Sebring (Unfinished Heroes #5)(105)

I went to work because I got paid to do it. I went home to the huge-ass house my father made me buy that it was annoying to try to sell, and since I didn’t have to anymore, I took it off the market. I did Pilates. I walked on the treadmill. I had my eyebrows shaped and my pubic hair waxed. I went to movies by myself. I went to dinner by myself.

I breathed.

I existed.

I pushed as far as Georgia would allow me to do so as my only enjoyment.

When I knew I was pushing too far, I toed the line.

The only other blip to getting to that was the unsurprising fact that Georgia had lost her mind about the fact that Nick had played me. She’d been infuriated at Nick for making that move. She’d been more infuriated at me that I’d let him.

The conversation with my sister that came right after the conversation I had with Tommy telling him I was over him and we had no future, regardless of his plans for six years he shared not an iota of with me, was unpleasant to say the least.

But one thing you could say for it, outside of it being done, was that I now definitely knew my place.

My father might be incarcerated but I was a Shade and my life was owned by the head of the House.

I could f*ck who I wanted (not that I did) just as long as they were nameless and harmless. If I actually developed feelings for someone, the silent understanding was that I told Georgia.

I might have found this even bleaker than my life if I had any intention to have feelings for anyone.

Since I did not, it wasn’t a problem.

In the case of Nick, I had no idea what was happening. That was part of the business she didn’t share with me. Although part of the unpleasantness of our conversation was me sharing I would very much rather my sister not put a hit out on the man who had dishonestly won my heart, but he’d done it all the same.

This was taken as a weakness in my allegiance.

I said no further to my sister on the subject.

I’d made my warnings to Nick. He could take care of himself.

Nevertheless, I sent an anonymous letter to his brother at his nightclub, sharing that the danger was still very real and measures should be taken.

That was all I allowed myself to do mostly because it was all I could do.

As I was not of that world anymore, I’d heard nothing. But watching the news and reading the paper daily did not share that a young, vital, handsome man had been found dead.

So Nick was taking care of himself.

That was good.

In the four months since Nick walked out of my house, I heard nothing from him and saw nothing of him, which proved my assertions during our heinous final conversation true.

I did not believe because there was nothing to believe.

I had no earthly idea but my guess would be that a man who loved a woman would not walk away from her and not look back.

So there it was.

And in the four months since Nick walked out of my house, as I had a great deal of time, I spent a majority of that time wondering how I ever believed in the first place.

Quite frankly, there wasn’t anything about me to love.

I was quite attractive, but deep down, people didn’t love looks.

They loved senses of humor. They loved personality. They loved manner. They loved someone who loved dogs, like they did. Or they loved someone who was passionate about issues, like they were.

Whatever.

There had to be substance to a person to be a person who could be loved.

There was nothing to me. There’d never been anything to me.

Now Nick, he was a person you could love. He teased great and he cooked great and he kissed great and when you spoke, he listened like there was nothing on earth he wanted more to do. He made me laugh. He made me feel. He made me believe there was something to me.

The woman he spent years plotting revenge for, I bet there was something to her.

But me?

I was a woman he could walk out of my house and never again see.

Truth be told, one of the reasons I decided to keep that house was because it was like keeping a bit of Nick with me. It was the only thing I had, memories of the few times he’d been there. Memories, if I was in the mood, I could pretend were based on something different.

Something real.

I’d been right that first day I woke up to him in my bed. Sometimes, if I was allowing myself to wallow (which I didn’t allow often, but it happened), I would ramble and remember his joke about the wood-fired stove. I’d remember falling asleep beside him on the couch after we got back from Vegas.

I’d remember right where he was, right where I was, precisely what he looked like when he lied that lie that was so pretty, telling me he loved me.

“Right, I’m here, I don’t wanna be here forever, so let’s start this. Harry’s retiring and he wanted me to ask you personally to come to his party,” my sister announced.

“His reinstatement didn’t last long,” I murmured.

“He wasn’t really reinstated, Liv,” Georgie murmured back.

No, he wasn’t. That was another bit of info I learned years late.

Harry didn’t need me giving him the odd job to make his load a little lighter. He was on Tommy’s dollar and on Georgia’s payroll, part of his duties being looking after (that meant monitoring) me.

An unexpected betrayal that shouldn’t hurt as much as it did.

But it did.

“I’ll take a pass on that,” I told Georgia.