I stared at the phone long after the call ended, long after the screen went dark, long after the last echo of his voice seemed to fade into the silence of my room. My breath was still trapped somewhere in my chest, and my hands felt cold numb, even. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. Everything in me had frozen around that single moment:
“Damn it… Vivienne.”
He knew my name.
He recognized my number.
He wasn’t surprised annoyed, maybe, irritated definitely but not surprised.
The worst part?
There had been a woman’s voice on the line.
Her laugh still replayed in my ears in a mocking loop.
I swallowed hard and threw my phone aside before I could lose whatever little sanity I had left. It landed on the other end of my bed, screen-down, vibrating once then going
