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Her request puzzles me. She has refused to return my calls and texts, and has made no effort to reach out to me since she ended our relationship, and now, suddenly, she wants to chat? I make my way through the back of the church with the rest of the mourners, into the cramped back room that has a handful of folding chairs and two long tables covered with sandwiches, individual bags of chips, and several bottles of soda and water. Through a side door, I find the hallway and lean against the wall between the bathrooms.
She finds me not long after, and without saying a word, grabs my hand and pulls me into a mop closet. Her lips brush against mine, and then they’re trailing down my neck as she begins unbuttoning my shirt. Confused, and regrettably, extremely hard, I grab her hands and gently push her back, putting space between us.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She tries stepping toward me, but I grab hold of her shoulders and keep her right where she is. “What do you think I’m doing?”
Is she truly attempting to seduce me right now? After a week of shutting me out completely? “Samantha, no.”
“No?” she draws back as if slapped. “All those texts you sent, asking if there’s anything you can do. Yet the moment I need you, you reject me?”
“This is how you want me to help you?”
“Yes,” she says, exasperated. “Make me forget that my mom just died.”
I loosen my grip on her, letting my hands drop to my sides. “No,” I repeat, annoyed that a quick fuck in a closet is all I’m good for in Samantha’s eyes, and disgusted with myself that I’m still hard, still desperate to taste her skin.
Her lip trembles as she wraps her arms around her middle. Seeing her pained expression knowing I put it there feels like a bullet ripping through my flesh.
“You don’t want me anymore? What, is it because of my speech?”
She thinks my feelings for her would fade after one bad speech? That’s absurd. She could spend the rest of her days muttering nonsensical things to large crowds and it wouldn’t dampen my need for her.
“This has nothing to do with that,” I tell her.
“So, what is it? I thought we were clear on what this was.”
“But then you gave me a glimpse at something more.” I don’t understand what’s so difficult about entering a relationship with me. Why isn’t she willing to give this a try? I’m not asking her to be my mate.
Although, since my eyes haven’t turned red, I wonder why I’m bothering to seek out her affections at all. Just because my draxilio thinks she’s my mate doesn’t mean she is. Unless my eyes turn red for her, she’s just another human female. I should be able to resist her.
She sighs, leaning back against the shelf with several dust-covered bottles of bleach. “What if this is all I have to give?”
I don’t want to say what I’m about to say. My draxilio can sense it, and he starts growling immediately. There’s no other way around it, though. If I fail to establish this boundary, I will continue to feel used by her, even if that isn’t her intention. Worse, I will begin to hate myself, and I refuse to go down that path. Sighing deeply, I take one last look at Samantha. “Then give it to someone else.”
CHAPTER 14
SAM
Time slows as I adjust to life without Mom. She was my purpose, and caring for her took up the majority of my waking hours. Now that she’s gone, I have no idea what to do with myself.
I want to sleep, but it continues to evade me. When the sun is shining, exhaustion hits like a freight train, but the moment my eyes close, I hear “Baby gate!” “Dehydration!” “Sepsis!” chanted at full volume inside my skull, and I end up staying awake until night comes when my energy tends to peak. It’s totally backward, and I can’t make any sense of it other than accepting this as part of the grief process, I guess, and I need to ride it out until my body shuts down.
My appetite only appears in the middle of the afternoon, which is when I tend to have takeout delivered. I don’t have the desire nor the energy to cook my own meals, so I’ll just do this until my money runs out, which should be soon if the alerts from my bank that keep popping up on my phone are any indication.
The couch has become my bed as it’s the shortest distance to the fridge and the half-bathroom by the front door. Showering would require me to climb the stairs that killed my mother, so I’ve stopped taking them altogether. It’s not like I have anyone to impress anyway. It’s just me in this old, empty house that suddenly feels way too big for just one person. Mom’s smile lit up every room. Her laughter echoed through the hall, and if she was making her homemadepasteles, you could smell them from the driveway.
This housewasMom. Now, it’s just a collection of wood and nails devoid of any joy or personality at all.
“Ugh, what the hell?” Marty mutters as he bursts through the front door and starts kicking my collection of empty pizza boxes aside. “Sam, what is all this?”
Jackie enters behind him, and her face scrunches up in disgust. “This house has been yours for three days and look at what you’ve done to it.”
I don’t have it in me to defend myself, or to fight, so I just shrug and pull the comforter from my bed up to my chin and burrow into the cushions of the couch.
Jackie drops her purse on the dining room table and makes her way to Mom’s chair. She plops down and turns toward me. “We’re supposed to go through Mom’s things today. Did you forget?”
I search my memories, but it doesn’t register. “I guess so?”
