He opened up his email account to send a new e-mail. He hesitated with his cursor hovering above the address line. Gage had to think about it for a few seconds, but the e-mail address still lingered in the back of his mind like persistent, sticky moss. “Fee-fi-fo-fum,” Gage said out loud as he typed it out in the designated location on the screen. That was Fiona’s username, assuming that she hadn’t changed her e-mail address since they last saw each other; she used it for everything. Fiona had ended things between them over a year ago now.
Gage typed out the text of his message quickly, allowing his fingers to fly over the keyboard, free from a filter. He was never very good at figuring out what Fiona wanted him to say. Why bother trying to do that now?
“Hi, Fiona, been a long time. I need to talk to you about something. You’re the only one who will understand. Please get back to me. Yours, Gage.”
It was only when he hit “Send” that a great big, hard lump formed in his throat, intense anxiety hitting him all at once. What have I done? Fuck. Goddammit, I’m an idiot, Gage thought, tossing his head back and groaning out loud. She’s not going to answer me, he thought to himself, getting to his feet again to pace around his office aimlessly. She’s never going to speak to me again.
But somehow, he knew that wasn’t true. Maybe that was why he felt sick to his stomach all of a sudden, because he knew she would say yes. She would help him. Gage would drag her back into this mess, like Hades carrying Persephone off into the underworld. She probably fought so hard to get away from all of this, he thought, the sick sensation of guilt weighing heavily in his chest. She probably just wants to forget. She probably just wants to heal. I should let her do that.
But his computer made a high, chirping noise, a notification that he just received an email. He knew it was from her before he even looked. She was always prompt like that, answering things right away. It almost made him smile to think about. Maybe she hasn’t changed. Maybe she’s still just Fiona. My Fiona. He sat down again to look at the email, his heart pounding in his throat as he opened it, sweat starting to appear in the creases of his arms and legs. By the time he opened the message, he was practically palpitating, but there was only one sentence in her response. “What do you want?”
# # #
Fiona chewed furiously on her fingernails, gnawing so hard that one of them broke right in between her teeth. Disgusted, she quickly picked it out of her mouth and threw it in the trashcan under her desk. She’d just opened up her computer five minutes earlier to check and see if there were any emails on her current cases. She certainly wasn’t prepared to see a message from Gage waiting for her like an innocent-looking bomb.
She didn’t even know why she opened it. As soon as she saw who the sender was, she should’ve placed it straight in the virtual recycling bin. But her finger just moved and clicked and the deed was done, just like that. The subject line was just an infuriatingly casual, “Hello.” Fiona groaned and placed her head in her hands before banging it down lightly against the wooden surface of her desk. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” she berated herself before looking back up at her screen. She quickly read the text of the message, huffing out a bitter, humorless laugh in the process. This fucker just got bored and has decided to poke at me for his own amusement, Fiona thought to herself, clicking the “Reply” button and typing out a response without even thinking about it. Only after she sent it did she actually consider the consequences of what she had done. She’d acknowledged his message, which basically meant she’d validated whatever stupid urge he had that made him bother her. She’d just invited him back into her life, and he didn’t even have to work at it. Goddammit!
Fiona could do nothing but wait now, tapping her feet impatiently while she felt herself grow physically hotter as her anxiety mounted. “Hurry the fuck up,” she murmured under her breath. She couldn’t exactly wait all day for him to respond, after all. She had cases to work on, families that needed her help. Sure, it was slow-going, most days—there wasn’t a whole lot of violence in the small town where she’d chosen to live after breaking up with Gage—but that was what Fiona needed right now. She’d chosen peace. She’d chosen quiet. That was the life that she needed, the life that she wanted. Why the hell had she done anything to disturb that? She could only blame old habits. Old Fiona had been addicted to fighting with Gage. It just came so naturally. But New Fiona? New Fiona had a responsibility to other things. To other people. She couldn’t let Gage get in the way.