“Want me to make some eggs?” I asked, expecting to see him at the table.
He wasn’t there.
“Olly?” I turned, looking toward the fridge and then wandered into the giant pantry.
He wasn’t anywhere.
I went the last place I thought he would be… downstairs in the ring. I smiled thinking of a repeat of this morning.
He wasn’t there either, but our clothes still were.
A feeling of dread enveloped me as I made my way back to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. I staved it off as best as I could, but every second, every minute that passed without him bounding into the room to annoy me made the facts harder to ignore.
By the time my second cup of coffee was drained, the razorblades were back in my belly. He wasn’t here. He left. He literally made it impossible not to love him and then he did the one thing he said he wasn’t going to do: he let Olly run away.
Where he went I didn’t know.
All I knew was that he was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Taunt - to reproach in a mocking, insulting, or contemptuous manner.”
Charming
I got all of an entire hour of living before I was reminded that I wasn’t allowed to live. That my life was over and technically it belonged to someone else.
Someone who just happened to be Death.
But I was done taking orders from him.
As soon as the coffee began brewing, I took the stairs two at a time, thinking I would slip into the shower with Frankie and have a little fun…
But I never made it that far.
I got close. Close enough that I was able to toss some clothes onto her bed.
But then I was yanked right out of my body. It dropped onto the thick carpeting like a stone and I was left—nothing but a red cloud—hovering above it.
“The state of your undress and the fact there is a woman in the shower makes me think you have other priorities besides your job,” said an all too familiar voice from behind.
How in the hell did he find this place? The one place I thought I was actually free of him.
I turned. “I don’t really think you care about me completing this job.”
“You don’t think I care about thirty million dollars?”
“I think you knew from the very beginning… The only reason you chose the senator’s daughter as a Target was because the only thing you cared about was seeing me fail.”
He smiled. “That’s right. I knew you would fail. Just like I knew you were here. Did you think I didn’t know about this house? Where you spend your time off? You should know by now that I know everything.”
“You don’t know where your secret bodies are.”
That wiped every ounce of smugness right off his boney old face. I resisted the urge to look toward the bathroom, not wanting to show that I was worried for Frankie. If she came out here…
No. I wasn’t going to let her get caught up in this. It was the reason I brought her here in the first place. Yes, I wanted to keep an eye on her, but not for the reasons she thought. I wanted to make sure she was safe from him.
“And what bodies would that be?” he asked like he was bored, but I saw the flicker in his eye… the fear.
“The ones you keep hidden. The ones you didn’t want anyone to know about,” I said casually.
“What do you know about those?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing into barely there slits.
“I know where they are. But otherwise, not as much as I want to. Unfortunately, the soul you have wandering around your house wouldn’t tell me a thing.”
“You little—” He snarled, lunging at me, but his hands went right through, making the red puff out around him.
“Bodily harm requires a body,” I taunted.
And just like that I was back in my body and being dragged up from the floor. “You better hope those bodies are where they’re supposed to be,” he said, jutting his face up close to mine.
The water to the shower shut off.
“Better go see,” I said, injecting a dare behind my words. There was a huge chunk of ice in my gut. Get him the hell out of here! the voice inside me was screaming. I looked at the bathroom door. Stay in there.
With a wave of his hand, a doorway appeared right beside the bed. The Reaper started forward, grabbing me and pulling me along with him. I didn’t put up a fight. I wanted him out of here and as far away from Frankie as he could be. And it seemed the fastest way for that to happen was for me to go with him.
And so I went, the door he created snapping shut behind us like it hadn’t been there at all.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Therapy - the treatment of physical, mental, or social disorders or disease.”
Frankie
I drove his Ferrari to the airport and left it in the long-term parking lot. If it got stolen or damaged, it was his fault for being a wimp and disappearing on me like that.
I mean, really. Did he not know me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t have dissolved in a puddle of simpering tears if he told me he only said those things because he was high on sex? Or maybe he was just trying to keep his precious face intact because he did know me and he knew I would have rearranged it.
At the ticket counter, I maxed out my credit card buying a flight back to Alaska and sat there at the gate, praying I wouldn’t get sandwiched between someone who liked to talk and someone that smelled like bacon and sweat. Never mind that my eyes kept straying to the crowd and I hoped to see him pushing through, trying to stop me from leaving.
This wasn’t some movie like Pretty Woman where the rich guy comes riding up in his limo with roses and begs the girl to take him back after he acted like an idiot.
After all, Charming hadn’t acted like an idiot. He was an idiot.
And I certainly wasn’t going to forgive him.
The flight was endless and far less comfortable than the private jet we took to get to Scotland. I kept praying that I wouldn’t have a panic attack from all the turbulence I felt sitting on the very last seat on the plane. I knew if I started barfing I wouldn’t stop and it would all likely be blood because those razorblade wings were back and they were making mincemeat out of my belly.
When we finally landed, I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and powered it on. I wasn’t looking to see if he called. I knew he hadn’t. It didn’t stop my heart from plummeting when the only missed calls were from Piper.
Piper. That was a whole other huge mistake. I had four missed calls and four texts from her. We’d barely talked in weeks. I was not only stupid for giving away my heart to the wrong man, but I also ruined a friendship while doing it.