Every single time I thought I was in the zone, something reminded me of her. Something she left around the house, the Lord of the Rings mug that she liked use for her tea sitting beside the sink. Or stray strands of long red hair on a throw pillow.
But I forced my thoughts away from dwelling on her, or wondering where she was or what was happening but I found it was hard to concentrate.
And sleep wasn’t much better.
Everything sucked without her, but I refused that truth, insisting that this feeling was temporary. She’d be back soon enough, and we’d establish a different sort of relationship—a consciously uncoupled one, to use the vapid vernacular. Yeah conscious. Yeah, uncoupled.
Ugh that thought didn’t bring me much comfort at all.
I was at work very early, waiting for the board to convene. I’d been paging through my slides at my desk when Warren approached. Damn it, I wasn’t in the mood for any more of his Canadian sex position jokes.
I held up a hand without looking at him. “It better be important or I’m doubling your work load starting five minutes from now.”
He paused, holding his phone. “Well, um, it’s weird. It’s a text from your wife but I have no idea why she sent it to me. And I have no idea what it means.”
I snatched the phone out of his hand without another word. Then, of course, had to unlock it. I held the screen up to his face and the message immediately flashed up.
KAT: Hey Warren, Can you pls inform whoever’s now in charge of QA that I’m going to need an extra week off? I’ve already alerted HR but I’ll need to hand off a couple projects or delay them.
“What does she mean ‘whoever’s in charge of QA’—that’s you, isn’t it? Did you lose your job?”
I checked the time stamp on the text—a little over half an hour ago. Then gave him back his phone, mumbling something at him to make him go away. My stomach churned and I could feel the blood drain from my face.
What the hell was this? And why would she text Warren instead of me? Well that was a stupid question, she obviously didn’t want to communicate with me. Or she thought I was already in the big meeting or…
If I remembered right, she’d already be in the air by now, or soon would be. I whipped out my phone and keyed in her contact info to call her.
It went straight to voicemail. Taking a deep breath and as calmly as I could, I asked her to call me back at her earliest convenience. She probably wouldn’t be doing that for quite some time. She’d have other things on her mind today.
I suddenly had a mental image of her flying in that plane alone, probably sandwiched between gruff businessmen or a noisy family while her nerves ate away at her. I remembered how she’d trembled when she’d told me the entire story of Derek’s constant bad choices. And how her entire family—the people whom she’d presumably most trusted in the world—had stood by, expecting her to commit a crime in order to cover for him.
None of her friends here in California had any idea what she was facing. Only me. And I’d vowed to be by her side. I’d put her up to it in the first place.
What the fuck are you doing sitting here while she’s on a plane, Lucas?
And why did she need the extra time off? What was she going to do? Was she thinking about staying in Canada now that she had some money saved up and could get her own place?
Maybe find herself an exciting new programming job or…. My mind raced, slides forgotten. She was not staying there. I’d go and get her and bring her back, first.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I’d gathered up my things and headed straight to Jordan’s office. He was usually in early, anyway, and though the meeting wasn’t for another hour, I needed to reach out to him.
His assistant, however, was not in, so I found myself knocking on his door yet again. He called out for me to come in. He was standing at the doorway into his bathroom in front of a mirror tying his tie.
“Padawan! Good to see you all nicely dressed up for your big day.” He turned back to his tie. “I didn’t feel like wearing all this