Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96957 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
The following week passed painfully slow. My lack of sleep didn’t help. If I wasn’t at the firm until the early hours of the morning, I was tossing and turning in bed with nightmares of Slade with his wife and two kids. Both girls. I didn’t know why I imagined him with girls; I just did. Maybe because I imagined us having one of each, and I wasn’t ready to give her that too.
When someone else lives your life, part of you dies.
Slade wasn’t the ghost anymore. I was the ghost.
Chapter Thirty-Four
A week later, I wore a tailored-fit, gray sheath dress with capped sleeves and the hem brushing my knees. Black heels. Wavy hair up in a ponytail with long bangs framing my face.
I wasn’t invited to be a part of the meeting with Floyd that day. Tim buried me in work for the bigger case. However, I made a point to need a refill on my tea a few minutes after I noticed Floyd and his security detail arriving. They met in Tim’s office instead of the conference room, and Slade waited just outside of the closed-door office along with one other guy on the opposite side of the door. I meandered past Slade and the other guy, keeping my head down and focused on my phone like I didn’t even notice him.
But I felt him.
I felt his eyes on me. I felt him everywhere.
The trip to the break room was a mistake. He was a mistake. I chased a monster. I fell for him. And he gobbled me up and spit out my soul, hollow and lifeless.
As soon as I got to the break room, I pressed my back against the wall out of sight from him or anyone else. Drawing in an uneasy breath and chasing away the emotions that threatened to steal my composure, I closed my eyes and blew out that breath in tiny increments. “Let him go, Liv … let him go,” I whispered.
I remained in the break room for nearly thirty minutes until I got the nerve to walk back to my office before anyone questioned my absence. Again, I buried my face in the screen of my phone as I approached Tim’s office and the two men parked outside of it.
“Livy?”
I turned a few feet before reaching the man I needed to avoid. Tricia approached me, jerking her head toward Slade. “Didn’t you have a question for him?” She smiled at Slade. “Alex, right?”
My gaze fell to my feet, next to my heart that had been on the ground since the day he appeared from the dead.
When I didn’t hear his response, I assumed he gave her a nod.
“Livy thought you looked familiar. Right, Livy? She was dying to know where you lived, hoping to make a connection.”
I wasn’t dying to know, but I was dying as she exposed me right in front of him. I forced my gaze up to meet his. His neutral expression gave away nothing.
Clearing my throat, I formed a pained smile. “At first … you looked familiar. But now that I get a closer look, I realize it’s not you. And his name wasn’t Alex. And he wouldn’t be standing where you are. He’d be inside one of these offices. You see … he was on his way to law school. I always imagined seeing him in a suit for the first time at graduation. But he never graduated. Or maybe he’d have worn a suit to a job interview for a prestigious law firm like this one. Or at his wedding.”
My chin tipped downward again for a few seconds before finding the courage to gaze into those haunting eyes again. “Did you wear a suit at your wedding?” I whispered past the suffocating emotion gridlocking my throat.
He didn’t get a chance to answer. Tricia laughed. “Okay, now you’re sounding weird, borderline harassing the guy with too much information about your friend that’s not him.” She rested her hands on my shoulders and guided me toward my office.
“Gray …” he said, stopping my footsteps along with Tricia’s.
She turned, but I didn’t.
“I wore a gray suit to my wedding. White shirt, pink tie. It was raining that day … felt symbolic of my mood … of my life. A friend married us. Two witnesses, no family or other friends. I’ve never worn that suit again.”
“Alrighty then. Interesting story.” Tricia chuckled and she released my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “I stand corrected; he’s the weird one.” She brushed past me. It took a few seconds for my legs to resume carrying my body to my office.
That night I attempted another bottle of wine, a white one. I didn’t like it either. Maybe I wasn’t a wine person or maybe alcohol wasn’t the answer. Exercise seemed like the more palatable and healthy option, so I took Jericho for a run to the park with his tennis ball and a launcher. A few smaller dogs were there, but they left soon after my beast of a dog started fetching his ball. I needed something like fetch to keep my mind occupied—a repetitive task that would keep me on track and not thinking about him.