The silence of a completely empty house is supposed to feel peaceful, but inside the penthouse, it felt heavy. Suffocating. It was the kind of quiet that pressed against my eardrums until I could hear the erratic, frantic thudding of my own heart.
He was gone. For the next seven hours, I was completely alone.
The first thing I did wasn't reasonable or was it smart. I just walked back into the kitchen, leaned my forehead against the cool, stainless-steel front of the refrigerator, and let my knees give out.
I slid down to the floor, pulling my robe tight around myself, and just let the tears come.
It was a raw, ugly, snotty sob that made my chest heave until it physically hurt. I cried because my life had been hijacked by a lunatic who weighed two hundred and twenty pounds of pure mu
