Free Second Chance Hero by Liz Lee Page A

fast, taking over, like she’d run a marathon instead of the few steps across his apartment.
    He wouldn’t understand but please God, she needed a few minutes. That’s all. Just a few minutes.
    She pulled a blanket off the bed and around her shoulders. She was so cold. She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the door and waited for the emotions to bombard her.  
    Right now she felt nothing and that nothing scared her. God it scared her so bad.
    She tried to control her breathing. In two. Out two. In two. Out two.
    On the other side of door David spoke. “Okay.” He paused and she wondered if he meant it. “Just, I’m here if…you know, if you need me.”
    She heard the worry in his voice and almost laughed at the strangeness of it. If she needed him.  
    Because she did. She wrapped the blanket tighter and let her forehead rest on her knees. She did need him. That was natural, wasn’t it? Devastating news should be the thing that drove her into his arms. She should want to be held, to hold, but she didn’t.
    She just wanted to be alone. To catch her breath. To feel. To think.
    Alone.
    Like always.
    Like that poor, poor girl. Solidad.
    She closed her eyes and finally the tears came.
    She’d been sitting on that couch playing pretend. She’d let herself forget how Rafe shook as he told of Degas taking Miguel away. And now Solidad was dead.
    She’d been thinking about kissing David like they were real. Like this was real. Like it mattered.
    She knew what she had to do.
    She stood, let the blanket fall to the floor and pulled the suitcase out of the closet. It wouldn’t take long. Just a few minutes really.
    She started tossing her things into the case. Her shoes, her bras, her soap, David hated Ivory anyway.
    She was a distraction. She told herself that as she found her socks and tossed them alongside her nightgown. This wasn’t about what she wanted. It was about please, God, finding Miguel alive. About stopping that horrible man Rafe called monster.
    But how? She was a teacher for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t do anything. And reading the bad guys to death wasn’t an option. So what?
    What? What could she, Lil Palmer, do?
    She collapsed on the bed and pulled David’s pillow to her face and inhaled at the same time she sobbed into it knowing it was all impossible. The family she’d always wanted, David, finding Miguel.
    A few minutes later, she brushed her tears away and pushed his now damp pillow across the bed before sitting down in David’s ugly orange overstuffed chair. She grabbed the portfolio of Miguel and Solidad’s papers from the floor next to the bed. Something in here would tell her what she needed to know. Something had to.

    She was crying. He could hear her sobs as papers shuffled.  
    It drove him crazy the way she did this, the way she just closed everything off. Body and soul. Everything shut down and she pulled so far away he wondered if she’d ever come back.
    Afterwards she’d do something totally pointless like clean the fridge or the windows, over and over and over, until they sparkled like diamonds.
    And then she’d snap back. Same ol’ sweet Lil.
    But she wouldn’t talk and she wouldn’t unload. She’d just smile like everything was perfectly fine.
    Only this time it wasn’t about him being out with the guys or her mother calling and telling her she was wasting her life in San Mario when she could be in Cannes or London or the City, which could be Dallas or LA but it didn’t really matter because Lil hated both equally.
    This time it was a dead student. And that student’s dead father. And missing brother.
    And Lil wasn’t closed off, or cleaning or pretending everything was okay.
    She was crying and it broke his heart.
    He walked to the door and knocked. “Come on, Lil. Let me in.”
    “Go away.” Only it was muffled and she sounded miserable.
    Lil was very big into the whole I mean what I say and don’t try to interpret thing, but this was different.  
    That