Page 240 of Toxic Temptation
Now, this.
I curl up on the floor next to my mother and wonder how much loss one person can survive.
83
KOVAN
I shouldn’t be here.
I shouldn’t fucking be here.
But here I am anyway, leaning against Waylen’s apartment door. Because Vesper hasn’t been at her apartment all week. Not at St. Raphael’s, either. And her mother’s house has been dark every time I’ve driven past.
Which leaves only here.
I’ve been camped outside his door for an hour when his footsteps finally echo up the stairwell.
He looks like hell.
Dark circles shadow his eyes. His beard is overgrown, his hair unkempt. He moves like a man carrying tons and tons of invisible weight.
“You look like shit,” I tell him.
His face stiffens the second he sees me. “I asked for temporary leave of absence, in case you forgot. I thought the part where I didn’t want to see your fucking face was implied.”
“It’s been two weeks.”
“You told me to take as long as I needed. Right before you hung up on me.”
I did hang up on him. The morning after I destroyed everything with Vesper, when he called asking for time off to deal with a family emergency. I’d granted it without question, too consumed with my own wreckage to ask for details.
Another regret for the pile.
“I figured you needed to be with Vesper.”
His lip curls. “Don’t you fucking talk to me about my sister. Don’t you so much as ask about her.”
“I’m not here about her.”
He freezes, key halfway to the lock. His eyes rake over me with open skepticism. “Right.”
“You’re an employee?—”
“And you visit all your employees at their homes?” He shoves the key into the lock like he’s stabbing something. “You lurk outside their apartments waiting for them?”
“Luka’s been asking for you.”
“I talk to Luka every day,” he replies coolly. “Interesting that he didn’t mention that.”
My jaw clenches. “Does he talk to Vesper, too?”
“What did I say about mentioning my sister?”
“Don’t be a fucking child, Waylen.”
He kicks the door open and whirls on me. “How dare you call me the child? You break up with my sister, forbid her contact with Luka, andI’mthe one being childish?”
So she hasn’t told him everything. Just enough to paint me as the villain. Which is exactly what I am.
