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It felt like a knife to the gut seeing the heartbreak on her face. “London…”
“Maybe it’s this damn city. I feel like it started when I came here. Maybe I need to leave. Just get the hell out of here and try again, somewhere they don’t know what EWO is, what Castleton is, what Pillar is, what Queen Pearl is. Just burn it all down and go. And just…” I sucked in a sharp breath, starting towards the door in a dolorous march. “Goodbye, María. It’s been a pleasure working with you.”
The night air felt colder than usual as I stepped outside, wishing María would say something as I left, hearing nothing.
Chapter 18
It even started raining. City was telling me to fuck off.
I crashed hard as soon as I got home, lying in bed and staring out the window, silently pleading the hopeless, anxious weight in my chest to go away just long enough I could sleep. I wasn’t sure when I actually made it, just that I’d seen the clock saying three fifty-something, so… somewhere after that. I woke up to my alarm, and I was halfway through getting up before the weight of it hit me—I didn’t have a damn job to get up for.
So I turned off the alarm, and I fell back into bed, and I pulled the blankets up higher again, willing myself to get just a little more sleep—get away from all of this for just a bit longer.
I only woke up again once Earl was pawing me, little princeling desperate for his food. I groaned, rolling out of bed, but quietly grateful for the distraction—just focusing on the cat. I could handle that. Pouring his food, shaking the bowl around a little so he couldn’t see the bottom, scratching him behind the ears as he ate. Put my own food on. A mindless ritual carried me through the morning tasks, giving me some blessed relief, until I found myself pitifully at the end of them—dressed for work, my shoes on and everything. Where the hell did I think I was going?
I had to keep moving forwards. That was all I knew. If I sat in this for too long, it would eat me alive. So… I found something to do. I sat down at my computer, searched cities, job listings, apartments. The whole thing made me sick. One reason after another why it wouldn’t work floated through my head like dark clouds, but I just focused on one thing at a time, one step at a time.
And frustratingly, it was her name that kept breaking through those clouds, prickling at the back of my mind.
What would she do? Was she going to be okay?
I couldn’t get my mind off the question—whether she’d stick with Leon, whether she’d buy the sixty-million place. Whether she’d regret it.
Whether she’d be able to stop and ask herself if she liked herself. Whether she’d be happy.
But it wasn’t my business. We’d had an agreement, and then like the universe had heard it and stepped in, I was removed from her case. Despite everything, we’d only ever been an agent and a client. And now that was over.
I’d been through this so many times, one would be forgiven for thinking I’d be used to it. There was no getting used to this uneasy quiet. That was the worst part of it all—the quiet, the emptiness, nothing to do but to sit with the noise of my own thoughts.
And noisy they were. I couldn’t hear anything over the rattle of them all, and I couldn’t get anything done amidst the commotion. So I ended up lying in bed at the end of the day with that churning in my stomach worse, my phone lying by my side, all the texts from Ruth ignored.
The worst part about it all was that this hell was of my own making.
It was right in the middle of it that I got a text from Cameron, plain and simple, and it made my stomach lurch.
Call me.
If she’d said anything else, I’d have denied it, talked myself around it, waffled on it until it was too late to respond. But the directness left no room for anything else. My hands shaking more than I wanted to admit, I picked up the phone, hitting call. I sat at the edge of my bed as it rang once and clicked through.
“They put me with an absolutely unbearable agent,” Cameron said, before I could even get in a word. “He’s just talking about how great this feature is, how great that feature is. A tacky salesperson. I’d much prefer someone who understands all of… a salesperson’s work.”
I was some kind of sap, because just hearing her voice felt like a balm on the burn that was everything in my head. I felt myself smiling—thin and weak, but there. “Not even a hello?”
“I’m a busy woman.” She dropped the playful tone, though, her voice more serious as she went on. “Tell me they didn’t dissolve the business without even the common decency to get you transferred over to the new business with my case.”
“María… told me to try. Said they’d be happy to take me on. I doubt it, though.”
“They will after I told the agent earlier today—in no uncertain terms—that I’d rather see London again.”
I paused, my train of thought derailed. I tried to speak, but something felt hot in my throat—something I didn’t recognize. I took a second to form words. “You did?”
“I told you I wasn’t satisfied with his performance.”
“But…”
“But what?”
I swallowed. Why my eyes were burning all of a sudden—hell if I knew. I blinked it away. “But… nothing, I guess. I just… didn’t expect you to do that.”
