possible good could come out of this?
Wandering around, he went through the living room, the library, and the dining room, making a loop of the first floor’s public rooms… until he felt like he couldn’t breathe, until the alchie buzz was beyond gone and his vision and his sense of smell and his hearing were unbearably acute. Why was he—
Tohr blinked as he found himself in front of a door.
He’d come full circle, back to the kitchen.
And he was standing at the way into the basement.
Ah, shit. Not this… he wasn’t ready for this.
The truth was, Lassiter and his dumb-ass movies had done more damage than good. All those couples up on the screen… even though they were contrived instruments of fiction, some of them had filtered into his brain, and triggered all kinds of things.
None of which had been about Wellsie.
Instead, he’d thought only about those days with No’One, the two of them straining with all those blankets between their bodies, she looking up at him as if she wanted so much more than he was giving her, he holding back out of respect for his dead… and maybe because he was a fucking coward at his core.
Probably equal bits of both.
Given what was banging around in his head, he’d had to come here. He needed memories of his beloved, images of his Wellsie that maybe he’d forgotten, a powerful blast from the past to compete with what felt like a betrayal in the present.
From a vast distance, he watched his hand reach out and grab the doorknob. Twisting to the right, he pulled the heavy, painted steel panel wide. As the motion-activated lights came on in the stairwell, he was hit with a whole lot of cream: the steps that went downward were carpeted in a mellow buff, and the walls were painted likewise, everything calming and serene.
This had been their sanctuary.
The first step was the equivalent of jumping off the lip of the Grand Canyon. And number two wasn’t any better.
He still felt that way when he got to the bottom and there was no more descent to be had.
The basement of the house followed the first-floor plan, although only two-thirds of the space was finished with a master suite, a gym, a laundry, and a minikitchen fleshed out, and the rest functioning as storage.
Tohr had no idea how long he stood there.
Eventually, though, he walked forward, toward the closed door up ahead.…
The fact that he opened the thing into a black hole seemed absolutely right—
Fuuuuck, it still smelled like her. Her perfume. Her scent.
Stepping inside, he closed himself in and braced himself as he hit the wall switch, bringing up the overheads gradually.
The bed was made.
Likely by her hands: Even though they had staff, she had been the kind of female who liked to do things herself. Cooking. Cleaning. Folding laundry.
Making their bed at the end of every day.
There wasn’t a lick of dust on any of the surfaces, not the dressers, his and hers… not the nightstands, his with the alarm clock, hers with the phone… not the desk with the computer that they had shared.
Goddamn, he couldn’t breathe.
To take a little break from his crucible, he went into the bathroom with the idea of catching up on the oxygen requirements of his body.
He should have known better. She was all over the tiled space, too; just as she was all over the house.
Opening one of the cabinets, he picked up a pump bottle of her hand lotion and read the label, back and front—something he had never done when she’d been alive. He did the same with one of her backup shampoo bottles, as well as a jar of bath salts that… yup, smelled just as he remembered, lemon verbena.
Back to the bedroom.
Over to the walk-in closet…
He wasn’t sure exactly when the shift occurred. Maybe it was as he went through her sweaters that were stacked in the cubbies. Maybe it was as he stared at her shoes in their neat, marching order on the tilted shelves. Maybe it was as he trolled through her blouses on their hangers, or no, her slacks… or maybe the skirts or the dresses…
But eventually, in the silence, in his aching loneliness, in his perennial grief… it dawned on him that this was all just stuff.
Her clothing, her makeup, her toiletries… the bed she had made, the kitchen she had cooked in, the house she had made their own.
It was only stuff.
And just as she was never going to fill out her mating gown again, she was never coming back here to claim any of this. It had all been hers and she had worn it, and used it, and needed every bit of it—but it wasn’t her.
Nothing he had done in his mourning process had brought her back. Not the agony of reminiscing, not the mindless drinking, not the worthless weak tears or the resistance to another female… not the avoidance of this place, or the hours sitting alone with an empty hole in his chest.
She was gone.
And that meant that all of this was just stuff in an empty house.
God… this was not at all what he had expected to feel. He had come here to pave over No’One. Instead? All he’d found was a collection of inanimate objects with no more power to transform where he was at than they could walk and talk on their own.
Although, considering where Wellsie was, the idea that he had been looking for a way to stop the connection with No’One was craziness. He should be rejoicing at the idea he was thinking of another female.
Instead, it still felt like a curse.
THIRTY-NINE
Back at the Brotherhood mansion, No’One sat upon the bed she shared with Tohrment, her robe lying on the duvet next to her, her shift covering her flesh.
Silent. So silent this room was without him.
Wherever was he?
When she had returned herein following her work down in the training center, she had expected to find him waiting upon her, warm and mayhap asleep upon the duvet. Instead, the covers were all arranged, the pillows ordered at the headboard, the extra comforter, the one he used to warm himself, still folded neatly at the foot of the mattress.
He had not been in the weight room, the pool, or the gym. Nor had he been in the kitchen when she had stopped briefly to gather a refreshment for herself. Or the billiards room or library.
And he had not appeared for First Meal, either.
The knob turned and she jumped—only to release a deep, easing exhale. Her blood in the warrior’s body announced his arrival even before his scent came upon her nose or his body filled the jambs.
He still didn’t have a shirt on. Or boots upon his feet.
And his stare was dark and desolate as the corridors of
“Where have you been,” she whispered.
He ducked both her eyes and the question by going into the bathroom. “I’m late. Wrath’s called a meeting.”
As the shower came on, she gathered her robe and drew it over her shoulders, knowing that he was
