“Can’t you see you’re killing me?” she whispered.

He swallowed past his throat closing and whispered back, “I can’t leave you.”

“You can’t stay either.”

“We’re not done.”

“We never even started.”

“Baby, we did.”

“It isn’t for me,” she stated.

“What isn’t for you?”

“Dawn.”

Beyond tweaked, that word made him more so.

“Dawn?”

“I live in dark. Dawn never comes for me. There will be no new day where I wake up complete. Happy. Loved. There is no other side to make my way to. There is no believe. It just isn’t for me.”

“I can take you there.”

“No you can’t, Sebring. Can’t you see?”

“No, I can’t see, Livvie.”

“You can’t give me dawn and all I can give you is dark.”

“That’s fucked up and not true.”

“It’s every day for thirty-one years, except a few, the few I shared with you, and they were all a lie.”

“Livvie—”

“Leave.”

“Liv—”

“Leave.”

“Baby—”

The tears slid down her cheeks and the whisper came again.

“You’re killing me.”

He said nothing and not just because she wasn’t letting him.

“And she’s gonna kill you, Nicky,” she kept whispering. “I can try to stop her but there’s no stopping Georgie. It’ll be her or you. I know it. I don’t want it to be either. Please be safe. Please get safe. Please get out of here and make yourself and your family safe.”

“I love you, Liv.”

More tears fell as she replied, “I wish, honest to God, I really wish I could believe that, Sebring.”

He held her eyes and watched the tears fall.

Then he made a decision.

“It’s gonna gut me to walk outta here not touching you.”

Her lip quivered so she bit it.

His stomach roiled like he was going to vomit.

He fought through it and did what he had to do.

“I love you, Olivia. And I can make you safe. I can make you happy. I want a lifetime of nothing but that.”

Another tear fell out of her swelling eye but she said nothing.

“I’m gonna walk out of here not touching you and the last thing you’re gonna hear from me is that I love you, baby. Fuck, I so fuckin’ love you.”

They stood, her in front of her couch, him behind it, and stared at each other.

Neither moved except for the wet that slid out of Livvie’s sad, dead, beautiful green eyes.

“Love you, Livvie,” he whispered.

She pressed her lips together.

Nick Sebring watched.

Then he turned and walked out.

Chapter Twenty-Four

No Soul

Olivia

Fifteen Weeks Later

I looked to my list of Today as shown to me down the side of my email screen as I heard the noises in the outer office.

On a sigh I turned my attention to my office door.

Georgie came in.