When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9)(100)

*

Thad had pushed her too far. He hadn’t intended to ghost her forever, just long enough to build up his reserves before he had to listen to another of her apologies—time enough to be able to put on his game face and convince her that she hadn’t meant that much to him in the first place. Time to pull himself together just enough so he could tell her she didn’t need to feel guilty about dumping him. Now he realized he’d made a horrible mistake.

That stricken expression on her face . . . It didn’t look anything like guilt. It looked like—

He raced after her toward the back of the house. One of the rear doors stood open. The security lights shone on the swimming pool and beds of spring-blooming plants. He followed the twisting paths around the garden fountain, past the pool, and through the shrubbery calling for her, hearing nothing in return.

He hurried to the front of the house. Her car was still here. He wasn’t leaving until he found her.

Half an hour later, Garrett pointed out that his Escalade was missing, and Thad realized she’d gotten away.

*

Olivia waited in the dark shadows of the adjoining street with the Escalade’s headlights turned off until she saw Thad drive away. She rested her cheek against the window. The raindrops splattering on the windshield seemed like tears from the gods. The only way she could make up the distress she’d caused him was never to contact him again.

*

Thad drove to her apartment and parked on the street near her building’s parking garage. He jumped out of his car into the rain. The orange barrier gate arm was down, but he could see inside. Garrett’s black Cadillac Escalade was missing. She hadn’t come home.

The wind whipped through his hair. Rain pelted his face. He’d screwed up big-time. Something was very wrong. He’d seen it in her face. He headed for the Starbucks across the street to keep watch.

*

Thunder boomed outside the sliding doors that led to the balcony patio of her apartment. She sat at her piano picking at the keys. Her clothes were still damp from the soaking she’d gotten when she’d returned Clint’s car and sneaked inside his house to get her own keys. Fortunately, she hadn’t seen Clint. She couldn’t bear facing another person she’d inflicted her insanity on.

It was too late for a courteous apartment dweller to play the piano, but she played anyway. Something soft, Bach’s Prelude in C Major. But the music did nothing to soothe her.

It was ironic. She had her voice back, and with Thad out of her life, no more messy personal entanglements stood between her and her ambition. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Nothing held her back from greatness except hard work and dedication.

A tear trickled down her cheek. The concierge had rung half an hour ago to tell her Thad Owens was in the lobby. She wouldn’t let him up. She needed him to understand he was free of her. No more texts. No more visits to his friends and his family. She would give him the gift of knowing he was free of her harassment.

A sob tried to escape. She squeezed her lips tight to keep it inside. If she started crying now, she might never stop.

A boom of thunder vibrated the piano bench, followed by a bang against her balcony doors. She spun around and gasped.

A man, silhouetted in a flash of lightning, stood on the balcony of her twenty-second-floor apartment. Tall. Lean. Arms pressed to the glass.

She raced for the door and fought with the latch. When it finally gave, she was hit with a blast of rainwater and the smell of ozone.

“What are you doing?” Terror made her push past him to the balcony rail. She looked down, expecting to see—a ladder? Ladders didn’t extend this high, and a fifteen-foot gap stretched between her balcony and her closest neighbor’s. The street lay far below. How had he—?

She looked up into the rain. The elderly, white-haired woman she’d once seen in the elevator leaned out the window directly above, oblivious to the rain, gaily waving. Thad pulled Olivia inside and shut the sliding door.

Everything went quiet.

They stared at each other. His wet, dark hair lay perfectly against his head. Rainwater dripped from the tip of his nose, and his shirt stuck to his chest. Her terror at the risk he’d taken—what could have happened to him—blocked out everything else. “You didn’t!” The words were hoarse. “You didn’t jump down here from my upstairs neighbor’s window.”

“She’s a nice lady. I met her in the lobby.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck as he swallowed. “She’s eighty-four, a widow. She invited me up.”

He was here, in her apartment. She couldn’t take it in. “She let you jump out her window? You could have killed yourself.”

“She gave me the cord from her bedroom drapes.” He sounded both nervous and apologetic. “I rappelled part of the way.”

“An eighty-four-year-old woman let a man she didn’t know into her apartment and helped him rappel out her bedroom window? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I might have told her it was your birthday surprise,” he said. “And in her defense, she thought I was her dead brother.”

“Dear God.” She suddenly noticed the trickle of red running down his arm. “Your arm is bleeding!”

“It’s only a scratch.”

She dug her fingers into her eye sockets. “You didn’t have to do this. You’re free of me. No more text messages or phone calls or showing up at your parents’ house. No more setting deadlines and then breaking them. I’m sorry! I don’t know what I was thinking.” She couldn’t stop herself. “Well, I do know what I was thinking. I thought if I could finally talk to you, maybe we’d have this big reconciliation. You’d realize you were in love with me after all, the same way I’m in love with you. We’d fall into each other’s arms, and everything would work out, and the curtain would come down on happily-ever-after.” She wrung her hands. “But that’s not reality. You’re a more casual person than I am. My life is too big and too complicated for a man like you to put up with. That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me, but instead of listening, I harassed you. And now, I’m going to apologize for the last time, swallow my humiliation, promise never to bother you again, and let you out.”