His fingers pushed into my damp hair as he pulled me closer, his hands never straying too far down my body as if there were still barriers between us. I wanted to tear them down, force him to admit to this rampant fire between us and bow to it. But he pulled away as my hands roamed over his muscles and he reached up to touch his swollen lips.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” His throat bobbed and he stepped back, the distance parting us suddenly feeling like a wall as his eyes grew distant.
“Wait,” I rasped, but it was too late. He stepped out of the shower, grabbing a towel and bundling up his things as he strode from the room without a backwards glance.
I sank down to the base of the shower, the heated water cascading over me. And I wished it could take the pain of my loss with it. Because in my heart, I was sure Monroe would never cross that line again.
Killing zombies on the Xbox was a lot less fun these days. Now that I’d wielded a real life bat against real life assholes determined to infect me, the make-believe shit just fell flat. So while Blake and Saint destroyed the undead, I sat by the fire and sketched.
I had my thumb wedged into a page where I’d mapped out a design for a new tattoo which I was considering inking on my thigh so that I could flip it over if anyone got close enough to look over my shoulder. It was a broken compass with the initials of the Night Keepers in place of the directions, but there was something off about it, something that didn’t fit right and was making me hesitate to place it on my flesh.
That wasn’t what I was drawing now anyway. No. Once again I was sketching the girl who’d looked into my soul and spoken my greatest fears about myself like they were facts.
I never usually bothered drawing anything other than tattoo designs, but since she’d arrived, I’d found images burned into my skull with such intensity that I had to get them out. And the only way I had to do that was in the form of charcoal on paper.
I didn’t often draw around other people. Not that I had any real reason not to, but I preferred to get out of my own head when I was working on a piece and not have the distractions of people talking or moving around to fuck with my concentration.
At the moment, I was torturing myself by drawing Tatum as she’d pressed her hands flat to the dining table and leaned towards me, telling me straight to my face that the only thing I was good for was fooling around with and that no girl would ever love me. Which I had already been aware of, but there’s nothing like someone reaching into your chest and ripping your pathetic excuse for a heart out in front of your only friends in the world to make something stick in your fucking head on repeat.
So as I sketched the deadly look in her eyes and the way her upper lip had pulled back in a sneer of disgust as she looked at me, I couldn’t help but feel my blood heating with my own anger. Because fuck her. Fuck her and her holier than thou bullshit and her fucking honesty and her fucking big blue eyes which glanced my way once and saw me way too clearly.
I’d drawn this fucking thing more times than I could count, trying to banish it, but it wouldn’t go. So fuck her for getting into my head too.
It was tempting to add a speech bubble with the words you’re useless and no one will ever love you in it, but I was pretty sure that superior expression in her eyes and the thinly veiled disgust on her face said it all.
I traced some shadow into her long hair, my jaw grinding as I looked into the eyes which haunted me and I pressed down too hard, snapping the charcoal and ruining the sketch in the process.
I snarled at it, ripping the whole page out of the book, screwing it up in my fist and throwing it at the fire with a curse.
Even though I was sitting right next to the fucking thing, I managed to hit the mantelpiece and the crumpled page bounced back across the floor instead, knocking into Blake’s foot.
He stooped to grab it and I snarled a warning at him which he ignored as he unfolded the paper.
Saint leaned in to get a look too as Blake whistled out a breath.
“You got it bad, huh?” Blake teased.
“Her nose is wrong,” Saint added.
“Thanks for the input I didn’t ask for,” I muttered. “And no, I don’t got it bad. I’m just bored as fuck and you two assholes don’t have tits so you’re not as interesting to draw.”
They clearly didn’t buy that shit for a single second, but they didn’t have time to call me out on it either as the door opened and Tatum walked in. Saint checked the clock like a douchebag and I tucked my sketchbook between my thigh and the side of the couch, wiping the worst of the charcoal from my fingers on my black sweatpants.
“Hey,” Tatum called unenthusiastically from the doorway and none of us replied as we looked between each other in a Mexican standoff while she removed her coat and shoes.
Blake smirked at me as he held my sketch hostage and the way Saint’s eyes slid to Tatum told me exactly what they were going to do.
“Show her then,” I growled, shoving myself to my feet. “Why should I give a shit anyway? I’ll die alone
