LEIGH
"Leigh..."
My name left Garrick's lips like a prayer he hadn't expected to have answered.
The tray slipped from my fingers with bowls rolling beneath the conference table, stew splashing across boots and maps that had probably taken hours to prepare. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, but nobody flinched. Nobody looked at the mess.
Every pair of eyes in that room found me instead.
I couldn't breathe.
Three weeks. Only three weeks had passed since I'd walked away from Silver Ash in the dark with nothing but a bag and a decision I wasn't sure I'd survive making. Yet standing there beneath the weight of Garrick's stare, I felt the distance between that woman and this one like a wound that hadn't finished closing. She had left. I had survived. They weren't the same
