Julian's POV
I was drifting in the space between sleep and wakefulness when my phone buzzed. It had been ringing and I had tried to ignore it but the person wasn't giving up.
My eyes felt like they had been glued shut. Every muscle in my body ached with exhaustion. I reached out blindly, my hand fumbling across the nightstand until my fingers closed around the cold glass of my phone.
I didn't check the caller ID. I didn't care. I just wanted the noise to stop, so I picked with the pace of a thief trying to flee from the police.
"Who's this?" I rasped, my voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel.
"Oh, so you're alive," a sharp, high-pitched voice crackled through the speaker. It was Lucy. And she wasn't just upset; she sounded like she was raging in fury. "I was beginning to think you'd died or maybe got paralysed. Well, it seems like it's even worse than I imagined. You've decided that I am not worth the effort anymore."
