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Again and again, only to replace his touch with his tongue as though he can’t get enough.
“Goldie?” he murmurs.
I get lost in the feel of him, forgetting he’d even spoken in the first place. God, he feels so good.
I just need to keep feeling good.
Need to feel something, anything, besides the aching chasm splitting my chest in two.
He kisses me again and his warm breath ghosts over my ear.
I shiver, digging my nails into his bare hips.
“Goldie?”
I blink, this vision leaving behind that same chasm as once before. My hand is still hovering over my clip, but I can’t bring myself to pick it up. To disturb it from its resting place, knowing he was the last person to touch it. Knowing he was the one who put it there.
Knowing what he did next.
It’s been four years since that night. Four years exactly, to this date, and yet I still can’t move on. Why can’t I just let it go already? Let Roman go.
He let me go. Easily, too. He walked away with nothing but a quick, callous text telling me I wasn’t worth ruining his future over. The night after my mother’s funeral, he packed his shit up and went away to college two weeks early and he never came back.
Four years ago, yet it feels like yesterday. He started a new life and left me behind, broken beyond repair.
So broken that I’ve started to question whether or not I’ll ever be whole again.
“Eve?”
I jerk my hand away from the clip as though it’s burned me. With a gasp, my head swivels toward the door. Isaac stands there, concern on his usually clean-shaven face. Right now, though, he looks exhausted. His cheeks are covered in a few days’ worth of scruff. His hair is disheveled, and his hands are shoved into the front pockets of his wrinkled slacks as he shifts uncomfortably.
He’s so undone, it nearly has me choking on my ragged breaths. Isaac is never undone. Never anything less than perfect.
“What are you doing in here, sweetheart?” he asks gently, his voice scratchy as though he’s been screaming.
He won’t come into the room. He just stares at me, but I feel the tension rippling off him. He wants to look around, and God willing, I want him to.
No.
I need him to.
I need him to acknowledge the son that left him, the man that left us both. Need him to understand how deep this ache is. How deep the devastation runs. To tell me he feels the same, so maybe I won’t look so crazy.
But Isaac does none of those things.
He won’t take his eyes off me. Like if he ignores our surroundings, we aren’t in Roman’s room. Like he never existed at all.
I wish I could pretend so easily.
“I—I don’t know,” I admit. My voice is raspy as I speak. I don’t sound right. I sound like a broken, empty version of myself. It’s how I feel. How I’ve felt for the last four years. I clutch the wine bottle closer to my chest, surprised he hasn’t chastised me for drinking yet.
“Well, come on.” He holds his hand out, and I notice it trembling.
Suddenly, his disheveled appearance becomes clear in a way it hadn’t before. His raw voice. The exhaustion marring his face. The tremor wracking his every muscle. The clothes covering his toned body, the same ones he was wearing yesterday when he passed through the house in a blur.
How could I be so selfish? This day has to be as hard for him as it is me, if not worse. He was the one who found her lifeless body lying at the bottom of the stairs. He was the one who cleaned the blood off the floor, casually spilling across the landing as though it had any right to. As though it wasn’t once the life force that kept my mother alive, breathing, existing—
Another sob leaves me, and his face crumbles. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” He hesitates before taking a step forward. He’s barely in the room, but I can feel the discomfort eating at him.
