Page 59 of Ice
“Yeah…”
“Is he okay?”
He glanced at his phone instantly.
“You sneaky bastard. I should have taken it with me.”
I shrugged. “We both know I could get your call logs pretty easily anyway. What’s going on? I know you’re struggling with trusting me right now, but you need to talk to someone. If not me, who? I’d recommend a good therapist, but someone got her fired recently.” He flinched. God, I can be a real bastard sometimes. I opened my mouth to apologise but he cut me off.
“Touché. You’re right. I do need to fucking talk to someone, but first I need his permission. Give me a minute.” He sent a text, and sat back staring at me.
“How are you doing, anyway? Getting back to work helped, I hope?”
I shrugged.
“It kept me busy for a while. Quite a few hours actually. Uh… on the subject of my kit. Nobody went snooping through all my shit, right?”
Reacher frowned, and then his cheeks reddened slightly.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“You asshole. What did you see?”
He sighed. “Just what you had on the screen when you left it all that night, but we talked about this already, didn’t we?” I hadn’t intentionally left that fucking page on my screen that night, but I barely remembered anything about that night except how fucking done with everything I was.
“Who else saw it?”
He checked his phone, like he didn’t want to tell me.
“Reacher, come on.”
“Ally, Ryder… nobody else. You hinted at it being a fucking suicide note last time we talked about this. Was it? Do we need to worry about you doing something else fucking stupid?”
I shrugged, wondering why it felt like the last thing I’d try now, when I was so sure back then that I had no way out.
“I dunno. I wasn’t in a good place at the time, and writing how I felt seemed to help, so I did it a few times back then. I didn’t mean for it to be seen though. I’m not in that place anymore, Pres.”
He nodded, and his phone buzzed. He read the screen and sighed. Was it a no?
“Okay… he’s okay with you knowing, but I’m swearing you to the highest level of fucking secrecy. This is his personal business, but he gets it too. I do need to talk about it.”
Yikes. It was gonna be something big.
Lissa
Cammystayedfordinner,and it helped so much more than she realised, to not be alone for the entire day. And the horrifying thought was that there was still tomorrow, and every day afterwards, stretching out ahead of me like endless hours of boredom. I needed something to do with my time.
When she left, I went to bed. I was tempted to drink some of the wine I had in the wine rack, but I knew I’d feel worse if I did. I’m not one of those happy drinkers. I don’t get all buoyant and excitable and happy. I had a tendency to sink into a pit of loneliness and despair and who the hell did that willingly? Sometimes I might drink a glass more than I meant to, but not tonight. I couldn’t.
I wanted to speak to Ice. I wanted to hear his voice, and I wanted to see his face. I wanted to watch his lips move as he talked. I wanted to be with him, dammit. I shouldn’t be yearning like this for a man I’d barely spent any time with, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe I’d just not had a chance to get him out of my system.
I grabbed my phone and opened up the chat with Has-Been. He wasn’t who I wanted, but I needed someone to talk to.
Me:Hey, I know this is a lot to ask, but any chance you can get Ice to call me? I really need him right now.
Wow, that was all kinds of desperate and needy, and pathetic, and I couldn’t unsend it. It was out there now. It was something I couldn’t take back.
Minutes passed, long agonising minutes, before my phone buzzed again.
