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The refrigerator was stocked with plenty of leftovers, even though I’d sent a lot home with everyone I could. I knew that Nathan and I physically couldn’t eat that much food before it went bad and I had a bit of a weird thing with throwing food out.
I had all but had to kick Eliza and Karen out of the house, them being the last to leave because they had the shortest distance to go. Eliza had tried to insist on staying the night, but I had managed to lie convincingly and tell her I was okay. I doubted she believed the lie, but she knew that the Greenstone Security guys had installed the fancy new security system—that Luke taught me how to use before my second glass of wine—and that I had Duke down the street.
I hadn’t thought about Lance, not properly at least, until Eliza and Karen had left, making me promise to shout out my window if anything went down.
Because of course I didn’t have a phone now.
I couldn’t afford to buy a new one, but I needed one since we didn’t have a landline. Fury ran through my veins at the fact Lance had smashed my crappy, third-hand phone because he heard the tail end of something that shouldn’t have even meant anything to him.
Sure, decent guys—if that’s what Lance was—hearing the horrible stuff men like Robert could spurt at women likely were going to have a reaction. But a reaction like smashing my phone and storming off without a word?
Not cool.
Infuriating.
And really frickin’ confusing.
Lance didn’t strike me as someone who lost his temper and smashed things. Everything about him was controlled, cold. I had only seen glimpses of what might be emotion from the man. Might.
He definitely made it clear that I was nothing but a job to him. He made it clear he was a man who controlled every situation and that he wasn’t shaken by anything.
If the pieces of my phone on my back step were anything to go by, he was shaken by that phone call.
Which was what made all this confusing.
He had to feel something about me in order to lose it like that. He had to feel something beyond the indifference that leaked from his pores.
I tortured myself with that truth. I tortured myself with that remaining bottle of fancy wine, with the food that filled up my fridge, with the lack of cell phone.
While I tortured myself, I waited. Because surely he was coming back. He couldn’t just smash my phone and walk off, never to be seen again. There had to be an explanation, or at the very least his cold presence informing me he was back to do his job.
Or that he’d killed my husband and the father of my child.
The look I’d glimpsed on his face just before he’d disappeared from sight had punctured the numb state I’d been in. At the time, I didn’t process it. But with all my crazy replaying, I realized what that expression was.
It was death.
He was capable of killing someone, I knew that deep down. I’d known it all along. Heck, he’d offered to kill Robert the first frickin’ day I met him. And I’d let him around my child. I’d berate myself for that bad parenting a lot later, when this was all a memory. When Lance was a memory.
I ignored the stab that came with that thought and focused on a particular memory. A fresher one.
That look on Lance’s face.
The one that had me pacing the house, half expecting someone to knock on my door and tell me Robert was dead. I was half hoping for that. What was wrong with me? That wasn’t who I was, wishing people dead because of how they’d wronged me. But that wasn’t it. I didn’t care how Robert had hit me, abused me, defiled me. I cared that he posed a threat to my son. And it was the mother in me that called for the blood of anyone who harmed my child.
So I waited for news.
For Lance.
Neither one came.
Chapter Ten
When my alarm buzzed, I was awake.
Luckily, I still had an actual alarm clock unlike many people that relied purely on their phones. I bought it at a garage sale because it was kitschy and a faded gold that went with the rest of the décor in my room. My purple velvet comforter, the mishmash of throw pillows I’d collected over the years. Photos in gold frames all over my restored nightstands that I’d painted white and put gold accents on. There was an old armchair in the corner which had a furry ottoman in front of it, I’d sit there sometimes, just looking at the moon when it was full.
I’d sat at that chair for most of the night before I moved to my bed and tried to sleep.
