Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 365(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Guilt tightened in my chest, but the panic receded. I needed to get to her. To apologize. To explain. Yanking my phone out, I tried calling Sarah, but she didn’t pick up. I called and called the entire way out of the bar and out in the city as I tried to flag down a cab. The cab ride was a torturous forty minutes back to my place. I must have called Sarah forty times and she didn’t pick up.
Worry cut through my shame. What if something had happened to her? Women weren’t supposed to be out alone. What if the serial killer was a fucking cab driver?
My melodrama and fears became monstrous things over the next forty minutes, and I rushed up the stairs to my flat like I’d lost my damn mind. I burst into it, shouting Sarah’s name as my eyes drifted over the living room. Rushing into the bedroom, I skidded to a halt at the sight of her missing luggage.
“No, no, no.” I threw open the wardrobe where I’d made space for her, and my heart sank. The hangers were empty.
That’s when I finally noticed the paper on my pillow.
Fingers shaking, I lifted it reluctantly and felt my panic build again at the words she’d scrawled in her pretty cursive.
If you need to discuss the adaptation, please do it through my agent.
Don’t call me again.
Goodbye.
Sarah
My legs gave out on me as I slid down the side of the bed, landing on the floor with a thump. She’d warned me. “But next time you tell me to go like I don’t matter … I will go.”
I’d acted like a swine.
The way I’d treated her tonight …
All because I’d let my fucking brother get in my head.
And now Sarah was gone.
Black spots covered my vision as I struggled to breathe, hyper-fucking-ventilating.
I curled up, head pressed to my bedside table, trying to survive every second of feeling like I might die.
As a boy, I’d suffered from panic attacks that my father dismissed as weakness and my mother tried to coax me through. They’d dissipated with adulthood, the last one being the day I buried my mother. There was nothing for it but to endure the absolute certainty that I was about to die.
Of course, I did not die.
I came out of it only to face the clusterfuck that had caused the panic attack in the first place.
Eventually, I got through the Sarah-induced attack, but by the time it was over, I was drenched in sweat and utterly exhausted.
I crawled onto the bed, turning my face into Sarah’s pillow and inhaling her perfume.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I felt an overwhelming sense of self-loathing I wasn’t sure I could come back from.
Why did I let Sebastian’s words get to me? He had Sarah all wrong. He thought she was some kind of charity case I’d picked up and was using.
She wasn’t, and I wasn’t using her.
Why did I let my damn fears win?
“It’s not too late,” I whispered gruffly, practically burrowing myself into her scent. I could explain. I could … I could get her back.
I had to.
Because as mortifyingly scary as giving myself to her was … it was nothing like this terror that swept over me at the thought that I might have lost her forever.
Twenty-Two
SARAH
To keep busy, I put up the Christmas tree and decorations because Jared hadn’t gotten around to it. He probably wouldn’t bother with them at all if it was just him.
I’d always been the one to decorate the farmhouse every Christmas, and I had a particular way of decorating the tree that meant I did not welcome help. Grandpa and Jared used to tease me mercilessly, adding baubles when my back was turned and waiting for me to spot them. Which I always did.
Grief thickened my throat and tears burned my eyes. Our first Christmas without Grandpa. I wondered what he’d think of me and how I’d let myself get swept up in Theo’s charm and seduction.
I was supposed to be smarter than that.
Jared had known without me saying a word when I turned up at the farmhouse first thing this morning. I’d gotten a night train from London to Inverness and then a cab from there. Dead on my feet, Jared had just led me to my old room, and I’d passed out. I’d woken up around six hours later with a note from him that he was out repairing one of the farm’s dry stone walls and that I just had to call him if I needed him.
Not feeling very hungry, I’d forced down toast and then stared sullenly around the kitchen. I should be writing. I still had a deadline, but I couldn’t stop picturing Theo’s bland expression as he passed me off to his friend.
Even if he cared a little … it couldn’t be enough. To just give me away like that.