Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I tried the handle. Locked.
I let out a long breath and straightened, staring at the door. I didn’t really have any other options besides breaking it down, which I considered.
The problem was that Sylvie didn’t trust me anymore. I didn’t know how to win back her trust, but breaking down her door when she’d asked me to let her sleep in peace didn’t seem like a good first move.
I turned, made my way back to my now very empty, very lonely bedroom. I pulled the covers up and stared at the ceiling, wondering if I’d be able to sleep. I thought about Sylvie, so close despite the locked door between us, lying in her bed alone, crying herself to sleep. Because I was an idiot and a coward.
I had to figure out how to convince her to trust me again, to take a chance on what we had between us. But as I stared at the ceiling, no solution appeared. This was out of my realm of experience. There had been plenty of women, but no one woman—no one who really mattered. There had been work, the team, but no one who stood out above the rest of it.
I had no idea what I was doing with Sylvie. If I had, I wouldn’t have fucked everything up so badly.
I knew she had feelings for me. So I had something to work with. I was supposed to be good at puzzles. I could figure this out. I had to hope, because the idea of losing her was untenable. It had only been days, but everything had shifted.
Losing Sylvie wasn’t an option.
Chapter Twenty-Three
SYLVIE
Eli was gone when I finally got out of bed in the morning.
A note sat on the table, saying he’d been called down into the office and to either come down there when I was up, or text, and he’d run out and get breakfast.
I read the note twice, rubbing at the ache in my chest with the heel of my palm.
I shouldn’t be so hurt. It was stupid. Eli never made me any promises. I’d signed an NDA, for fuck’s sake. I knew they were working on a confidential case. Was it really such a big deal that he hadn’t told me who the client was? That there wasn’t a client?
Yes, my heart shouted. Yes, it was a big fucking deal, because while I thought he was looking out for me, it was really about finding his missing mentor. While I was feeling safe for the first time since—
I swallowed hard as I forced myself to recognize it. For the first time since the carjacking. Which was wild, because I was in arguably the most unsafe situation I’d been in since then. My freaking van had been blown up. Someone was trying to kill me. I’d been locked out of my bank, my credit cards, my socials. My career was on the line. Everything was falling apart.
And I’d felt safe with Eli, right up until I found out that I was just the smoke screen so he could do what he really wanted: find Silas Creed.
I could take care of myself. I’d been doing that for a long time. I didn’t need Eli Bishop to keep me safe. I was fine. I still had the safe house, and Sinclair Security was on the case.
It just… It just wasn’t what I thought.
He never promised me anything, I reminded myself for the ten millionth time since Emmett had spoken Silas’s name yesterday.
I forced myself into the kitchen, made a cup of coffee, rummaged through the refrigerator, then swung the door closed without taking anything out. I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t really want the coffee.
What I wanted to do was run away to a tropical island and never come back. Go home and sleep in my childhood bed at my parents’ house, or just curl up in a ball and cry for a week or two.
I couldn’t do any of that.
It just— It fucking hurt. It shouldn’t. I barely knew Eli. Sex wasn’t love. And none of that mattered because my heart was a fucking bleeding ache in my chest, and all I wanted to do was scream at him and sob until he promised never to hurt me again. I needed to get it together. I’d cried myself to sleep last night, and it hadn’t done a fucking thing to make me feel better. Eli was still playing me, and I couldn’t rewind to before, when just being with him felt better than anything ever had.
Crying wasn’t going to change anything. Throwing things at Eli couldn’t turn back time or undo his lies.
So I did the next best thing: sat at my laptop and worked on the case I thought might be my next season of Evidence & Echoes. A teacher, twenty-eight and beloved by students and fellow teachers, who’d disappeared on an overnight field trip. At some point after everyone else had gone to sleep, she’d left her tent and had never been seen alive again.