Because he had no clue what to do or say.
His head hurt, and it wasn’t from the alcohol.
He could walk away. He never needed to see her again.
Yesterday he’d told her that they needed distance, but at the same time he’d believed he would still see her every day. That they’d have months, and somehow he’d find a way to cope with the inevitable separation. But now it was here and he didn’t know how to cope.
Panic clawed at his guts. He remembered when he’d been shot in Afghanistan, remembered lying in the hot sand, waiting for them to come along and finish him off. He hadn’t felt as scared as he did now.
“Are you okay?” Vito asked from the seat beside him.
He nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Can you let me out here?”
Vito spoke to the driver and the vehicle slowed and pulled over.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Come back to the hotel with me. We’ll get some breakfast…”
“No. I’m good. I need some fresh air, that’s all.”
“Okay.” He opened the door. “By the way, I like your wife.”
“So do I,” Josh said as he climbed out.
He had no idea where he was, and he just started moving. He hit the river and walked along the embankment, breathing in the salty tang. He had no sense of where he was going until he glanced up and recognized the tower block where he had spent his childhood.
This place was a world away from Hampstead Heath. Growing up, he hadn’t even realized places like that existed. He sat on a wall facing the building and counted up the windows, finding the eighth floor and the apartment he’d lived in until he was seventeen. The curtains were different; no doubt someone had moved in. Probably the place had changed hands numerous times. You didn’t stay here longer than necessary if you could get out. Like his mother had gotten out, leaving him and Evie behind.
He’d never been back in the years since. Why would he? He was happy to put the whole fucking memory behind him.
The place held an air of depression, the gray walls scattered with graffiti, the patches of grass threadbare. A group of kids were playing football under a weak sun. Any one of them could have been him fifteen years ago.
What the hell chance would these kids have to get out of this place? Maybe losing Evie had done him some good. Maybe he’d still be here, doing God knows what, if she hadn’t been taken from him. Maybe they’d both won in the end.
Except he didn’t feel like he’d won. He felt like his heart was cracked in two all over again. He had a longing to sit in Lexi’s warm kitchen. He didn’t even mind the people or the animals. He’d gotten used to them. He’d even grown fond of the chicken. He hated mess and chaos, but he’d come to love Lexi’s house, probably because it was the first real home he’d ever lived in. Hell, the thought of going back to his sterile apartment made him want to weep.
He’d never cried in his life. Well, only the once, when he’d finally accepted that he’d lost Evie and was never getting her back.
The kids had stopped playing now. They were loitering, lighting up, passing a bottle between them. A group of girls joined them, with short skirts and dyed blonde hair. They couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve. He wanted to go over and knock some sense into them. That might have been Evie if she hadn’t got out of here.
Maybe he could get Lexi to set up one of her charities. He could help. Somehow give them a chance to escape this life. At least let them see there were other things out there.
“What you staring at, mister? You some sort of pervert?”
He glanced down to see one of the boys glaring up at him, a blank, hostile look in his young eyes. “I used to live here”—he waved a hand—“in that apartment over there.”
“And you came back? You crazy?”
He grinned. “Just feeling nostalgic.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Look it up.”
He jumped off the wall, gave the building one last glance, and strode away. There was no going back. But maybe he could go forward. The first step was understanding where he wanted to be.
A vision of Lexi flashed through his mind, followed by a long ago memory of Evie, blond-haired and blue-eyed and super-cute, holding her arms out to him. He pulled out his phone and did a search for the number of the local social services, then punched it in.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah. My sister was adopted eleven years ago. She’ll be eighteen now. I want to know how I go about contacting her.”
Chapter Fifteen
Lexi wandered around the house as though in a daze.
He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.
Now she had to get through this. And she would. She’d done it before, long ago, when her parents had been killed. She’d do it again.
For once she had the place to herself, and she was glad. They were all being so careful around her.