Read Online London Falling by Audrey Carlan - Free Book Online Page B

really wasn’t anything more I could say. The man had been cheated on by the woman he loved.
    “It’s life. It is what it is.” He brought his hand to cover mine in my lap. Immediately the sizzle and thump of our connection leapt from my hand to my heart, filling it with something I couldn’t define. “What about you?” His voice was soft.
    “What about me?”
    “What sort of daft bastard would leave a bird as lovely as you?” He squeezed my hand reassuringly.
    “He didn’t mean to leave me. He died.”
    Normally when a man finds out I’m a widow at twenty six, he has a freak out moment, one in which he either decides the waters to this woman’s bed are too treacherous to wade, then bails. Or the alternative: offering me a sympathy fuck to make me feel better. Neither is desirable. After years of dating, I realized men just couldn’t deal with the fact that I didn’t choose to leave the man I married, nor did he choose to leave me. It was decided by an innocent but tragic accident which left me unwilling and incapable of loving another ever again. That part of me died when my husband died.
    “I see,” he said.
    Quietly we both chewed over the thoughts, a heavy brew based on the information we’d both shared. The air around us was thick with tension.
    Finally he asked, “So what happened to your husband?”
    I liked that he referred to James as my husband. It reinforced the importance of that relationship even though he was gone.
    Collier had a way about him that put me at ease. Usually, I refrained from telling people about James. Tripp was constantly telling me I had to let it out, let the ghost of James rest. Maybe this would put me one step closer.
    I took a deep, calming breath. Collier waited patiently, eyes glued to the road ahead. Not looking in his eyes made it easier to share somehow.
    “It was raining out. The first rain of the year. The pungent scent of the newly wet roads in New York City was stifling. I remember the humidity being unbearable. James was driving home from work. His car was t-boned at a light. The driver lost control of the vehicle; bad tires with little tread didn’t stick on the slick oily streets. It catapulted the car into cross traffic.”
    “Was the driver bombed?”
    I shook my head. “No. He was sixteen. Just got his driver’s license. It was his first time on the road by himself. He was driving home from studying at a friend’s house. He didn’t have a drop to drink.”
    “Was it instant?”
    “Unfortunately, no. The accident broke a lot of his bones, did a great amount of damage internally but all that could be cured. What couldn’t was his liver. He needed an immediate transplant, but one didn’t become available in time. He died within forty eight hours of arriving at the hospital.”
    “In my experience, Beauty, it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Our past makes us who we are today. I for one think you’re incredible.” He said it with all the conviction of a man who’d gone through it himself, which I now knew he had.
    It was refreshing. Collier didn’t apologize for my loss. He didn’t tell me that everything would be okay or look at me as if I was a broken woman. His brown eyes gleamed with understanding. Like he’d said to me, when he recanted his tale, it is what it is and he truly believed that. We couldn’t change what the universe doled out to us, but what we could change was how we dealt with that experience.
    “You’re a wise man, Collier Stone.”
    “Indeed.” He waggled his eyebrows, breaking the serious mood. “You still want to stay the evening with this wise-arse, I mean wise man?” He chuckled and I laughed with him. He was good for me. At least for tonight he would be.
    “More than anything.”

Chapter - 5

    After parking the car and taking the lift to my flat, a bit of melancholy wafted in the air. Her admission about losing her husband had been tough on her. I wondered how many people