{MICHAEL}
Two months later…
My fists clench until my knuckles turn bloodless white as I watch my wife struggle with the obscenely large vase bursting with flowers she's trying to transport. She drops it on the floor, and even though she's several feet away from me, I can almost hear her grunt. Almost.
This is the pathetic existence I'm relegated to now. Watching her from the shadows like some goddamn stalker, devouring glimpses of her from a distance without daring to bridge the chasm between us. All while my body aches with a primal need to cross that threshold, to feel her skin beneath my fingertips again. To claim what's mine.
When I got back from work that evening to talk to her, to make her see how what I did was the right thing for us, she was…gone. And her mother's necklace—the one she never takes off, the one with my tracker in it—was lying on our bed.
I nearly ran mad. No—I did run mad.
