But a lot of fucking shit had happened.
“Are you okay?” Luce asked tentatively from behind me.
“No.” I huffed a laugh, picking up a dusty trinket from the dresser. “I’m not fucking okay. Every demon I’ve been trying to outrun is going to soon come to a head.” I ran my thumb across the knotted wood carving of a wolf on my hand.
Seeing my grandmother was one thing, but seeing my parents—thinking about them sent a shudder through my body. Anger and sadness colliding along with a shit ton of other emotions I still wasn’t ready to confront.
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “I want to go to bed.”
“Okay.”
I looked toward the singular large bed in the center. It wouldn’t be the first time Luce and I had shared a bed, andI typically loved company. I loved being surrounded by others, it was in my nature for fucks sake. But right now, I ached to be alone with my suffering.
I slipped under the covers and rolled onto my side, staring at the portrait of my family hanging above the dresser.
All seven of us had squished together for the portrait. Our parents kept scolding us throughout as we squirmed and teased one another while we were meant to stay quiet. The twins couldn’t have been older than seven when we sat for it. Their matching chestnut curls were tamed for once, their light blue eyes shining with mischief. I wondered where they were now?—
No. Every so often, thoughts of my family made their way into my mind. I made sure to banish them quickly. I closed my eyes, but I still saw the portrait.
The image of the happy family we once had been.
I opened my eyes and stared at the portrait, my gaze lingering on my parents. Zienna looked so much like my mother now, with the same light brown hair and matching chocolate eyes. Only Zienna and Bodhi had inherited my mother’s eyes. The rest shared my father’s light blue shade.
The glass frame had been shattered from when I threw it across the room the day before I left.
Someone had been in here since I left. Glass no longer littered the floor, and the portrait was back where it belonged, as were the rest of my belongings. No longer left in disarray in my fit of anger.
“Do you want me to—” The bed dipped next to me as Luce kneeled on the mattress. “I don’t know how to comfort someone…” She trailed off. “Do you want me to—hold you?” Her voice lilted at her question. I could picture the look on her face, her face pinched, her dark brows lowered, and those luscious lips posed in a pout as she tried to puzzle out what to do.
Luce wasn’t the comforting type and I didn’t expect her to be.
“I won’t say no.” Still, I didn’t face her. What I wanted right now was a distraction. If I asked her in this moment, she might let me use her as such.
That kind of comforting, I knew she could handle.
But I was certain Luciana Ambrose didn’t think about fucking me as often as I thought about fucking her.
She saw me as a friend—an annoying friend at that. But I might have been one of her closest friends. Especially after the events of the past few months.
But she was my only friend I thought about fucking on a daily basis.
Shit—an hourly basis.
But this wasn’t the circumstance I wanted her in. Not when I was trying to distract myself from my demons.
If I ever got to fuck Luce, I wanted to be fully myself—I’d wring pleasure out of her so thoroughly she’d be begging me to do it again.
The bed dipped again as Luce lay down. Tentatively, she wrapped an arm around me, pressing her body against my back ever so lightly.
“Is this okay?”
I resisted laying my hand on hers, keeping my hands underneath my head instead.
“It’s perfect, Lucy.”
Screams tore me from my restless sleep.
I would have been grateful for the distraction if it hadn’t been for the sinking feeling in my gut as screams continued to ring out in the distance.
