Page 167 of Sorrow & Strangers

“Buying stuff for an apartment is very relationship-y,” Max says, and he looks like there’s a bad taste in his mouth.

“Max, you’re overthinking this,” I say, rolling my eyes.

Max stares at me, and then he blinks, looking at his wrist as if there were a watch there, which there isn’t. “Oh, I have to go. I have a date.”

“What?” I ask around my second bite of pizza, blinking owlishly at him.

Max clambers off the mattress with none of his usual grace, and I watch in confused disbelief as he scrambles around for some clothes, grabbing whatever he can find. “Yeah, I forgot. I have this thing. And you aren’t my girlfriend, so.”

I frown. “You invited me round for a quick fuck before you have a date?” His girlfriend comment also hurts a little, because I was just thinking how easy this is. How much I am enjoying being on the same page with him. How lucky I feel to have a friend like Max.

“Sorry, I forgot.” He has the grace to at least blush, but he continues to pull on a burnt-orange tank top and a pair of jeans. “Then I remembered.”

I look away, feeling really cheap and gross. It’s not the first time in my life I’ve felt that way, but this time hurts so much worse. I feel used as a friend.

“You can take the pizza. I’ll probably eat there.”

I stand up, crossing my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling very exposed. “You’ll probably eat on your date?” I ask, shocked by his audacity. “But I can take the pizza I paid for?” I blink. “Cool.”

Turning my back on him, I pull on my shorts and grab my purse. Still wearing his tank and leaving the pizza behind, I slam the door as I leave his room. I knew Max was a fuckboy, but I didn’t realize he didn’t respect me as a friend.

The second the early autumn air hits my cheeks, my annoyance with Max starts to morph into something else. Max and I are just fucking, and the issue isn’t that he’s got a date with another female. The issue is with how he treated me. Even if we were nothing more than just friends, he dismissed me so readily. He threw the idea of me being his girlfriend at me with such disgust, which is not what I’m upset about. It’s the way he thinks the things I do for him are even a fraction of what I did for Connor. And then there it is. It sinks in. The deep sorrow of losing Connor, of how easy it was, how perfect. How much I loved him. The effort we both put in for each other, though he always put in more.

There was no messiness with fuckboys. There was the stranger, but he was kept more at bay than he is now, and at the end of it all, there was Connor and me.

I stop on the path. The darkness is creeping into the lightness of the sky, and I try to identify the shadow that penetrates my grief. There is something there, something I don’t want to identify. As I focus on it, the fog clears to reveal the brutal truth, and there it is—that deep longing, that deep need. That is what I keep trying to shove down and deny. I need to finish this once and for all. I need to say goodbye not only to the stranger, but to everything he represents. It’s time to end this because I cannot succumb to that dark lure. To do so would mean losing all that Connor taught me. I need to cling to him and that light he breathed into life in me.

With that realization, I start to mourn the part of me I have always refused and only just started to explore. The darkness and the stranger have to go. For good.

Chapter Seventy-Two

The Stranger

The call from her reverberates through my body, summoning me from my home to the meadow. She’s summoning me? Something must be wrong.

“Princess?” I call softly, surprised to find her alone and unharmed in the clearing.

She glances at me, her arms wrapped around her middle, warding off an unseen blow. “Please. Please leave me alone.”

“Princess,” I repeat, closing the distance and grasping her arm gently.

She yanks away, her eyes cornered and alert. “If you listen to me just fucking once, please, can it be now? Go away.”

Yet her words belie the way I can feel her power radiating from her, calling to me, begging me to come closer. Does she not feel it? Is she not aware of what she’s done?

“If you listen to me once, know that you called me here,” I say gently, cupping her cheeks, trying to reach her.

She freezes, her bright eyes blinking up at me. So she wasn’t aware. She shakes her head, denying it, denying me, but I brush her hair back, nodding instead. She whimpers softly, closing her eyes.

“Please stop . . .” I move closer, looming over her. “Why are you here? Why are you always here?”

“You called me,” I repeat, knowing the question was mostly rhetorical. She’ll deny it, of course. She’ll deny any and everything that might hint at us having something more lasting between us.

She pulls away, her eyes misting, making them glow an icy blue in the dim forest. “Why can’t I get rid of you?” she demands. “I just fucked Max, and you’re still here. Why? Move on. I don’t want you.”

“Yet you called me,” I state again, brushing away a tear that slides down her cheek. Even after fucking her berserker, foolishly thinking that would be enough, that it would keep her from seeking me out, she couldn’t deny the connection between us. No more than I could deny it last year. No matter how much I hated the hold she had on me, hated her control over me.

“No I didn’t!” she stubbornly insists. “What the fuck do I have to do to get you away from me? Do I need to get engaged, married, have a kid?”