His tired eyes looked me over. He was ancient today. “What do you need?”
I’d made a mistake. It hadn’t been a message, or if it had, the message had been to stay away. A good-bye enchilada with a side of “it’s not you, it’s me” rice.
I shrugged the cake box, a bulky movement. “I just brought this for the restaurant. Like we agreed, that’s all. Unless you didn’t want it. Then I could—”
“I’ll take it,” he said, taking the box from me. He didn’t sound happy about it, but then he didn’t sound mad. More flat, more distant, like he had a cold. Though I knew he didn’t, or at least he hadn’t last night.
I stood in front of him with no further reason to be there but unable to walk away. “Are you coming home?”
“No.” Not anytime soon, I understood.
Why, why, why, played in my head, but this wasn’t the place. He’d removed himself from the place just to avoid that discussion. Still, I was confused.
“Do you want me to move out?” I asked.
“No,” he said sharply.
I waited for him to say unless I wanted to. If I wanted to leave, then I should, and that would be my cue. The way a nice guy, a guy who’s unable to properly break up with me, would do it, but he didn’t say it.
“Okay.” Tiring, despairing, I turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said. “I want you to stay there. And you…you could keep sending these. Maybe…maybe send them back with Kai.”
I stopped and glanced back. “Yeah?”
He shrugged. “Nothing fancy. Don’t work too hard.”
I firmly resisted the urge to mimic don’t work too hard back to him. He was the one who looked about ready to fall over from exhaustion. Had he even slept? That wasn’t my concern. He didn’t want it to be.
We resolved nothing, really.
Chapter Twelve
I dragged myself home. The one high point was that Colin hadn’t wanted me to leave, which had to mean there was some hope for us. Or maybe he just pitied me. Either way, I wasn’t really up to tackling a new apartment so close on the heels of the encounter with Philip, and this was a reprieve.
Linda was reading a book to a sleepy-eyed Bailey when I got home.
“She woke up just after you left,” she said apologetically.
“It’s fine. Thank you.”
She looked up at my dull tone. “That man of yours at work?”
A blush heated my face. “Yes.” At least it was true. I left out the part about him not planning on coming home.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you go on upstairs? Take a little nap or read a book or something. I’ve got her covered.”
Grateful, I trudged up the stairs. I soaked in a hot bath, letting the sweat and steam bead on my face before I pulled myself back out. After throwing on some clothes, I looked inside his closet. Beside the space he’d emptied, there was a row of shirts. Collared things that I almost never saw him wear. And underneath, slacks and jeans. In the drawers I found undershirts and socks and underwear.
I knew all this was here, of course. He’d gratefully relinquished laundry duty to me since my first days here. I only ever looked at these sections, of course, not what was on the top shelf.
It took me a minute to find a stool downstairs and then lug it back up. Shoe boxes filled with receipts and bills. They looked like they had to do with the restaurant, which fit, since any Philip-related papers were probably in his tinderbox of a mansion.
I set that back on the high shelf and rummaged through some folded blankets and sheets. At the very end, in the corner and under some winter clothes, was a file folder marked “Marge” in Colin’s square lettering.
I slid it open and found a Registered Claim and Deed granted to Colin James Murphy. Was this where he was staying? It didn’t seem likely. Based on the zip code, I guessed it to be out by Wolf Lake, about an hour’s drive from here.
I was going to find out. Maybe because I deserved answers, and Colin was too damned reserved to ever give them to me. Or maybe because I cared about him enough to push, in the same way he’d pushed me at the beginning. And plus, I was incredibly curious about the man I loved.
Even more thankful that Linda had stayed on for Bailey’s dinner, I got in my car. I passed through the neighborhood streets of Oak Park, out across Chicago’s urban jungle to the remote plains near the lake.