of a grimace and it’s obvious the statement is true. Blake slides his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. “Get that nut iced. Mila, my offer stands. Happy to donate to the growth of the family.”
I can’t help but smile because Blake’s is infectious. Over the years I’d learned he’s just the type of man you begrudgingly love. Where his charm is just enough to offset the asshole. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The hell you will,” Lucas grunts out. “Thanks, asshole. I’ll call you.”
“I’ll hold my breath, later bro,” Lucas taunts as he makes his way toward the front door.
“You’re the devil,” Lucas yells, wincing before he eases himself down on the pack.
“Heaven for the weather,” he grins back between us both, “hell for the company.”
I speak up then. “Did you seriously just misquote Mark Twain? It’s ‘Go to heaven for the climate, and hell for the company.’”
“Clever girl. I adapted it to suit me.”
I cross my arms, trying not to smile. “You ripped it off.”
He shrugs. “Everything under the sun has been done. But I can duel with you all day.”
I roll my eyes and respond with an annoyed, “Out, Grasshopper.”
“Later, Ants.”
I hadn’t exactly been kind to him the last time I saw him, I’d dismissed him. Guilt gnaws at me as I stare into Blake’s vacant office and imagine the horror of finding him lifeless, all the light and playful mischievousness in his beautiful brown eyes gone…forever.
Stifling a sob, I cup my hand over my mouth with grief for Blake, for the life he cut short, and for my husband who’s suffering this very stab a thousand times worse.
“You okay?” Amanda asks.
Wiping the tears away from my eyes, I do my best to tamp down my own pain. I’m here for Amanda, to get her through this. I nod. “Memories. Just thinking of the last time I saw him. It wasn’t here.”
“Good, because I hate this place,” she says, and I follow her past the office, through the living room into Blake’s bedroom.
“I think maintenance has been in. Everything looks picked through. I wouldn’t be surprised if half his shit were on eBay already,” she sniffed. “His Emmy is at my house, thank God.”
“Do you want to place a complaint?”
“I don’t have the energy.” She stands idle, too thin for her tall frame and ghastly pale. When I met Amanda, she’d been full of life, her tactless jokes terrible but her laughter contagious. We were on a high when we met. Lucas had just earned his first SAG award nomination, and Blake had guest-starred on a season of a crime series and won an Emmy. We were all on one edge or the other of thirty. Champagne and money were both flowing, and the red carpet was stretched out as far as the eye could see for both Blake and Lucas. We all looked the part, in both health and heart, we were unimaginably happy. And somewhere in the last few years, we’d lost sight of why. Looking at Amanda now, it feels like it had been a decade ago, but it was as close as yesterday. Her once vibrant auburn hair lay lifeless, piled on top of her head underneath two inches of new growth. Dark circles drown out the shimmer in her light blue eyes, and it’s easy to see she’s been doing the kind of crying that weakens the body but doesn’t heal the soul.
“I can say something to management,” I offer, surveying the ransacked apartment. “Do you have a list of things that are missing?”
She shakes her head. “It’s not worth it. Let’s just get this over with, okay?”
I nod because I can physically identify with her ache and I’m already on the verge of more tears. Amanda pushes past her emotion, pulling a box from a stack next to the wall. I feel like I’m circling in place as I try to muster up the courage to go through a dead man’s possessions.
Amanda reads my thoughts. “It’s okay to dig around. I know it might make you uncomfortable and I can’t thank you enough for helping me. Just pack what you think I might want to look through. I trust your judgment. I’m donating his clothes, and I have someone picking up the furniture. A cleaning service will come after that. We’re mostly here to make sure there’s nothing that could hurt him further, you know?”
“I know.”
Her chin trembles as she speaks. “They’ve already decided he hurt that woman who keeps