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Andthatwas something our fathers never wanted us to be; the type of predator we didn’t take our cues from.
I pushed thoughts of Kev exactly where they belonged—out of the forefront of my mind.
I got in my bed and grabbed my favorite toy from my bedside drawer. Not because I was aroused or even wanted to be.
I was just chasing the same thing I’d been chasing in the shower.
Anything.
But nothing came.
Including me.
Usually, all it took was a quick couple moments with this thing pressed to my clit and I was perfectly content, ready to pass out asleep. This time, no matter what angle, no matter what speed, no matter what pressure, I couldn’t findthefeeling.
I hadn’tbeenable to find the feeling, and it was that – the not being able to – that was driving me fucking insane. I just wanted my body to feel like my body, my skin to feel like my skin, and it wasn’t happening.
So I put on some clothes and went to my workroom instead.
Maybe I could finish something in here since I couldn’t finish anywhere else.
Terrible joke, I reprimanded myself in my head.
But I had to find humor somewhere.
I shook my head and tried to focus on the crystal in front of me. A large piece I’d been working on—a carving of a rose, a bigger version of the one Tali had made me all those years ago. Once I finished it, I wanted to take it to her graveside to show her, but my progress on it was slow.
I wanted it to be perfect.
I could only work on it when I was in certain moods and I already knew today wasn’t one. Still, that was the piece I picked up, sitting at my bench with it clutched in my hands, making no move to do anything.
If Tali was still here, how would she react to all this?
What would be her way of offering comfort?
I smiled.
She’d probably have me atBottomsgetting drunk or something, but really... when I thought about it, if Tali was here, I probably wouldn’t even have been dealing with Kev. And if Tali was here, Brandon wouldreallybe my brother.
I shook my head, thinking about how deeply the two of them had been in love. Brandon had been so damn paranoid about my father finding out, only to discover when it was too late that he’d always known. He’d just been waiting on them to say something.
It’d hurt Brandon when she died—helplessness consumed him, along with the baseless belief that he couldhave done something.
I’d felt all that too.
It waswhyI’d been moving the way I did. Tali’s death hurt so bad that it didn’t make sense to addmorepeople I could potentially lose to my heart. Keeping a healthy distance was just so much safer.
Until it wasn’t.
“Knock knock.”
I looked up from the rose carving I wasn’t actually working on to see Onyx at my workroom door. A bit of a surprise, considering I hadn’t seen him since the night he left my house after changing the sheets for me.
“Hey,” I said, putting the rose down. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
His eyebrows went up. “Something has to have happened for me to come through?”
I shrugged. “You haven’t, so…”
