Page 4 of What's Left of Us

Tomorrow.

My fist clenches around the door handle. “Do I want to know how you know about that?”

There’s a pregnant pause, but I refuse to look over my shoulder at those pleading amber eyes. I don’t want to get sucked into the guilt for what needs to be done. “Just…please. Don’t go. Tell Matt you changed your mind.”

She’d love that, wouldn’t she? My knuckles turn white where they remain on the handle. It’s the only thing grounding me where I stand.

“We’re going to that house and executing the arrest warrant,” I inform her, using the same stern voice I use on the people I interview in interrogation rooms. There’s no room for bullshit. Not there and not here. “It’s time we ended this.”

This. The ultimate game her father started years ago when he tried threatening my career. He knew the truth, and his secrets were finally about to be exposed.

It was him or me.

His livelihood was at stake.

But so was mine.

Don’t go.

“I have a bad feeling,” she whispers, her words causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. “And I’m asking you to do one last thing for me, even though I don’t deserve it. Don’t go tomorrow.”

Is that a warning? Or a last-minute plea?

Either way, it’s pointless.

“If you came here to convince me to change my mind with sex, it’s not going to work,” I tell her, turning the door handle and opening it. I pause halfway through the threshold, the next two sentences streaming past my lips before I can filter the cold words. “Your pussy is good, baby girl. But it’s not that good.”

I hear her intake of breath but can’t find it in me to feel bad. All I’ve felt for the past two years is bad—bad because I can’t make her happy and bad because I can’t make things better with her family. Hell, bad, because I refuse to give up my mission to destroy the man who’s done everything in his power to destroy me first.

There’s nothing left in me to feel bad about.

“Lincoln,” she whispers.

I stop just inside the house, ears perking at my name on her lips. It elicits the same reaction it always does, sending my heartbeat into overdrive like it forgets what she’s done.

“Happy birthday,” is the last thing she says.

Slamming the door shut, I’m tempted to slide the lock into place and make her walk around the house without her bra and panties.

But I don’t.

Because Georgia still holds a place in my heart despite the knife she stuck into it when she chosehim.

CHAPTER ONE

Lincoln / Present

The silence isdeafening as I make a list in my head of at least fifty other things I could be doing right now instead of this. It’s the beginning of September, the perfect time to gather firewood when the weather is cool enough so I don’t sweat my balls off, and the bees aren’t infesting the wood pile. Then there’s the yard that needs tending to, thanks to the blanket of orange, yellow, and red leaves that cover the once-green grass that’s an inch too long. I could go on, thinking of the never-ending to-do list that always grows ten times longer when the fall hits.

Not that any of it matters. If I skipped another session, the lieutenant would hear about it within the hour and tear me a new asshole. Then he’d be on me about all the reasons I needed to go andtalk out my feelingslike that could change anything that happened over the past year. It can’t. I know that, he knows it, and the attractive brunette in the seat across from me knows it too.

Doctor Theresa Castro holds my fate in her petite hands thanks to the work-ordered grief counseling I have to sit through before my happy ass can get back to my regular schedule.

It could be worse. The psychiatrist is pretty in a sophisticated sort of way. Professionally put-together. There isn’t a piece of hair out of place on her head or a wrinkle to be seen in her purple dress, which reminds me of the tie I used to wear as part of my old uniform.

The woman, who must be around my age, seems comfortable in the leather armchair, with a quiet confidence about her that I can appreciate even if I don’t want to be here.

But I have no choice, no matter how far away my mind wanders from the events that led to the weekly meetings to discuss all the fucking ways my life has been turned upside down over the past year. I’ve learned by now that getting lost in the what-ifs of life only gets you closer to rock bottom, and I don’t think I could survive the plummet at this point. Talking about it seems like a cruel punishment—like pouring salt into an open wound.

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