, though. Each morning, I woke up with a fresh sense of grief.
I still felt as I had the day I’d boarded the plane to London. Like he’d torn my heart out of my chest and ravaged it like a pomegranate, blood trickling down his muscular forearm. It was ironic, how I’d always wanted to trade love for comfort, but once love struck, comfort became the last thing on my mind.
“Duffy?Duffy!” Kieran kicked my ribs across the settee. Guess I’d been zoning out. Who could blame me? I’d be better off watching paint dry.
“Bloodywhat?” I whipped my head toward my brother.
“First of all, good to hear yourrealaccent is back.” He wiggled his brows. “Second of all, there’s someone at the door. Go answer it.”
“Yougo answer it,” I raged. “It’s pissing outside, and I’m a delicate flower.”
“I got us dinner.” Kieran stubbed his chest with his finger. “And you’re a pesty weed at best. It’s your turn to unplaster your arse from the couch.”
“It could be a murderer,” I pointed out smartly, crossing my arms over my chest. “You’ll have better luck shooing him away, with your size and strength.”
“Him?”Kieran’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “So now we’re under the assumption all murderers are males? I reject that framing.”
“Eighty-five percent of serial killersaremale, and eighty-two of them are white,” I countered, squinting at him. “Which means I might be looking at one right now. Should I be worried?”
Kieran gave me a look, throwing a Jammie Dodger at my arm. “Go get the door, smart-ass.”
“Ugh, fine.”
I kicked the throw off my waist and trudged to the door. Mum and Tim were upstairs, watchingThe Age of Innocencefor their book club (the book, according to Tim, simply had “too many pages to even count”). Besides, they clearly had keys to their own house, so I was taken aback that someone was paying us a visit this late at night and in this weather.
Maybe itwasa serial killer. If so, hopefully my jammies alone would scare them away.
I swung the door open with a sigh, expecting to see a volunteer asking for donations for something. “Hi. Let me get my purs—”
The rest of the word died in my throat.
In front of me stood Riggs. Tall, gorgeous, rugged Riggs. His floppy blond hair wet from the rain, bracketing his face. There were so many emotions in his stare I couldn’t even begin to untangle them.
And ... he wore asuit. A proper one too. With a jacket and bow tie and everything. For the first time in his life, my husband looked like a groom.
I’d never seen him looking so formal. So ...drenched. My heart skipped three beats before trying to bulldoze its way out of my rib cage and jump into his arms.
Riggs is here. Riggs came to London to see me. Riggs, my husband. And ... I’m wearing the most atrocious thing to ever be created, bless Tim.
The first thing I did was not trust my own eyesight. This was clearly a hallucination. Another step in my cognitive decline since I’d startedeating junk food and drinking soda. I reached to pinch my arm, then immediately regretted it when I gave myself a bruise.
“Aw, Duffy, you daft cow.”
“Hey, don’t talk about my wife like that.” He frowned.
Oh. My. God.
Seriously, what was happening?
Too shocked to produce words, I simply stared at him, clutching the doorknob for dear life.
It seemed like a lifetime passed before he said anything. For the first few moments, he just drank me in, as I did him. Taking inventory of the person who used to share a roof with me and was now across a threshold.
“I brought waffles.” He raised a Tupperware container between us, then handed it to me. The condensation of hot, fluffy pastry adorned the plastic dish from within. I grabbed it and held it tightly, knowing my shaky hands weren’t to be trusted.
“Ch-ch-cheers . . . ?”
I needed to say something.Heneeded to say something. Somebody definitely ought to start this conversation. Was it an official breakup conversation? A let’s-get-back-together conversation? Were we even really together in the first place? My head was spinning.
