Page 38 of What's Left of Us

The formality has me staring at her for a second as her pen taps against the notepad. “Iwantto want kids. Most of my friends are married with families. They’re settled down. Happy. I don’t have it in me to get to that point.”

“You don’t have it in you to want children? Or be happy?”

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? “I was happy once,” I murmur.

“What happened?”

I meet her eyes, leaning back and draping an arm across the back of the cushion. “I let a woman I barely knew move into my life and change it forever.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Georgia/ Seven Years Ago

The apartment is…quaint.I wonder if this tiny one-bedroom is what’s in store for my future. If my family cuts me off like my father threatened to, then this may be foreshadowing what’s to come.

I could sell things. I know the designer tag on my bag could get me plenty of money on its own, and that’s not including the clothes inside; everything from Hermes to Versace fills it. Things I never cared as deeply about the way my stepmother did. She said it was less about self-expression and more about making a statement to society, as if the house we lived in, or the multi-million-dollar business my father ran, didn’t let people know the Del Rossis had money.

I’ve been living in Lincoln Danforth’s apartment for five days, and not one person, not even Millie, has reached out. I’d expected my best friend to ask how I was at least once, but the silence I got instead cut deep. I’ll admit, she was never great at being my friend. There were times she’d get so caught up in her boy of the week that she’d stop talking to me until things ended with them. Then she’d get mad when I’d call her out for it and give me the cold shoulder until she decided to stop being dramatic. But this was different. She knew my father didn’t want me back at the house. She had no clue where I was going to go or if I’d found somewhere safe.

And still nothing.

Mrs. Ricci had my number too. Was she fired for taking the hit meant for me? Or was my stepmother able to save herfor stepping in? Leani loved Mrs. Ricci. Despite my father’s reminders that the help was just that, Leani treated our housekeeper like extended family. She and I both had a soft spot for the older woman with kind eyes and a warm smile.

My father knew how close I was to her—how she was my sole ally growing up. He was never happy when he found out she’d sneak me food I wasn’t allowed to have or go out with her to run errands for a little freedom when I was supposed to be at home. Frankly, I never understood what the big deal was. But he always made a scene whenever I wasn’t locked inside my gilded cage like a princess in a tower waiting for her white knight to rescue her.

He wants to ensure I have nobody.

Nothing.

I’m sure it’s his doing that Mrs. Ricci, Leani, and Millie have been radio silent. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Because thinking about the alternative, that nobody actually cares, hurts far worse.

Living alone is…odd. Not quite scary but also not liberating either. Every creak in the night, every foreign sound that perks up my ears and stirs me from sleep, leaves it hard to find peace. Lincoln told me the sink faucet in the bathroom leaks sometimes, and for the last day I’ve heard the faintdrip, drip, dripcoming from that direction without a clue how to make it stop.

Apparently, there are also mice.Actualvermin. And when he heard the horrified sound I made after he explained they come in through the baseboard heating, he laughed and told me he’d check the traps when he was back on the weekend.

Traps.There were dead mice intrapssomewhere in this apartment.

That made sleeping nearly impossible the first night. The second night wasn’t much better. I was up almost the entiretime thinking I heard something in the walls when it was more than likely my imagination playing tricks on me. By the third, exhaustion had aided me in finally getting at least six hours. And last night, when I’d accepted that my phone wasn’t broken after checking it four different times to make sure it received messages, I fell asleep with a heaviness in my heart.

Lincoln had my number too, after I’d called him about his apartment offer. I hadn’t wanted to, but I soon realized my options were limited. It was either finding a shelter to take me, tucking my tail between my legs, and going home like my father wanted or this.

Besides giving me the address and telling me when he was leaving so I’d have the place to myself, I haven’t heard from Lincoln either. The strange thing is, I don’t know whether to be grateful or sad.

Because somebody who’s barely more than a stranger was willing to give me a place to stay with no benefits. He doesn’t expect sex or even for me to like him. But I think I do. It isn’t every day that somebody would give you a place to stay, but he did without thinking twice. And not hearing a thing from him makes me wonder what exactly I’m getting myself into whenever tightness clenches my stomach.

I recognize the feeling.

Disappointment.

He’d mentioned coming back tonight—that his new schedule was only Monday through Friday, with weekends home. I didn’t ask why he was away because I didn’t want to push for details that weren’t my business, and he didn’t enlighten me. But as each day passed by, when I struggled to create meals from his meek pantry and tried ignoring the odd looks I got from his neighbors whenever I went outside to get some fresh air, I started becoming curious about the man whose bed I slept in.

Like what cologne he wears that makes his sheets smell so good. After the first few nights, I got used to the woodsy scent and how it wrapped around me—how the soft cotton T-shirts I borrowed from his dresser cocooned me with the same smell, mixed with some sort of floral laundry detergent that I’d bet money he doesn’t do himself.

A girlfriend certainly wouldn’t do it, or else I wouldn’t be here. Does he hire somebody to clean his apartment and do his laundry? It’s cleaner than I’d expect a man’s place to be, let alone a bachelor. Mrs. Ricci used to tell me to hold my tongue whenever I wished for a husband when I was little.“Boys are dirty creatures, Georgia,” she tells me as she folds laundry. “You should enjoy not having to deal with them while it lasts.”

At the time, I was excited for the day when I could run my own household that I lived in with whoever I fell in love with—my husband—the person I’d chosen, like my mother and father had before me. I’ll never understand how so much changed, or when that distant, naive dream morphed into something completely different.

I suppose it started when I was a teenager when my father would look at me with pain in his eyes and say,“You’re growing up.”He made it seem like a bad thing, and maybe it was.

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