No strangulation by charger on her watch, thank her very much.
She’d worked too damned hard to get her life back together.
And she was together.
“I am,” she whispered. “I. Am.”
Except for the fact that she couldn’t connect more than a handful of hours of sleep together. Eleven to two in the morning.
Every day.
Except for the fact she lay in the dark for a while before then giving in and turning on the lights, banishing the shadows, adding an extra blanket so she wasn’t cold.
Because she always woke with her heart pounding and her teeth chattering.
And frozen from the tips of her toes all the way up to the ends of her fingers.
But…she was together.
Totally.
Except for the sleeping and the icy chill and the fear that crept in at random intervals and the difficulty looking at her body and the panic she had to stifle every time she went to take a sip out of her drink.
Because that was how it had begun.
“Stop,” she ordered, rolling to her side, tucking her knees up to her chest, assuming her position, folding herself tight, holding herself close so she didn’t break into pieces. “Just breathe and—” Her chest hitched. “Just breathe.”
Start there.
Oxygen in.
Carbon dioxide out.
Over and over again.
But slowly. Slowly.
The cold began to fade, the tension abated, and then she did what she’d been doing the last weeks, ever since Ash had appeared at her front door. She didn’t turn on the lights, tag the remote, and start bingeing some crappy reality television.
She forced herself to stay in the dark.
Then she propped her phone up sideways, using the spare pillow next to her to keep it from flopping backward. The pillow she pretended still smelled like Ash. Spice and man and Ash. Just like she pretended her sheets continued to hold his scent (even though she’d washed them).
Because she was together.
Totally.
Positioning her phone always took time, finding that balance between tipping backward and falling forward (and usually smacking herself in the face in the process), and tonight was no different, but eventually she found that stability.
Then found what she wanted to watch.
A playlist of rug cleaning videos.
Filthy, disgusting floor coverings destined for the trash. But someone had decided they were worth the effort to clean—or at least worth the effort to make a YouTube video about it. Someone had decided they were worth the effort to yank on a pair of white boots, pull out the power washer, and get to work rinsing and soaping and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing.
Until the rug was clean.
Until it was like new again.
She watched until her eyes burned and exhaustion settled heavily into every cell in her body.
She watched until the sky grew bright outside.
She watched…
But she didn’t sleep.
The day had dragged.
Mostly because she was exhausted and not sleeping (but she was still together!), but also because she was working with a client who was…difficult.
She did graphic design.
More specifically book covers. More, more specifically she designed romance book covers.
As far as a job went, it was a fun one.
She was excellent at making sexy man chests look even sexier, at highlighting those eight-packs and those little bitable indents at the models’ hips. She was just as good at using objects instead of people or couples instead of one shirtless dude. Fire, flames, swords, fancy crowns, kickass women holding flaming swords. Blue aliens, dragons.
All of it.
She loved all of it.
And she was good at all of it.
So much so that she had a six-month waiting list.
So much so that she rarely had to deal with annoying people—or at least not more than once.
Some of her covers had graced bestsellers. Some had been the face of someone’s pet project they were just thrilled to get up on bookselling sites.
Mel didn’t judge.
She wasn’t a writer. The idea of sitting down for hours on end, pecking away at her keyboard, trying to create something interesting out of words filled her with no little amount of horror.
Nightmare.
Give her a mouse and tiny details and shading or color correcting over that every single moment of every single day.
Now the planning meetings?
Those were nightmares.
Those were the things she dreaded.
Peopling.
But most were okay. There was a camaraderie between her and her authors. They had a vision. She wanted to bring it alive.
Unfortunately, one of her clients right now was a disaster.
She’d already had several meetings (though, thankfully, not the early ass morning one since she was in Mel’s time zone). But several meetings were more than Mel normally had with her clients. Usually, it was one video call and then emails and chatting online. Beyond the extra video chats, which weren’t her favorite but something that came with the job, Mel had already prepared more than a few proofs. More than a few…as in ten. Ten freaking proofs.
In fact, Mel had been so fed up with her client that proof number ten was actually proof number one.
Not that her client had noticed.
Not that her client had been happy.
Hence the additional meetings.
The issue was that what her client said she wanted and what her client then didn’t like on the proofs were one and the same.
All of which were frustrating and costing her money and sucking the fun out of her job.
And she had the feeling that no matter what she put together, her client would not be happy.
Which meant they were likely going to have to part ways.
Something she hated to do because she was a professional, dammit.
She should be able to get the job done for anyone.
Except authors who didn’t know what they wanted and had liked none of the ideas she’d pulled out of every orifice, including the ones on the lower half of her body.
“Crap,” she whispered, hitting save automatically and shutting down.
Her focus was splintered, and she was frustrated. She wasn’t going to get other work done, especially with her stomach rumbling and the clock telling her she’d worked almost eight hours without a break.
She pushed away from her desk and moved out of her bedroom, intending on making her usual dinner for one.
She was thinking fancy grilled cheese and canned soup.
Fancy because she always slipped a thin slice of green apple and a dollop of dijon mustard in between the slices of cheese. This equaled “fancy” and made her forget she was eating canned soup.
Which was delicious.
But it wasn’t gourmet or fancy and made her feel a little sad, especially when the can of soup lasted her three meals.
That night, though, she’d just reached out to pop the top on the can of soup when the doorbell rang.
She froze, debated pretending she wasn’t home, but even as that thought was crossing her mind, her cell buzzed with a text from her sister.
I know you’re in there.
Damn Twin Powers.
Tiff knew her too freaking well.
Sighing, she plunked the can down, moved to the front door, pausing only to peer through the peephole and confirm that it was, indeed, her twin standing in the hall.
Looking impatient.
Mel rolled her eyes as she unlocked the door, turned the knob, and pulled it open.