Act Like You Love Me (Jessica) novel Chapter 187

Chapter 187

David’s POV

“David, please let go of me.”

28

5 vouchers

Julie’s voice was thin, barely a thread of sound in the empty hallway, but it was the way she refused to look at me that fueled the fire in my chest. She kept her eyes fixed on a nondescript smudge on the floorboards, her jaw locked tight.

I didn’t let go. If anything, my grip on her arm tightened just enough to make sure she knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

I stepped into her space, forcing her to acknowledge the shadow I cast.

“Do you really think I will?” I asked, my voice dropping an octave. I scoffed, the sound harsh even to my own

ears.

“You walk into this building looking like a fugitive-darting around every corner, jumping at your own shadow. You look suspicious, Julie. Your eyes are everywhere but on me, and you think I’m just going to wave you off with a ‘have a nice day’?”

I leaned in closer, trying to catch the darting movement of her pupils.

“I’m not doing that. You’re going to tell me why you’re here. Now.”

She didn’t answer. She just pulled against me, a weak, desperate tug that told me she was more exhausted than she was angry.

I didn’t care. I needed answers that had been rotting in the back of my mind for nearly a year.

I steered her toward the exit, my hand firm on her elbow. She stumbled once, a small intake of breath escaping her, but she stopped fighting.

She had that look in her eyes, the look of someone who had run out of places to hide.

The drive to my condo was a suffocating stretch of silence,.

I kept my hands at ten and two, my knuckles white against the leather of the steering wheel.

Out of my peripheral vision, I watched her. She was a wreck of nervous habits.

Her left leg bounced with a relentless, erratic speed that made the fabric of her trousers rustle.

She kept picking at a loose thread on her sleeve, winding it around her finger until the tip turned red, then unwinding it and starting over.

It made my stomach churn. This wasn’t just grief. I knew what grief looked like; I’d lived in it few years ago when my dad passed away. This was something else. This was fear.

12:07 Thu, Mar 26

Chapter 187

28

5 vouchers

Why now? I thought, the question looping in my head like a broken record. Why show up at my office after all this time?

My mind drifted back to the funeral, if you could even call it that.

It been eight months of silence. No word from her family, no questions, no contact, nothing that resembled the way a family behaves when they want to understand what happened to someone they loved.

They’d claimed the body, held a closed-casket service that felt more like a business transaction than a farewell, and went silent.

I had told myself, in the months after, that grief did that to people sometimes. That there was no single way a family processed the loss of someone young and sudden, and that their silence wasn’t necessarily suspicious, it was possibly just unbearable.

I glanced at Julie again. She was staring out the window, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing the city lights.

She looked small in the passenger seat, swallowed by the gravity of whatever secret she was carrying.

My unease shifted into a cold, hard knot of suspicion.

When we reached my place, the air didn’t get any easier to breathe.

I unlocked the door and gestured for her to go inside. She walked in tentatively, her footsteps muffled by the rug.

I didn’t say a word as I dropped my keys on the side table and tossed my suit jacket onto the arm of the couch.

The fabric slid off and hit the floor, but I didn’t bother picking it up.

I turned and caught her staring at me. For a split second, there was a flash of something in her expression- maybe admiration, maybe a plea for help.

But the moment she realized I’d seen her, she snapped her head away, focusing intently on a bookshelf as if she were deeply interested in my collection of computer science journals.

I didn’t want to overthink it. I couldn’t afford to let my imagination run wild, not when I needed her to be coherent.

“Sit down, Julie,” I said, my voice softer now, but still carrying the weight of an order.

She sat on the edge of the leather armchair, her back straight and her hands clasped tightly in her lap, She looked like a guest in a doctor’s waiting room, bracing for bad news,

“I’m going to get you some water,” I muttered, leaving the room before she could protest.

In the kitchen, I leaned against the cold marble of the counter and took a deep breath.

My heart was thumping a steady, heavy beat against my ribs. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, the plastic crinkling loudly in the quiet apartment.

12:07 Thu, Mar 26

Chapter 187

:

28

5 vouchers

I stood there for a moment, staring at the label, trying to find the right words to tear the truth out of her.

I walked back into the living room and handed the bottle to her.

“Thank you,” she murmured. Her voice was so low I almost missed it.

She unscrewed the cap with shaking fingers and took a long drink.

I didn’t sit down. I stood in front of her, leaning against the heavy oak desk, watching her every move.

I watched the way her throat moved as she swallowed. I watched the way she avoided the empty space on the wall where a photo of Fiona used to hang.

The silence stretched out, growing thick and uncomfortable. It felt too choking to breathe properly.

Finally, she set the bottle down on the coffee table, though she kept her hand gripped around the neck of it.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

“What were you doing at the office today, Julie?” I asked.

She flinched. Just a small twitch of her shoulders, but it was enough.

“I was just… passing by,” she lied. It was a terrible lie, voiced with no conviction.

“Don’t,” I snapped. “You don’t ‘pass by’ a private floor in a high-rise at seven in the evening. You were looking for something. Or someone. And since your sister isn’t here anymore, I have to assume it was me-or something I have.”

I stepped closer, invading that safe bubble of space she was trying to maintain. “Your family vanished, Julie. No calls, no letters. Nothing. Then you show up looking like you’re ready to jump out of a moving car. Talk to me. What is going on?”

She looked up then, and for the first time, the fear in her eyes was replaced by a raw, jagged grief that matched my own. Her lips parted, but no sound came out,

She looked at the water bottle, then back at me, her face pale under the living room lights.

“David,” she started, her voice cracking. “There are things… things Fiona didn’t tell you. Things she couldn’t tell you.”

The knot in my stomach tightened. “I’m listening.”

“Eric.” She whispered.

12:07 Thu, Mar 26