“What do you want?” she asked, raising a perfect brow at me.
“I want . . .” I stopped walking backwards now and paused.I wanted what I couldn’t have. I wanted what I’d lost. And it was all my fault.That’s what I wanted to say to her, but I didn’t.
“Never mind.” I turned around and started walking towards the lift, feeling like I was dragging my now very broken heart with me. I could almost hear it whimpering as it slid across the cold floor, trailing behind me.
I heard a long, loud sigh from behind me. “Are you looking for Alex?”
I turned back to her and nodded. Tears in my eyes now . . . no, tears streaming down my cheeks. God, I didn’t want to cry in front of her, but I was.
She leaned against the doorframe in a defeated kind of manner. “He doesn’t live here anymore,” she said, almost sadly.
I shook my confused head and then my eyes drifted down to her finger where the massive celebrity engagement ring had once been. But her finger was bare. “He moved out,” she said flatly.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you and him are . . .?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.
“No. I was with someone else who, well, let’s just say when his circumstances changed, I was no longer what he wanted.” She looked so sad in that moment and suddenly I felt desperately sorry for her. I could kind of guess what had happened; Enigma won, he scored some major record deal and was now banging someone far cooler than her, some up-and-coming rock chick covered in tattoos with labia piercings.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I actually meant it.
She shrugged. “What can you do, hey?”
“So why are you here?” I asked.
“It’s temporary. I had nowhere to live, Alex had a month on his lease, so he let me stay here while I found a new place.”
I smiled. That sounded like Alex. The guy who didn’t have a bad bone in his body, even when it came to people who’d hurt him.
Then she looked up at me and met my eyes. “I lied. I know who you are.”
“How?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You were all over his social media pages. How could I miss you? Although your hair is considerably better in real life.”
I nodded.
“Don’t make the same mistake I did,” she said slowly to me.
“What mistake is that?”
“Letting the one good man around go.” She gave me a small look and then started closing the door.
“Where can I find him?” I asked frantically as the door started closing.
“St. Mary’s hospital is where he works.”
Of course!Why hadn’t that dawned on me? “Thanks,” I said to her and turned and ran out the building.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“I’m sorry, the doctor can only see ye next weeeeek,” the receptionist said in a very thick accent that I was struggling to understand.
“Next week? But I need to see him right now,” I said, feeling frantic. I could see that my raised panicked tone had caught the attention of the taxi driver, who was now looking at me in the rear-view mirror.
“I’m sorry, but the doctor is fully boooooooooked.”What accent was that?
