You Know I Love You (You Are Mine #3) - Willow Winters Page 0,13

the sofa or go to bed, I always bring my laptop with me.

Workaholic is a word for it. I’m not sure even that does it justice. I gave up everything for this. For sitting in this damn office, making deal after deal.

It’s why I came to New York.

It’s why I spent years in the publishing industry, collecting contacts and building a brand that’s recognizable. I do it on my own and it’s always been rewarding. Up until recently, this was my dream.

While Evan stayed the same and carried on with a life that was a fun distraction, I buried myself in work. Growing farther and farther apart from my husband. Knowingly creating distance between us. I thought it was worth it and that they’d all understand.

Ignored friends … at least I didn’t have family to ignore. Other than Evan.

I rub my eyes again and try to soothe them, but the darkness is all I can see. It begs me to sleep.

I desperately need it. I can’t even read an email right, partly from how tired my eyes are and partly from my inability to focus on anything at all. I’ve reread this pending message about a dozen times and I couldn’t tell a soul what the content is to save my life. My meeting with Jacob is next week. I spent an entire hour on my own sitting mindlessly in the coffee shop before I bothered to check the time and date.

The errors are piling up and so is my anxiousness.

At least the coffee in the shop was comforting and the little biscuits delicious. But the rain was coming down in sheets, and any sense of ease was gone by the time I dragged my ass back home to an empty townhouse with soaking wet jeans slick around my ankles.

My shoulders rise and fall as I take another glance at the screen. The contrast of the black and white is too harsh and I almost shut the laptop down and give in to sleep, but my phone goes off, scaring the shit out of me.

Evan.

It’s my first thought and I hate how disappointed I am when I see it’s not him. It’s his father. My heart sinks and I pretend it doesn’t hurt.

In my contact list, it still says “Evan’s parents’ house.” It’s tied to the number for the landline at the house where he grew up. He said he had the number memorized when he was only six years old.

Marie gave the number to me the night I first saw her, so she could call me about next Sunday’s dinner, all those years ago. Every time I see the words Evan’s parents’ house, I’m reminded that only Henry remains.

It brings a number of memories I don’t welcome. Just the same as the reminder of my own parents’ sudden death in a car crash. Tragedy brought us together. It wasn’t love. It was a need for love and that’s something else entirely.

That’s something Evan and I had in common, both of us losing our loved ones so quickly. He still has his father at least, but I’ve had no one for most of my life.

The phone rings and rings as I attempt to gather my composure. We’d only been seeing each other for a few months when I got the first call from this number. I was expecting it to be Marie, but it wasn’t his mother making the call, it was Evan because his cell phone had died.

He told me he couldn’t make it to our date and the first thought I had was that he was breaking up with me, simply because of the tone of his voice. It wasn’t until he apologized that I realized it was something else.

He couldn’t hold it together on the phone. His voice shook and his sentences were short. I’ll never forget that feeling in my chest, like I knew something horrible had happened and there was nothing I could do about it.

There was something in his voice that I recognized. It’s how I sound when I’m trying to convince someone else I’m okay, but I’m not. I knew it well.

After my parents died, I got tired of having to convince people there was more to me than tragedy. People who didn’t bother to get to know me, because I was just the sad girl at the end of the block. The poor child everyone talked about.

It was why I moved to New York. Living in the small town where my family