Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 61

Chapter 61

Chapter 61

DENISE

Kieran’s message came in at eleven forty-seven.

+10 Free Coins

I read it twice, sitting on the sofa in the penthouse with the television on and the volume low, running as background rather than something I was actually watching.

*Something has come up-I need to travel. France, leaving tonight. I’ll be back as soon as I can.* A pause, and then: “When I’m back, I’ll answer your question. I haven’t forgotten.*

I sat with it for a moment.

My first response was the question I didn’t ask, which was: where. My second response was the name I didn’t say, which was Alyssa Stone. My third response was the deliberate, conscious decision to set both of those aside.

He hadn’t told me the specifics. That was a choice, and I was going to respect the choice rather than push against it, because pushing against it would make me the version of myself I was trying not to be–the version that had spent four years interpreting silence as abandonment and filling gaps with anxiety rather than patience.

I typed back: “Okay. Travel safe.*

Short, clean, not performing anything.

I put the phone on the cushion beside me and looked at the television.

The truth was that I had questions. The question I’d been ready to ask at seven o’clock was still there, fully formed, and now it was going to wait in the same drawer Kieran had put his answer in, and I was going to have to sit with that. I was capable of sitting with things. I had been sitting with things my entire life.

What I was less capable of, apparently, was sitting in a penthouse on a Thursday afternoon with nothing to do.

I had sent the Voss photographs to Elena in the morning. The legal documents were signed and filed. The St. Mira’s heating fund transfer was processed. I had no Blackwood Enterprises work because t had been fired from Blackwood Enterprises.

I picked up my phone and opened my contacts without a clear destination.

Then it rang.

The name on the screen was one I hadn’t seen in almost three years.

*Andrea Davis.*

I stared at it for a moment.

Andrea Davis, who had been my closest friend from our second year of high school until the distance between our lives after graduation had done what distance did to friendships that weren’t maintained carefully enough. Not a falling out-just the slow, unmaintained drift of two people whose paths had diverged and who had kept meaning to close the gap without quite doing it.

I answered.

1/2

1:26 pm P PPP

Chapter 61

“Tell me that’s actually you,” Andrea said, before I could speak.

+10 Free Coins

Her voice was exactly the same. That was the thing about some people-their voices didn’t age, didn’t change their register the way their faces changed, and hearing it produced an immediate, physical recognition that bypassed the years.

“It’s me,” I said.

She made a sound that was equal parts relief and accusation. “Three years, Denise. Three years of almost calling and then not.”

“I know.”

“I’m in the city,” she said. “I just got in. Tell me you’re free.”

I looked at the penthouse, at the low television and the phone on the cushion and the afternoon that had nothing in it.

“I’m free,” I said.

The coffee shop Andrea had chosen was the kind that had been in the same location for twenty years and showed it–not in a neglected way, but in the way of something that had outlasted trends by simply being good at its specific thing. Worn wooden tables, proper coffee, the smell of something baking in the back. I arrived before her and ordered and found a table by the window and sat down.

She came in six minutes later.

Andrea Davis was one of those people who looked precisely like themselves-not dramatically changed from the version I

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify