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I’d done so well holding it together, and then I thought of her empty room back home. Her silence was a comfort I never realized I’d taken for granted.
She listened to me and heard every word I ever said. She protected me, never judged me. She’d always been there—a huge part of my life, and now she was just…gone.
I tried to swallow, but it felt as if there were fragments of glass in my throat. Every breath was a bit harder as something hitched in my chest. A storm gathered behind my eyelids. I placed my back against the wall and a hand over my mouth, I couldn’t hold it back. The tears fell.
I had never lost anyone before—not someone I was close to.
Maybe it was karma teaching me a lesson. I did a lot of terrible things in life, and I was far from done adding to my rap sheet. To many, I wasn’t a good person, and perhaps bad people weren’t allowed to grieve.
But I did. I was.
This hurt.
I didn’t try to stop my tears from falling, only muffle the sounds that seemed as if they would rip open my chest and fill the house.
After pain, there would be anger, and that’s what I was waiting for, she’s what I was waiting for, practically screaming eternally for her to wake up. I needed her.
This had to be ten times worse for Nyx. I wanted to go to her, but I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t want my shoulder to cry on, she’d only offer me hers’.
I let my tears subside, getting out every last hiccup before I turned the shower off and climbed out. Goose pimpled prickled my arms and legs from the shift in temperature. My hair dripped onto the tiled floor as I wrapped a fluffy towel around myself.
It was a little weird to be in a strangers’ home helping myself to their things, but it wasn’t as if they would be using them again.
Having left my gear bag in the bedroom, I pulled open the door and promptly froze.
Zane was in there—shirtless.
He was laid back on the bed with one forearm thrown across his face. I stared. Even with my mind in a million other places, I could appreciate how well he took care of his body.
“If you touch it, you’ll be able to memorize it better.”
I sighed and shook my head. “What…” I cleared my throat, cringing at the sound of my voice. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you,” he casually replied.
“Shirtless? With a bottle of Grey Goose?”
He sat up in one fluid movement, muscles flexing as he settled his back against the suede headboard.
He looked down at himself, over at the nightstand where the liquor was, and then to me with an almost boyish smile on his face. “Looks like it to me, yeah.”
“Zane,” I groaned. “I’m going to say something I never thought I would say to you. Please not right now.”
“I actually imagined you saying please for a lot of other reasons.” He patted the space on the bed he was making look ridiculously small. “Come sit down.”
“Like this?” I gestured up and down my towel-clad body.
“Just like that.”
“Um, no.”
“No?” he repeated back.
“N-o. No” I tightened my grip on the towel and slightly shuffled backward.
His eyes tracked the minscule movement.
A slow, deviant grin almost predatory in regard split his face in two. I knew not to trust it. It made my heart beat in a distrustful rhythm.
