unREAL [Act II] - The Real Trilogy, #2

"She's everything he needs…"

Kyle Lock
I live to work and work to live. That's been my motto, my philosophy, how I've survived since the disappearance of Josephine two years ago.
The media had been relentless: Killer. Criminal. Innocent. Fool.
Not knowing what happened is slowly killing me. I've built an armor around my emotions. Not letting anyone in has kept me sane.
I won't rest until I find out what happened to my wife, and make whoever hurt her pay with their life.
​But to complicate matters is the last person I ever expected to distract me from the demons that haunt me: Sedona Mathison.
​
"He's nothing like what she thought."
​
Sedona Mathison
As much as I want to see Kyle Lock as nothing more than my boss, I can't help but notice the pain he still carries.
​I wish I didn't. I don't want to deal with someone else's emotions, their hurt, all that heavy past, but he understands, even if we never talk to each other. Not in ways that matter. Or so I've always told myself.
​Outwardly, we have nothing common. Except for one thing: Grief. Day by day, we're polite and we talk, but it's never personal, intimate, or meaningful. It's how we both like it. That's what I tell myself because it can't be more than that. Ever. It's what we both need and strive so hard to maintain.
I can't deny that being witness to his daily struggles every day gets to me in a way I don't ever want to revisit. Because I feel a similar kind of pain and grief that he does. The loss of something you know you'll never regain.
​But even as I try to ignore the mysterious disappearance of his wife, I can't help but wonder who this man is. And why I should bother. Or if I look too closely, I won't like what I see.