The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,135

me. Don’t tell Rob. This was all his idea and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.”

She sniffles. “I wish you had opened up before. All those times when I wanted to know things.”

I manage to give her a smile, and then I do it anyway, because I can’t resist. I give in and put my hand to her face. The velvet softness of her skin is warm against my hand and memories flood back of the scent and feel of her against me.

I wish she had come sooner. I wish we had sorted things out so that we could have moved to a better place together instead of moving apart. “I’m falling in love with you, Mari, but I have learned that love is a dangerous, precarious thing.” The confession tumbles from my mouth before I have a chance to rein it in. Her eyes widen and turn glassy and if she looks at me like that any longer, I will want to wipe those tears before they fall. I walk away.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she calls after me. I stand on the other side of the taxi, my hand on the door, about to open it. I pause and take in a snapshot of her face in case this is the last time I will ever see it.

“You don’t have the right to say that to me and leave,” she yells.

“Look me up next time you’re in New Orleans.”

I hope she does, but that is entirely up to her.

Chapter 55

MARI

He said those things and walked out of my life, ripping through me like a tornado that twisted and broke everything in its wake. Trust Ward to do that to me. He left me thinking, and wishing, and hoping.

I watched the taxi drive away and a collage of our rocky past hurtled by me. We could have reconciled. We could have had a good thing, a great thing, before everything was ripped away from us.

It was fortunate that I started my new job soon after. It gave me a reason to move forward every day but, compared to before, everything about my new working life dimmed. It was like looking at a paler shade of a painting that had lost its color in the sun.

My life had no allure. I was grieving for my mom, and that was hard. Harder still was living alone, where it was just me with my melancholy thoughts. I tried to heed the warning Ward had given me, about being sucked back into an abyss of nothingness.

I’m not sure I managed to heed it well. It was work that saved me, that gave me a reason to get up and out of bed, and to be useful and pretend to function for the eight hours I was there. But it wasn’t easy, forcing myself to get through each day, stumbling from Monday to Friday to Monday again.

At the weekends I would stay in bed, listless and feeling useless. Jamie tried to help, but I was so aware of his feelings for me, I pushed him away, made it clear to him that I didn’t feel the same.

After a while, he stopped trying to help me.

I fell deeper into my malaise.

It became a pattern. I would function during the weekdays and fall to pieces during the weekends.

I kept willing for Ward to contact me but he never did. And I, mindful of Jamie’s words, that I was a magnet for men and relationships that weren’t good for me, forced myself never to contact him.

Even though the temptation was strong, I made myself believe I was weaning myself off an addictive drug.

One month passed.

Then two.

And still I thought of Ward. I forgot about the bad times, and only remembered the good ones.

Three months passed, and I still found myself thinking of him every time I went to sleep and every time I woke up.

I had to do something. I wasn’t succeeding at all in getting him out of my system. Maybe it was because I needed him more than ever.

I bought a ticket to New Orleans, I called Rob before, and got Ward’s address, telling him I wanted to send Ward a card. This was how I found myself one day getting a cab from the airport to Chesterton Heights, Ward’s home.

As I look through the heavy black and gold wrought iron gates, I begin to feel claustrophobic. I begin to feel as if I’ve made a