Page 95 of How To Not Need You

She waits me out, the sneaky emotionally literate woman. I don’t say anything for a while but eventually the silence gets the best of me. I close my eyes and see the scene again.

Megan in her towel, her hair wet, her arms bare, like the world’s most literal punchline.

“I didn’t even wait for her to explain.”

“Then maybe that’s your first step.”

“I…” I start but my voice catches again before coming out embarrassingly small. “I don’t think I can right now.”

I hear her sigh on the other end of the phone. “Liv. If you need time, take it. But I think there could be an explanation. Everything you've told me about Jake says there probably is. I don’t think he would hurt you like that.”

My throat tightens.

“I thought that too.”

Chapter

Seventeen

Jake

Something is wrong.

I’ve had the feeling sitting low in my gut for most of the last day, and no amount of telling myself I’m being ridiculous has managed to shift it.

The last sixty hours have been complete fucking chaos.

What was supposed to be a forty-eight-hour shift became sixty when Collins didn’t show for his shift yesterday morning, and somewhere between a highway pileup, two medical assists, a shed fire and maybe four hours of sleep spread across three days, I stopped knowing what day it was.

But what I do know is that Liv hasn’t answered me.

That part I’m painfully fucking aware of.

A hand lands hard between my shoulder blades.

“Good shift, man.”

I jerk forward at the force of the slap and turn to find Ben beside me, looking irritatingly cheerful for someone who smells like smoke and has dark circles beneath his eyes.

“I don’t know about you,” he continues, opening the locker beside mine, “but I’m going home, showering, eating something that didn’t come out of a vending machine and sleeping until someone checks me for a pulse.”

I grunt something that probably counts as agreement and turn back to my locker. My phone is sitting on the shelf beside my bag. I pick it up. Still nothing.

Dammit Liv. Where are you?

“Everything good?”

“Yeah.”

Ben looks at me and I sigh.

“No.”

“Knew it.”

I unlock my phone and check how many messages I have sent to her with no response. Six messages. Six fucking messages over the last two and a half days, sent whenever I managed to find five minutes between calls.

You get your charger?