Chapter Thirty-One

Miles

T ime is an illusion.

It's an illusion when minutes slip into seconds as the urgency grows to score a winning goal, and it's an illusion when minutes swell into hours as the need surfaces not to suffer a goal.

Time ticks beyond the clock. It bends and stretches, and it crawls and races on its own accord, with a mind of its own.

The door slams. Zoe is home.

Time ticks lethargically against my urgency. My breath quiets. Awaits.

Time slows, suspended in the silence that follows.

Only silence—footsteps never come. Flowers never sprout in the air. Zoe's beautiful face never appears in the doorway.

But I don't dwell—on meaning, on consequence, on breathlessness, or chest pain.

Because Charles has a death wish.

"That damned bitch!"

I was oblivious to it, but it's obvious as he shouts three little words .

Charles fucking Cox has a fucking death wish.

"Shut up."

Undeterred by the low warning in my inflection, he proceeds with his final speech. "I knew it! I knew it had to be the little bitch."

"Shut the fuck up," I hiss over my shoulder, rage seething through my bared teeth.

"She just ran away. Of course, it was her!"

He connected the dots and arrived at the same conclusion I had.

Zoe came home, greeted by a slew of pointed fingers and false accusations.

So, she left.

"Stop speaking." Clinging to it, to the wrath that fuels my blood, I finally turn from the doorway to which I'd taken a step and stopped, waiting with bated breath. "Stop speaking about my girlfriend."

"You're still defending her?" Like a madman, he throws his manicured hands in the air. "She just sold you out. She just ended your career. She needs to go a—"

My restraint is strung so tight my muscles complain. A little more and it will snap.

"If you say another word—if you so much as think about my girlfriend, you'll be the one going the fuck away." I make my steps slow. If I reach him too soon, I might actually do something I'd regret. "Everyone goes before I leave her."

I would lose everything before I lose Zoe.

I would throw everything away before I leave her—or let her go.

"You are paid— very well paid—not to insult my girlfriend or opine about my personal life." I bare my teeth, almost nose to nose with him. "So do your fucking job before unemployment becomes the least of your problems."

His complexion reflects the hue of gray of his pinstriped suit. His shoulders hunch, but he isn't smart enough to shut his mouth. "She—"

Snap .

The last string snaps with the underwhelming thud of my knuckles colliding against his nose.

Sharp pain shoots through my hand, and still it's dulled. Even his high shriek does nothing to dim the red haze around my pupils.

Apparently, I don't know how to throw a punch that injures only the recipient. I would try again, but Leonard seems to have finally decided to make his presence known, stepping out of the shadow of his soon-to-be-dead boss to grab my arm. Taller than Charles, he manages to stop the swing. Though, not as big as me, he stutters back showing me his palms as I shove him away.

"Get the fuck out of my house!" I roar, flexing my fist, not because the pain is too much, but because it's not enough.

My house.

My house that isn't a home without Zoe.

Our home is the heart of the life we've been building together these past few weeks, through arguments and disagreements, through sheer happiness and willpower—and Zoe is the heart of this house, breathing life into its walls, setting the pulse with her laughter.

I spent years chasing a dream, a flicker of fiction—the perfect life. It wasn't until her that I realized everything I could ever dream paled in comparison, and all those dreams meant nothing if she were not by my side as I accomplished them. If she were not the one accomplishing them with me.

These past few weeks, I got everything I wanted—and more. They were the happiest days of my life—bumps on the road, struggles, fights and all.

Getting to learn every dot and every stitch that composes the fabric of Zoe Beatrice Westwood's soul has been the most exquisite experience of my entire life. I never want to stop.

Fuck.

Fuck .

I need to think.

I can't think when she isn't around.

I don't even realize I'm in the kitchen until I'm planting my hands on the countertop, on the very spot I sit her every morning so I can steal a little bit of her warmth as I cook and she eats. My head bows down to the shadow of the memory, my eyes fall closed in an attempt to gather my scattered thoughts.

Zoe came home—that much I know for certain. I know in my heart that she was coming home to me. And then, she heard the accusations flying.

None from me, though.

I can't be sure how much she heard, but it's abundantly clear what she didn't hear. I was so busy stopping myself from finding out if I could throw a punch without breaking my fingers that I didn't have the energy to focus on anything else—like a simple hell no . An obvious denial.

No wonder she assumed I blamed her, too. No wonder she left.

She probably jumped to all sorts of other assumptions, too—all of them wrong. But with time and space, her mind will settle, and she'll realize all the things her brain told her were wrong. She has to.

And if she doesn't, I'll tell her. I'll show her. I will prove it to her by any means necessary. We will yell and fight until she gets it into her thick, beautiful skull that I will never leave her or let her leave me.

My fingers stumble against themselves as they dial the number they know by heart. But the voice that answers lacks the raspiness that always warms my skin. It lacks the accent and the sarcasm and all the things that make it my favorite sound.

I plow my fingers through my hair, pulling at the strands with a frustrated huff like that will help me think faster, think better.

With her gone, so is my sanity. I'm reduced to desperation and determination to get her back.

Refusing to give in to defeat, I thumb the digits once more. Once more, the mechanical voice grates on my pounding ears.

Angry knuckles whiten as I pull my arm back. At the last second, my body is smarter than my despair, and my fingers uncurl to let the phone fall with a clatter against the marble. It lights up, illuminating the otherwise dark house.

A crack splits the screen in half.

23:11.

Dozens of new messages, dozens of missed calls. None of them from her.

The dial tone keeps me company through the hours as they drag like forty days in the dry desert without a single drop of water.

Because time is an illusion.

It's an illusion when it feels like I've known Zoe my entire life and not nearly long enough. Like my life didn't start until the day I met her. Like I didn't truly know myself until I knew her.

With her gone, so is the bigger part of me.

I slept on the sofa.

Actually, I didn't sleep at all.

I spent the night on the sofa in the very same spot from which I always sit and stare at her.

Unmoving except for my eyes. Splitting my staring between the screen and the doorway. Listening for the rumble of her Jeep and to the mechanical chorus of her voicemail until it, too, tired of me and switched to informing me the box was full.

The longer it wouldn't ring, the more I wanted to smash it into the wall. Time and time again, out of sheer willpower, I'd refrained.

Zoe wouldn't be able to contact a broken phone.

But why hadn't she yet? Why hadn't she given me any proof of life? Why would she leave like that and just… stay away?

She should be here, shouting and screaming at me and seeing how mad she makes me.

Because, goddamn, I'm mad.

But afraid, too. I'm fucking terrified.

Afraid that she'll leave—and leave me. Terrified that something happened to her.

The first rays of sunlight infiltrate the space obnoxiously as dawn announces the day will soon rise, and I can't just stand here and wait any longer.

As much as my own body revolted against itself, I gave her the hours and the miles away to think it through and see the truth. Tortuous hours of torment and turmoil, waiting and wondering as my muscles shrunk then stretched with blood that boiled and chilled in the span of a second.

If she couldn't—if she refused to—I would go and get her back and make her see.

Just as I'm about to turn the ignition, a shrill sound erupts from my pocket. With fumbling hands, I retrieve the phone, but the name on the screen is not the one I need.

I pick up, anyway. "What?"

"My exact thought every one of the hundreds of times you've called me," Detective Asshole drawls. "I've got something for you."

"What?" I repeat without venom this time, only worry and concern.

"How soon can you come to the station?"

With the right amount of speeding and enough run red lights, I'm parked less than half an hour later, and catching sight of detective Jones. Smoke billows from between his fingers in a spiral as he awaits with a self-satisfied smirk.

"You're gonna get a ticket." He tips his head to my car in a prohibited parking spot, taking a puff of his cigarette. I shrug and raise my eyebrows to my hairline, wordlessly pressing him to get on with whatever this is. Tapping a finger on his cancer stick, he acquiesces. "We were able to track your little stalker."

My chest deflates like a balloon, making space for relief. "Zoe's safe? "

"Unless you have more stalkers with access to guns and privileged information." He smashes the butt of the cigarette under a steel toe boot. "You're gonna want to hear this, though." As Jones leads our way inside through uniforms bowing their heads in acknowledgement, he explains they were able to track Lucy by recent phone calls. "As soon as she was detained, she started singing like a birdie. And her song was a suicidal stone that killed two birds."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

Usually, I would have minded my tone as I addressed the authorities, but today I'm not in a place in which I could remotely care. It also helps that we've forged some kind of familiarity over the last months as I badgered and pressured him once he took charge of Zoe's attack case.

As we finally get to his office, he enters first, holding the door for me. Only after it's closed shut does he continue.

"According to her statement, someone warned her that your girl is a selfish bitch who's taken over your life and is ruining your career." The muscle in my jaw ticks like a bomb with every sentence he relays, so much that he raises his palms to remind me they were not his sentences. "So, Charlie's Angel took matters into her own hands." Leaning against his desk, he shoves his hands inside the pockets of his jeans. "Between you and me, the girl doesn't seem… well. And someone took advantage of that—which is where this gets truly interesting. Wanna take a guess?"

"I'm not in the mood for games." I fold my arms before I get the urge to break something. "Just spit it out."

"Charles Cox." He uncrosses his ankles, crossing them again with the opposite foot. "Thought for sure you'd get the hint from Charlie 's Angel. "

Fucking Charles and his fucking death wish.

In all honesty, I'm not surprised at all. I just wish I got more punches in, enough to actually break some bones.

"I understand he works for you."

"Clearly it is not for me that he works," I chuckle dryly.

My muscles stretch and strain against my skin, boiling blood pulsing in my veins and spilling in my mouth from under my teeth. They clamp on my cheek, hard and harder until I taste metal.

Then, I swallow all the rage down. I deserved every bit of its toxic sourness. I brought all these people into Zoe's life, effectively putting these wheels in motion.

"Well, the calls that allowed us to track her were directed to several media outlets. She leaked your very scandalous images to the press—after uploading them all over social media, as I'm sure you know."

All I taste is red blood.

"She insists she was instructed to do it, that she would never do anything that might hurt you. Again, I think you can guess who instructed her."

As the relapse of my adductor injury threatened to end my season early, I've been preparing the announcements and officialization of my transfer. The timeline shrunk, and this must have been Charles's last attempt to get his own way. He wanted to split me from Zoe, whom he blames solely for my choice, in hopes I'd jump to any of the other plumper offers to wipe my heartbroken tears with a fat check; expecting the public opinion would pressure me, too.

"It's her word against his," he says sympathetically. "Even if we prove she's telling the truth, his involvement doesn't stretch into illegal territory. He'll argue he shared his personal concerns and whatever she did was on her own account."

Fucking Charles.

After staring at the dirty wall above Jones's head for long moments to convince myself not to take a page from Charles's book and find some loophole on the law to make him pay for all he's done, I jerk a nod and yank the door open. "Thank you. Please call me if—"

"I will. As I've promised all the five hundred other times you've demanded," he shouts to my back.

The city is now in full bustle under the gentle autumn sun. Traffic delays my steps as I shove all the unsettling information in the back drawer to focus on my priority.

Zoe.

I can deal with everything else after.

The answers to my questions arrive with a ringtone—the hospital calls.