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“Risa, are you leaving already?”
She turned at the sound of Raven’s soft voice. Raven had piled her long dark hair atop her head. Her blue eyes were faintly alarmed, her expression anxious.
“I need to get back.” Risa shook her head. “I’m sorry, Raven. I’ve been taking up too much of your time like this.”
She had to stop talking. The pain rose inside her, searing her chest, her throat, as she fought to hold back the tears. It had to be the hormonal changes in her body, she thought. The doctor had warned her about the mood swings. With the absence of the small amount of Whore’s Dust that had once been present in her brain, and her current pregnancy, he’d told her that it would be as though she didn’t know which emotion she needed to feel. She would be learning herself all over again.
And maybe she was. She was definitely learning what it meant to hurt inside until she thought she was going to die from the pain. She was learning what it meant to miss someone, to watch for him everywhere she went. To cry for him each night.
She pressed her hand to her stomach and reminded herself that she wasn’t alone anymore. She had a part of that love inside her. It eased her, but nothing could erase the living ache that beat at her chest.
“I enjoy your company, Risa,” Raven said gently. “We’re friends; no apologies are needed.”
Risa shook her head and looked back to the window.
“I keep thinking he’ll be here,” she admitted, her voice hoarse. “That he’ll return with Reno. That all I need is to see him one more time, to know he’s safe, and I’ll be okay.”
“And you know better,” Raven finished for her. “You know if you see him you’re only going to hurt worse, and ache more.”
Risa nodded jerkily. “It’s not fair of me to put either of us in that position,” she told her friend. “He had to leave. Didn’t he?”
Of course he did. He wouldn’t have gone otherwise, she told herself. But the absence tormented her. If he loved her, how could he stay away from her? Risa spent more time at Raven’s, Morganna’s, and Emily’s than she spent at her own home now. Hoping to hear something. Hoping one of her friends would volunteer the smallest shred of information. And they never did.
“Did he?” Raven asked instead. “Only Micah knows that answer, Risa. Would he have left you if he could have stayed?”
Risa’s lips trembled. “He would have stayed.”
She had to believe in that. It was the only thing that got her through each night, the only thought she had to hold on to.
She almost laughed at the thought. “I’ve lost my mind,” she told Raven then. “I managed to survive six years of nightmares, and even then, the nights didn’t seem so long.”
She slept, but rather than having nightmares, she dreamed of Micah. His touch. His kiss. His arms wrapped around her. Only to awaken alone. Awake was her nightmare now, because she hadn’t yet learned how to survive without him.
“You haven’t lost your mind,” Raven sighed. “You lost your heart; there’s a difference.”
Risa shook her head. “No, Raven, I lost Micah.”
And that said it all. Shaking her head, she turned from her friend and moved once again for the door.
“Risa,” Raven stopped her again. “I wish you’d stay for a while.”
Risa shook her head. “I can’t stay,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t even be here for the reasons I’m here. I can’t do this to him, or to myself, Raven. Not anymore.”
She left the house, her head down, hoping her hair hid her tears, and moved quickly for her car. She had spent too much time in the past two weeks waiting for him, watching for him. She had worried, and she had paced the floors locked in a certainty that she was never going to see Micah again.
“Leaving so soon?”
She froze. Her head jerked up.
He was standing in front of her. His black eyes were as tormented as she felt; his face was lined with tiredness.
Her lips parted, her heart began to race in her chest.
Then he smiled. A crooked little grin that stilled the breath in her chest.
“You’re a hard woman to catch up with,” he told her as he straightened away from the side of her car and moved closer. “Reno called ahead. First you were at Emily’s. I got there five minutes after you left for Morganna’s. I went to Morganna’s, but you weren’t there.”
She shook her head. “We went shopping.”
