110

But now she was really gone, and her voice was silent and I’d never felt so lost or alone.

It was a sign of what needed to happen next in my life. It was finally time to move on.

Footsteps sounded behind me, and when I heard someone sit two chairs down, I didn’t need to look up to know it was Reeve.

I let out a long slow breath. “It’s over.”

“Yes. It’s over.” He sounded as tired as I felt. “We just have the scattering of the ashes, if you still want to do that, but when you’re ready. No rush.”

I looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time in weeks. Maybe the first time ever. When I first saw him, I’d thought of him as mysterious and dangerous, a playboy who cared only about himself and his own wants and needs.

That wasn’t the man sitting with me now, a man who cared for me in ways that I’d never imagined a man would. Ways that weren’t sexual or materialistic.

“I mean us, Reeve. I mean it’s over between us.”

If he were the type, I imagined that he would have rolled his eyes