DAMIEN
.
.
A week.
Seven days that felt both like an instant and an eternity since I’d last seen her across that room, since that unexpected jolt had gone through me.
I’d gone back to the kitchen that night, finished the whiskey, gone to bed in the silent, cavernous bedroom.
Tried to forget the splash of red, the genuine smile, the unsettling feeling of a pulse stirring in my chest after months of emotional flatlining.
I’d thought about her.
Briefly.
Her face, that smile, but the thought of Leila, sharp and painful, had slid in right beside her, a constant, suffocating presence that overshadowed everything else.
Leila.
Her empty eyes.
The feeling of her hand in mine just before she pulled away.
The ghost of her haunted this penthouse, haunted me and the thought of
