Page 121 of The Chance

Take a breath. He’s not disappearing.

I force myself to do just that and take another lap around my apartment.

I’ve already put away all the clothes I dug out, just in case the bed is needed. Thrown on an old Goo Goo Dolls shirt. Cleared the dishes from last night out of the sink.

Made sure there was another box of mac in the pantry.

Forty-eight minutes.

I check Cookie’s food for the thousandth time, and she eyes me warily as I snatch her water bowl and end up spilling half of it because it’s fuller than I realized.

Both dishes are sparkly clean and full at the fifty-nine-minute mark.

“Calm the fuck down, Jordan,” I mumble aloud and suck in a breath. “He said he was coming.”

Cookie comes to me when I flop on the couch and rub my hands down my thighs. They’re damp and tingling and my stomach is in knots.

Why is he not here yet?

I lick my lips. Scrub my face.

“God, I’m so nervous,” I tell my cat. “Am I really doing this?”

I should have picked him up like I’d planned.

The cat stares at me, which is not unusual, but then she hops up in my lap and her pupils dilate.

It’s been too long.

I pet her head, but she dips out of my reach and nails me with another look.

Blinking, I watch her pupils flex again and my stomach sinks.

“Something’s wrong.”

My feet are already under me when she jumps away, my shaking hands grabbing at my keys and knocking them off the hook.

I curse and dip to snatch them from the floor when the ring of my phone pierces the silence.

It’s loaded and heavy and I’m trembling when I look at the screen to see Peach’s name flash.

There’s no picture this time.

No blinding grin or gorgeous guy.

Just a scrolling name that screaming all the things I feel deep in my gut.

Nonono.

It takes two tries to swipe the answer button far enough to engage it and my apartment is immediately filled with the wail of sirens.

“Mr. Kauffman?”

Suddenly, I’m no longer in my own space, but in Mac’s instead. Seeing the slump of his shoulders at the claim of best friends first with only Mark Wahlberg as my witness.

On the outside of a photoshoot where I saw Mac as something more for the first time. Something fierce. Something … devastating.

But then I’m in the rain, watching as he lets the storm hide the hurt in his eyes.

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