Or maybe she was hurt. Or ill. What if she needed help?

He exhaled loudly, looking up at the ceiling and hating his indecision. Back in his fighting days, this never would have happened. He never would have let a woman get under his skin like this, let alone hesitate about what to do. Standing in Clare’s hallway, he found himself questioning all of it. Questioning who he had become, who he was before Clare, and who he was now that she had come into his life.

“Buddy, you ring my buzzer?” An older man poked his head out from the door down the hall.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, sir,” Rory responded.

“Whatcha doin’ over by Ms. Ivers, then?” he asked, suspiciously.

Rory stepped toward the man, trying not to be as intimidating as his size made him appear. He hoped that the giant, scar-covered dog trotting beside him wouldn’t intimidate him, either.

“I’m trying to find Clare. Have you seen her?”

“What’s it to you? She your girlfriend or something?”

“No, I, uh—she just left early from work. I was just checking on her is all.” Rory found himself blushing, then mentally criticized himself for it. The man had asked him a simple question, and he hadn’t known the answer. Is she my girlfriend?

“Uh-huh.” The old man was clearly not buying it. “Well, you ain’t goin’ to find her here, son. She left a while ago. Had a couple suitcases with her. Doubt she’ll be back anytime soon.”

The old man shuffled back into his apartment, closed the door. Rory’s mouth opened, shocked. He couldn’t believe that Clare would just leave. He stepped back over to her door and knocked. He had to find out for himself. After a minute of knocking with no answer, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket. Finding a pick he kept in there, he fiddled with the doorknob, listening carefully for the click.

A few failed attempts later, Clare’s door popped open, and Rory quickly let himself and Ace inside, then closed the door behind them.

“Clare?” he called out, his gaze roaming around her apartment.

The very first thing he saw was her cellphone on a table by the front door. He picked it up and powered it on, seeing all his missed calls appear on the screen. She had left it behind.

She didn’t want to be found.

He had been inside her place only once before, but it had been late at night and they had made a beeline for the bedroom. Even when he had left the next morning, he had been distracted and hadn’t taken the time to really see where she lived.

He wasn’t sure what he had pictured, but this certainly wasn’t it. The entire place was empty, barely a shell of a home. But not empty as though someone had left in a hurry, empty as though it never had anything in it to begin with. The kitchen had one chair up against a windowsill that was clearly used as a table.

There was a small table by the front door that held a bowl with a few keys in it, plus a random magazine. The living room had one small box television in the corner on top of a milk crate facing a futon that doubled as a couch. Farther back, only partitioned off by some folding screens he hadn’t noticed before, was the bedroom.

The bed was the one thing he remembered; it had definitely seen better days. It was flanked by a small nightstand and a dresser to one side. There was nothing on the walls, no photos or frames, no decorations of any kind.

How had I not noticed this?

He had been here before, but completely failed to pay attention to how she had been living. As he and Ace roamed the tiny place, the one thing he found that was remotely reminiscent of someone living there was a clay pot holding a small ivy plant on the bedroom windowsill. It was dark green, well fed, and the soil was moist when Rory reached in to feel it.

Guilt racked him as he sat down on her futon, feeling as if he had failed to take care of her, to give her what she needed. He had more money than he knew what to do with, and she ate her breakfast on a window ledge. Rory dropped his head, leaning his elbows on his knees as he thought about the signs he had missed.

Ace came over and sat in front of him, dropping down to the ground and making a sad, whimpering sound as he laid his head down. Rory reached down and scratched behind Ace’s ears, hoping that the small comfort would make both of them feel better.

The showers at the gym because there was only a half bath in here. The coffee and lunches she had with Casey that he always saw show up on Casey’s credit card bill, which he paid for her. He had always been one to take care of the women in his life, yet he had been completely oblivious to Clare’s needs.

And now she was gone.

Rory stood and picked up the ivy plant, taking it with him as he and Ace left the depressing apartment and walked slowly to his place on the other side of Woodlawn. He put her plant on the windowsill in his kitchen, unsure of why he had taken it. He just knew that if it had meant enough to her to care for it, he didn’t want that to be for nothing.

He had liked being with Clare; he still did. Now that she was gone, he realized that it was more than that. Sighing, he had no choice but to admit to himself that he had loved her.

He had been in love with her.

It was clear now, and he wished he had figured it out sooner. Then maybe he could have told her, instead of missing her. Now he wondered if he had ever really known her. Either way, she had left not only him, but her entire life in the Bronx. She had made sure there was no way to trace her.

She didn’t want him to find her.

She didn’t want him.

The thought was agonizing, and Rory was already in enough pain. His leg hurt him every day, but with all the new tension plaguing his body right now, the pain seemed to have doubled. It made him wonder why he had bothered going through everything he had to try to get off the prescription pills.

Rory stood in his kitchen, suddenly realizing that he didn’t have to go through that anymore. If Clare had given up on him, why shouldn’t he? He had gotten clean for her, but she had still left him.

He searched through his apartment, looking anywhere for leftover medications. Ace watched him in confusion as he tore open drawers and cabinets, hoping to find a forgotten bottle somewhere.

He had thrown everything away to be clean for her, but he was hoping that maybe he had missed something. Almost an hour later, he still came up empty. Making a mental note, he decided to ask one of the doctors who had given him prescriptions before at Legends. Or maybe ransack one of their lockers to find a prescription pad to tide him over.

He was desperate.

Melancholy overtook him as he changed his clothes and crawled into bed. Ace lay on the floor by the foot of the bed as Rory, tossing and turning for hours, let sleep find him slowly.

Chapter 15

No one had told her how cold it was in New York in late fall. Clare desperately missed the warmth and sun of California as she sat on a bench on the outskirts of Van Cortlandt Park, trying to decide what to do.

She had two suitcases filled with her clothes, plus her purse, and that was it. Her purse contained only the tips from one night’s work, and that wasn’t going to get her anywhere fast. She found herself wishing she was older: Her parents had left her a hefty sum of money in a trust fund, but she couldn’t touch it until next year, when she turned twenty-five.

Clare’s mother and father hadn’t known that they were going to pass away so early in life, leaving her stranded and at the mercy of someone like Travis for years until she could make use of her inheritance. They had meant the money to be a gift, not a means of survival, and yet now it was something much worse. Clare remembered how she had found Travis’s safe accidentally left open one evening when he was drunk.