Sophie (The Boss 8)

“I don’t know where I’m going. I just need…” He checked to make sure he had his wallet and phone, cursing under his breath. “I just need time, Sophie.”

When he walked toward the door, any cool I might have had was gone.

“Don’t go!” I caught his arm and held on like he was falling over a cliff.

And he kind of was. Because if he left…

He gently pried my fingers from his sleeve. “I have to go. I need to go breathe.”

“Please don’t. Please. Please!” I begged, my hands clasped together so tightly my knuckles ached. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. See Rudy! I’ll call Rudy!” My voice tore from my hysterical throat, every word lined with razor blades. Tears made my vision watery. This was it. It would be back to the alcohol and the pills and the rehab and the hospitalizations—the suicide attempt. The entire thing would start over, like a hellish carousel we could never get off. “Please, don’t. Please.”

“Sophie. Let him go.”

I turned at El-Mudad’s softly spoken words. He leaned against the archway into the house, the wreck of the ransacked living room behind him.

“But—” I began.

He didn’t need to hear it. He already knew what Neil had been through during his recovery and therapy. They’d regularly talked throughout Neil’s hospitalization when Neil hadn’t been able to bear contacting me.

El-Mudad knew Neil in a way I didn’t. I trusted El-Mudad in a way I didn’t trust myself.

I had to let Neil go.

Nodding, I stepped back.

“Neil,” El-Mudad said with a compassionate, closed-mouth smile. “Come home to us.”

Neil nodded and went out the door.

Chapter Five

“Maybe he just went for a drive,” El-Mudad suggested after the slowest hour in the history of time.

We sat on our balcony, looking out at the sea while Rashida took a post-trauma nap in our bed downstairs. I could barely make out a person walking their dog at the shore’s edge, blending in against the blue-gray of the twilight waves.

“Maybe we should get a dog,” I mused to keep my mind off the fact that my drug and alcohol addicted husband with severe PTSD, depression, and anxiety had just gone through an emotional crisis and was now out there somewhere unsupervised in a world designed to cater to his ills.

El-Mudad thankfully came along on my trivial conversation. “No dogs.”

I tilted my head. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “Because they’re dirty.”

“You like horses,” I argued.

“Do I keep a horse inside my home? Do I let it sleep on my bed and lick my face?” He pretended to gag. Or maybe it was a real gag. He didn’t seem to be joking about his opinion of dogs.

“You had a pet tiger as a teenager.” I turned my gaze back to the white caps on the sea.

“Nefertiti was totally different—” El-Mudad began to protest, but his phone chiming cut him off.

“Olivia’s French lesson is over,” I said without him having to check. “I didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”

He made a noise as he glanced at the screen. “You’re right. Time to put on our reassuring faces.”

I took his hand and squeezed it. “We can do this.”

We had to.

We left Rashida asleep and went to intercept Olivia. She waited for us in the den, and she was not pleased. “I want to go in my room! Mariposa said no!”

“Mariposa said no because your room is being cleaned,” El-Mudad explained. “You’ll be so surprised when you see it.”

Mariposa lingered in the doorway. She’d gotten a brief run-down of the situation when I’d warned her that the social worker would be contacting her, but we hadn’t had time to have a proper sit down about it.

El-Mudad apparently thought that could wait. “Would you mind bringing one of Olivia’s swimsuits? I think it would be nice to go for a swim.”

Olivia’s face brightened. Even though we had a pool in our house and got to use it pretty much whenever she wanted to, swimming never got old for her. “Can Amal come?”

El-Mudad’s gaze flicked to me, then back to Olivia. “I don’t think Amal would like to swim today. Rashida might. And Sophie, perhaps?”

The last thing I wanted to do was continue to plaster a smile on my face. But that’s what was going to happen. It might as well occur with a view of a hot half-naked guy. “I think that would be great. Olivia, you can come change in my dressing room.”

Her eyes lit up and filled with stars. “Can I see your jewelry?”

“You can see some of it. But we don’t want to waste too much time.” I also didn’t know if it had been sorted by the cleaners or lumped back into its drawers. “Why don’t you go with El-Mudad and find out if Rashida wants to join us. I’ll meet you in my room.”

“The all grownups room,” Olivia scolded me sternly. “All of you.”