Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81009 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 405(@200wpm)___ 324(@250wpm)___ 270(@300wpm)
Pepper tossed the shirt, skirt, and the bikini she’d chosen for me onto the bed. “We can agree to disagree. But while we are stuck here, humor me. Wear this and keep your hair down.”
I was beginning to realize telling Pepper Abe no wasn’t acceptable. She wouldn’t allow it. If I didn’t like her so much, I would be annoyed by that fact.
This wasn’t who I was. I didn’t put myself out there and try to draw attention.
My life had been comfortable and safe. Going to work, knowing that I had a dependable husband who loved me and accepted me with all my flaws, was my normal. I took it for granted. That was something I’d learned the hard way this past year.
Sure, Eamon hadn’t been rugged; hadn’t smelled like cigarettes, the outdoors, or leather; and hadn’t had tattoos and piercings, but he was handsome. He’d smelled like clean soap, had a smoothly shaved jawline with his hair trimmed every four weeks on schedule, and dressed in Ralph Lauren the majority of the time. I loved all those things about him. But that wasn’t where the guilt came seeping in through the crevices of my memories. It was that my heart never fluttered, it never raced, and there was never that excited knot in my stomach at the sight of him. His kisses never made me cling to him, panting and wild for more.
That was where my shame lay. And to make it all the worse, Eamon had always known it. I liked to pretend he didn’t. I had even convinced myself that I had hidden that from him. That he’d had no idea there was another who had caused those things in me that were now broken. His last words replaying in my head would forever haunt me. I’d never be able to shake them.
Pepper stepped in front of me, waving a hand. “Hello? Where did you go?”
I blinked, shaking my head as I pushed away all those heavy thoughts, and I looked at her. “Sorry. Did you ask me something?”
She studied me for a moment. “Yeah,” she replied. “Three times.”
“I, uh…I was thinking about before,” I admitted. “My life after Rome. Married and how different it all was. I’m not used to dressing to get someone’s attention. It…it isn’t me, and I don’t think I want Rome’s attention really.” Not that this was going to change anything anyway.
I just didn’t look forward to the humiliation of him ignoring me and letting naked young girls with tight bodies crawl all over him. Nina, Goldie, and Pepper were so sure he was going to see me and want me. This would be the embarrassing truth. I was not his type now. Why couldn’t they see that?
Pepper gave me a sympathetic smile and gently squeezed my arm. “I’ve never loved a man enough to marry him. So, I don’t know what it feels like to lose him. But you lost two men you loved in this life, and one is there for the taking, if you want him.”
I wanted to laugh. No, he wasn’t. He could spout that he had never forgotten me or that he saw me when he was screwing other women, but that wasn’t true.
I had been there when he walked out of my life. I was the one wrecked and lost. So completely lost. He had carried on with his life. Never looking back.
He might not have gotten my note with the address I had left him. I could believe that. But he had my number. I’d never changed it. In all these years, I’d kept the same one because, deep down, I held on to the fact that it was the only way he could find me. And that was just another one of my sins. Another piece of myself that I’d never given to Eamon.
Rome never called.
“I don’t see tonight going the way you do. You weren’t there for it all. How it ended. Rome couldn’t have loved me and ripped out my soul the way he did. But”—I smiled as brightly as I could—“I will go have a good time. This week has been one of the most traumatic I think I’ve ever experienced, and I’d like to not think about my dead boss being a drug trafficker or his lifeless body on the floor.” I paused and winced as the image came back with my words. I would never get over that scene. “Anyway, whew, I want to find an escape, but I’m under no illusion where Rome is concerned.”
Pepper smirked. “You say he isn’t the same guy you knew, yet you still call him by that name. Must be something there you see.”
She was right. Calling him Rome labeled him in my head as the boy I had loved with everything I had. The one I had thought loved me until he broke me. He wasn’t that boy. He was a very different man.