Chapter 260
Dominic’s POV
The journey back to the pack had been long and quiet, which gave me plenty of time to lament over everything.
“You’re more of a coward than I thought, Dominic.”
Lucas’s words hadn’t stopped echoing in my head since he said them.
By the time we arrived home, I had come to the conclusion that maybe there was a shred of truth in what he had said. Perhaps I had been too rash in accusing Ellie of having an affair with Lucas. I should have listened to her.
I decided that I needed to talk to her. I wasn’t entirely sure what I would say. I didn’t know if my ego would let me apologize. But I needed to say something, anything, to try and begin to repair what had been broken.
When I walked in the door, I expected Ellie to be there. I supposed a small shred of myself had hoped that she would have missed me just as much as I missed her, and would be waiting for me with open arms.
She wasn’t.
Mara and Vivian were standing there instead.
Vivian’s face split into a smile when I entered. She opened her arms and rushed over to me. “Welcome home, Dominic.” She pulled me into an embrace before I could react. “I’m glad to see you’re well.”
Vivian’s embrace was warm and welcoming, and her perfume hit me like a brick wall. Sweet and floral. But she wasn’t Ellie, who, admittedly, I’d wanted to see more than anyone else since yesterday.
I pulled back and looked around. “Where’s Ellie?”
Vivian’s face fell at the mention of her name.
Mara clasped her hands in front of her and cleared her throw. “She, uh… She left yesterday morning, Sir. I wasn’t able to stop her before she had slipped away.”
I stared at her for a moment. “Slipped away?” I repeated. “Where?”
Vivian sighed. “We don’t know. It seems she set off the smoke alarms in the kitchen as a distraction and was out of the house before anyone realized what was happening. Her car is missing and she packed her toiletries.”
I set my jaw, but I didn’t say anything. All I could think about right now was being alone and taking a hot shower.
Brushing past Vivian, I made my way upstairs to my room. I wasn’t expecting to find a note sitting on my pillow when I entered, but there it was, scrawled hastily across a small yellow sticky paper. I saw it the moment I stepped into the room.
Quickly crossing the room, I grabbed the note and scanned it.
“Dominic-Heading out for a few days. Personal matters. And no, I’m not with Lucas. Be back soon. E.”
I read it twice over before I set it back down on the pillow and stood there with my hands on my hips, staring at the wall.
Personal matters.
I almost laughed.
The note said she wasn’t with Lucas, but right now, I wasn’t sure if I believed her.
I dialed Lucas’s number immediately. He picked up after several rings.
“Yes?” he answered.
+30 Bonus
“Is Ellie with you?”
There was a pause, and then: “No.”
“If you’re lying-”
“I’m not,” Lucas said, sounding exasperated. “I thought we’ve been over this, Dominic.”
My teeth ground together. Lucas was right. Suddenly, that guilt I’d been feeling since yesterday struck me again, square in the chest, right where it hurt the most.
I was making assumptions again.
But Ellie had taken off without a word. Just a scribbled note and an intentionally set-off smoke alarm, which meant that she’d planned to leave without anyone finding her in time.
Where did she go? And why make it so secretive?
I shook my head, turning off the phone without even saying goodbye to Lucas, although I was pretty sure he had hung up on me
first.
Ellie was up to something. I wasn’t sure what yet, but whatever it was, it was making me uneasy.
Vivian’s POV
Ellie had been gone for two days, and Dominic looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
When Mara first told me that Ellie had slipped out, my first thought was that this was it. This was the moment I had been waiting for. Dominic would come home to an empty house, realize that his wife had run off again, and finally, finally reach the conclusion that she wasn’t worth the trouble.
He would come to me. He always had before, in one way or another, when things with Ellie fell apart.
So I prepared. I made sure I looked put together without looking like I was trying too hard. I had a bottle of his preferred whiskey opened and set on the sitting room table, just in case. I was ready to be exactly what he needed while quietly making the case that a woman who snuck out through the kitchen while the smoke alarms were going off was not a woman who deserved the title she was holding.
But Dominic didn’t come to me.
He came home, went upstairs, and stayed there for the better part of the next morning. When he did come down, he was quiet in a way that wasn’t his usual brooding quiet. He didn’t speak to anyone; I tried to strike up a conversation twice, and the most t got were a few grunts in response.
I was not expecting him to act as if he actually… missed her.
He didn’t even seem angry with her. He just kept looking at the window as if he were waiting for her to pull in the driveway, and whenever it remained empty, he looked wistful and forlorn.
By the evening of the second day, I was running out of patience.
I found him in the hallway outside his room, coming back from what looked like another fruitless attempt to reach Ellie by phone. He looked haggard.
“Still nothing?” I asked, stopping in front of him.
He glanced at me. “No.”
I stood there for a moment and thought quickly. Every approach I had tried over the past two days had either been ignored or
2/3
deflected, and it was becoming very clear that as long as Ellie was missing, Dominic was not going to be available to me in any meaningful way. She was taking up all of the oxygen in the room even from wherever she was.
Which meant that, unfortunately, I needed her back.
The thought was unpleasant, to say the least. Having Ellie gone had seemed so easy. And yet it just made it harder to reach Dominic than ever.
If I was going to make him open up to me again, then maybe I needed her here. Close by. Where her shortcomings would be more easily noticeable to him.
They do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. Does that mean that being too close does the opposite?
“Let me talk to her,” I said.
“She’s not answering her phone.”
“I know. But I know Ellie,” I said, forcing what I hoped was a small, encouraging smile. “I’ll get her to talk to me. I’ll convince her to come home, if that’s what you want.”
Dominic looked up at me. I wasn’t sure if he’d looked at me like that at all in the past few days.
“You’d really do that?” he asked.
My smile widened a little, even though on the inside, my blood was boiling.
“For you,” I said, “I would do anything.”
COIN BUNDLE: get more free bonus
Comments
Support
Share
