Nothing Between Us. Roni Loren

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       THREE

      At dawn Monday morning, Georgia shuffled to her living room with a steaming mug of coffee and a headache. She hadn’t slept well, but she wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore this morning. Once she was up, she was up. Plus, she had a video chat session scheduled this morning with Leesha, and they were supposed to discuss Georgia’s progress now that the trial was only two and a half months away. Georgia blew across the top of her mug, but it was more a weary sigh than any attempt to cool off her coffee.

      Progress. It was going to take Georgia the hour before the call to come up with things to list in that column. Everything was going so much slower than she, Leesha, or the prosecution had hoped for. The notion that she was supposed to get on a plane in January, fly back to Chicago, and face her ex-boyfriend, Phillip, was too much for her to think about right now. In the last six months, her biggest accomplishment had been managing to go back and forth to the grocery store without having a complete meltdown. Even in that, she wasn’t a hundred percent successful every time. Last week, she’d left a basket of groceries defrosting in the middle of the store because she’d seen someone who looked like Phillip and had to run out to the car before she made a scene.

      But if she didn’t figure out a way to get herself to Chicago, functioning at full capacity, Phillip could walk. He’d murdered the person she’d loved most in the world, and he could stroll out a free man. The thought made her want to retch, but it was a real possibility. Phillip was a brilliant attorney and had hired an equally brilliant one to represent him. Most of the evidence was still circumstantial and Georgia’s testimony was key. But if she got on the stand and freaked out, jurors would believe the things the defense attorney would say about her—unstable, overactive imagination, drama queen.

      Not an option. If Phillip went free, she was done. Revenge would be swift and deadly at his hands. Or worse. He’d take her and not kill her at all. He’d try to keep her.

      Georgia shivered and went to the front window to let in some light. There were too many shadows surrounding her all of a sudden. But when she cracked her blinds open, her breathing ceased, and she almost dropped her mug to the floor.

      There was a man in her front yard. Fear swept through her in a rush. But before she could tumble into full-fledged panic, the man turned and she caught sight of his familiar profile.

      Colby reached up toward the tree in her front yard and tugged something from it. Only then did she take in the rest of the scene, her tunnel vision widening out. Her front yard was a complete disaster. Toilet paper hung in sagging loops from every branch and bush, and the flowers around her tree were flattened into a brightly colored carpet.

      Seeing all her hard gardening work dismantled had the fear morphing right into anger, helping her shake off the dark memories she’d been plagued by a few minutes before.

      She set her mug down and went to her front door, unlatching the three deadbolts and deactivating the alarm before pulling it open. The sight was even worse outside. Her entire garden out front looked like a herd of elephants had trampled through it. “What the hell?”

      Colby turned at the sound of her voice, his jaw set. “Morning.”

      She wrapped her arms around herself, remembering she was only wearing a thin robe. “What’s going on?”

      He dropped the pile of soggy toilet paper to the ground and took a few steps toward her. He was dressed for his morning run—baseball cap, track pants, and a blue Nike shirt. The man was like clockwork with his routine. Not that she’d noticed or anything.

      “Apparently, some of the neighborhood kids decided to go on their own post-Halloween rampage and went a little overboard last night. My house got hit, too. When I came out, I figured it was probably a group from the school I work at targeting the staff. But then I saw your yard. My kids would know better than to tear up someone’s garden. At least they better or I’d have their butts out here fixing all this.”

      She glanced over at his house and saw that it had gotten the same treatment. The white streamers of toilet paper billowed in the breeze. “Why are you over here, though? Looks like you have your own mess to handle.”

      He shrugged. “You work hard on your yard, and it’d be tough for you to reach this stuff in the tree. I figured I’d help.”

      “Thank you. That’s really nice of you.” She fought past her tendency to evaluate the kindness. She’d learned that a favor could be an aggressive move, a way to make someone feel indebted without permission. But every instinct told her Colby wasn’t a danger to her. The man was dominant and a sadist, but he lived by a code. She’d done her research on his lifestyle and had seen it in action through the window—structured, practiced, controlled. He only hurt with consent. “Do you want some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

      He wiped his hands on his pants and smiled. “Sure, that’d be great.”

      She stepped back inside and put her hand on the door, giving him the subtle signal that he wasn’t invited inside. No one was. “I’ll grab some and bring it out to you. Cream?”

      “No, black with a little sugar is fine.”

      She shut the door and locked it. With lightning-fast precision, she pulled on a pair of yoga pants, a bra, and a long-sleeved T-shirt, then made her way back toward the front of the house with two cups of coffee. Colby was sitting on her front steps when she walked out. He stood when he saw her and took the cup from her hand.

      “Thanks,” he said, leaning against one of the brick columns on her porch. “I usually don’t let myself have one of these until I get to school.”

      She wrapped both hands around her mug, the heat warming her cold fingers and soothing her nerves a bit. This was just coffee with the neighbor. “If I don’t have it within ten minutes of opening my eyes, I’m ruined for the morning.”

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