Page 244 of Time Stops With You

It’s the smart thing to do.

But I can’t think straight.

Not when time is slipping through my fingers.

I pull around the bed to where she’s sleeping and write a short note. Next, I lower to my haunches. A few more seconds. I just want a few more moments with her.

Nardi slides one hand under her cheek and breathes evenly. I resist the urge to kiss her again, knowing it would disturb her. Instead, I pull the blanket higher over her shoulder, tuck it solidly around her and back away.

I listen to the sound of her breathing as I move to the door and there, in the doorway, I linger.

Turn back. One more look. One more kiss.My body pleads with me but, I dig my fingers into fists and force myself to walk away, while praying, hoping, wishing with every breath left in my body that Nardi Davis will be happy without me.

Twenty-Eight

NARDI

When morning arrives, I open my eyes leisurely. At first, I don’t remember where I am. And then it hits me.

Cullen.

I reach for his side of the mattress and, although he’d warned me, although a part of me had anticipated this is how he would go about it, I still groan when I find it empty. My fingers fist into the sheets where his body had been.

That bastard.

Biting back a curse, I wrap my naked body in a blanket and storm to the living area, hoping beyond hope that I’m wrong. That he’s in the kitchen, his back to me as he fries eggs in a skillet. His spiky hair wet from a shower, his silver eyes sparkling with the satisfaction of losing his virginity to the woman he loves.

He’s not in the kitchen.

I check his computer room next.

All the monitors are off. The desktop computer that’s usually glowing neon has gone dark. He must have plugged it out.

Seeing the forlorn stillness of his computers, my heart cracks in half.

I don’t need to visit any other part of the house.

Those dark, abandoned computers spell one thing.

Cullen is gone.

Numbness takes over me and I think about last night. About how tenderly he held me. About his reaching fingers and his desperate kisses. Every time I fell asleep, those kisses would rain on me again and tug me out of dreamland and back into his arms.

I lost count of the number of times Cullen drove me to the edge of insanity, refusing to give me a moment’s peace. Pushing and pushing at my defenses until I felt like I’d never catch my breath.

I wished he’d said goodbye, but when I think about last night, I realize that he did. All night, his goodbye lingered under his touch and tainted me with its darkness.

The emptiness seeping through my veins pushes the sensation of tears to my eyes, but I have no tears left. They’d all bubbled out of me last night.

The strength suddenly leaves my legs and I sink to the ground, clutching the sheet around me. A part of my brain still rejects that Cullen’s gone. So, when I hear the click of someone tapping on the keypad outside, I shoot to my feet.

Whirling around so fast, the bedsheet whips like an extravagant wedding train, I sprint to the door. It swings open and reveals…

My mother.

“Nardi?” Mom’s eyes widen. She takes one look at me wrapped in the bedsheet and her eyes double in size. “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here? Where’s Cullen?” I crane my neck to look past her, searching the porch and the front yard.

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