demons that plagued him.
“You mean the world to me.”
I love that.
Then I lost his eyes because he buried his face in my neck. I wrapped my arms around him, held on with my legs still around his hips, and I felt wetness leak from his eyes. I soaked up every last tear he shed. I’d take them all if it meant he let go of his pain.
It was a long time before he picked me up and carried me into my bathroom. I stood by the basin as he gently cleaned our combined release from between my legs, the act intimate. The gentleness of it overwhelming.
Maybe I wasn’t done falling in love.
Maybe I’d fall more every day.
Maybe each day, he’d show me something new, something I didn’t know I needed and it would surprise me and make me love him more.
There would be nothing better than falling more every day for the rest of my life until my dying breath.
That would be a dream come true.
Later that night after Brady raved about dinner, he helped me finish the floors, and tucked me in, staying long enough for me to fall asleep in his arms. I found that I was right, I wasn’t done falling. Because when I felt his lips brush my forehead and heard his whispered “Sweet dreams, my beautiful Hadley” as he got out of my bed, my heart swelled even more.
17
Something was off.
Way, way off.
Brady was pulling away.
I was sitting in my office staring at the email I’d been drafting for the last hour wondering what had gone wrong. Everything had been going great—until yesterday. We were just us, but more. The teasing, friendship, easiness was all still there but it now included touching, kissing, sex, and open affection. Brady had come over every night since our first date. Sometimes he showed with takeout, sometimes I cooked, but however it came to be, we ate dinner together.
He’d helped me put in the new baseboards, making a tedious job fun. We worked well together. He hadn’t taken over even though he could’ve done it faster and probably better than me. He just let me work and kept me company while I did. Brady knew without me having to tell him, I wanted to accomplish the task. And after we were done, he praised my work in a way that made me feel good. He was genuinely impressed, not because I was a woman, but because laying flooring was hard work and I’d done a damn good job.
And every night we ended up in my bed watching TV, making out, having sex, then cuddling before I fell asleep and he left. Every morning, I’d woken up alone and each time it stung. But I was determined to give him time and address it in a few weeks.
But now something was seriously wrong.
Yesterday he texted me he had to work late because there’d been a break in something the team was working on. I knew it had to do with my cousin Liberty because my mom had told me my dad was happy that they’d finally had a solid lead. But what concerned me was he declined my invitation to come over later. And it wasn’t the refusal, it was the way he dismissed me.
I spent last night and all day trying to talk myself out of being concerned. Telling myself I was overreacting and being a needy girlfriend.
And no one liked needy.
But I wasn’t overreacting. I knew I wasn’t. And it wasn’t because Brady didn’t answer his cell when I called him this morning on my way into work. It was because it had been six hours and he hadn’t returned that call or the text I sent at lunch. And when I phoned Triple Canopy, Lauren, the receptionist, told me Brady hadn’t been in all day.
Now I was worried. I didn’t want to call my dad, uncles, or brother to find out why Brady wasn’t in because that was seriously not my place to do, but I was concerned enough I had to do something.
So even though it was pouring buckets and there was a storm warning in effect, I was going to drive to Brady’s house and check on him. It was mid-summer in Georgia, and tropical storms and hurricanes were something I was used to. Thankfully, the storm hadn’t been upgraded to a hurricane but it was blowing something fierce. That meant I needed to get on the road before it got worse. Once I got