The Billionaire's Voice

CHAPTER 8

The next afternoon found Tessa rolling her shoulders to release

some tension as she skated through her warm-up, trying not

to regret her words to Micah the day before. Oh, not that he'd

treated her poorly, but he had backed off, asking her a few po-

lite questions about the bleakest time in her life before getting

up and taking her hand as they made their way back to Randi's

house.

He'd left soon after they'd arrived.

Now, she could feel him watching her as she skated,

and he'd been unusually quiet since he'd picked her up this

morning.

What did I expect? Did I think he was going to understand

why I wanted to off myself? Hell, sometimes I don't even un-

derstand it now. But back then, her desperation had been all

too real.

After her mother had died, she'd been so alone, feeling so

damn worthless that she hadn't wanted to live anymore. She'd

shared with Micah how she'd put together a cocktail of med-

actions that she'd been pretty certain would kill her, mainly

from a stock she'd had left of her mother's pain and sleeping

pills. She'd been ready to go to sleep and never wake up, let

the dark pit she'd sunk into taking her awake.

The only thing that had stopped her at the last minute

was Liam. She couldn't leave him all alone. and she knew he'd

blame himself for the rest of his life if she ended her own. She

had been selfish, ready to ease her own pain at the expense of

her only living close relative.

At the last minute, she'd dumped all of the pills in the toilet

and flushed them down the pipes, unwilling to end her pain by

causing more for Liam.

Tessa had experienced episodes of depression since her

hearing loss, but she'd found herself in her darkest days after

her parents were both gone, leaving her alone in a hearing

world when she had none. Isolated and feeling separated from

the rest of the world she'd had to battle her way out of the

darkness and back into the light. She'd finally escaped after

Liam had come home and she'd reached out for counseling.

Tessa had never talked about her near-death experience to

anyone. How she'd gotten to the point of no return she couldn't

fathom now but she'd been there, ready to take her own life