The woman he spent years plotting revenge for, I bet there was something to her.

But me?

I was a woman he could walk out of my house and never again see.

Truth be told, one of the reasons I decided to keep that house was because it was like keeping a bit of Nick with me. It was the only thing I had, memories of the few times he’d been there. Memories, if I was in the mood, I could pretend were based on something different.

Something real.

I’d been right that first day I woke up to him in my bed. Sometimes, if I was allowing myself to wallow (which I didn’t allow often, but it happened), I would ramble and remember his joke about the wood-fired stove. I’d remember falling asleep beside him on the couch after we got back from Vegas.

I’d remember right where he was, right where I was, precisely what he looked like when he lied that lie that was so pretty, telling me he loved me.

“Right, I’m here, I don’t wanna be here forever, so let’s start this. Harry’s retiring and he wanted me to ask you personally to come to his party,” my sister announced.

“His reinstatement didn’t last long,” I murmured.

“He wasn’t really reinstated, Liv,” Georgie murmured back.

No, he wasn’t. That was another bit of info I learned years late.

Harry didn’t need me giving him the odd job to make his load a little lighter. He was on Tommy’s dollar and on Georgia’s payroll, part of his duties being looking after (that meant monitoring) me.

An unexpected betrayal that shouldn’t hurt as much as it did.

But it did.

“I’ll take a pass on that,” I told Georgia.

“Babe, you gotta—”

I stared at her right in the eye. “There are a lot of things I gotta do, Georgie. All of them you know. So please don’t tell me what else I gotta do if it’s telling me how I should feel or if I really don’t gotta do it. You cannot dictate how I feel. Now, as you sign my paychecks, if it’s your order that I attend Harry’s retirement party, I’ll be sure to attend. But I’d rather not.”

“We were all looking out for you,” she informed me.

She truly believed that.

Which, of course, made it all the worse.

“That would make a great deal of sense, if I was seven,” I retorted. “As I was not, it makes no sense at all.”

“Liv—”

I interrupted her, “Can we move past this?”

She shook her head in annoyance.