I’d screwed up. I hadn’t handled anything well, and now she was gone.
I didn’t know where she was, but it wasn’t here with me, in our home. My brother probably knew where she was… just like he’d known she was an angel. It seemed Miles knew all sorts of things about Danielle before I was privy to the information.
“Fuck!” I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes. Those were the thoughts that had gotten me in this mess in the first place.
Ten fucking days.
Where the hell was she? Was she ever coming back? Had I lost her for good?
What would I do if she never came home? I couldn’t exactly stay in the penthouse forever, waiting for her to walk through the door.
I wasn’t an idiot—okay, I was, but that wasn’t the point—I knew I owed her an apology. I’d left when she begged me not to, and I’d accused her of lying to me. She deserved a chance to tell me her side of the story. But I couldn’t give her an apology without seeing her.
She said she wanted to talk. But now she was nowhere to be found.
I leaned back in the beanbag chair I was currently sitting in and stared at my living room ceiling two stories above me. Had this place always been so empty? So lonely? I couldn’t remember ever caring before, but now all I could hear and see was the lack of Danielle’s presence. She’d changed this penthouse from an apartment to a home.
I was pretty sure I used to like solitude, loved havingmy own space where no one bothered me. Now I’d give anything to have Danielle barge in and ruin my peace and quiet.
A knock on the door had me jumping to my feet in half a second, before reality caught up to me. Danielle’s knock was softer, less pounding, and she wouldn’t knock in the first place. This was her home too.
I dropped back onto my beanbag. I wasn’t in the mood to see or talk to anyone who wasn’t my wife.
The knocking came again, even louder this time. It sounded like someone was trying to beat the entire door down.
Whatever. I didn’t care. The whole building could be on fire and I wouldn’t bother to move. What would be the point? I’d already lost everything that mattered to me.
The pounding on my door stopped, and a second later there was the click of the lock turning.
I could count on one hand the number of people who had a key to my place. Danielle, Sierra, my housekeeper, Maggie, and Miles.
Based on the banging, my money was on my brother, who was just about the last person I wanted to see.
The door opened and closed, followed by the sound of footsteps. A few seconds later Miles appeared in the doorway. I watched him take in the state of the room, from my broken phone on the floor to the beer bottles that littered the coffee table and floor around me and finally to me.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks.” Sleeping on a beanbag chair and surviving off alcohol for more than a week will do that to a person.
“Is there a particular reason you’re drowning yourself in beer while your wife sleeps on her friends’ couches?”
“Which couches?” I couldn’t help asking.
“That’s not really the important part of the equation.”
“Is she okay?” I hated asking him, hated that he knew and I didn’t, but my pride had abandoned me sometime in the past ten days. If Miles wanted me to beg for scraps of information about Danielle, I’d get on my damn knees.
“You’d know if you made an attempt to talk to her.”
“Just answer the question.”
“No, Hayden, she’s not okay. She’s hurting, and you’ve been MIA since you left her crying on the floor.”
“She lied to me,” I whispered.
“News flash, asshole, she lied to all of us, even her brothers.”
“Not to you.”
