Not loveable enough. Not enough to make him stay.
“I mean it,” Violet said, reading my doubt. “You and I started out on a weird path, but I’m so glad we got a friendship out of it, River. Let’s stay in touch, okay? When you get sad, call me. Any time. Day or night. And I’ll do the same when I’m missing Miller. It’s not the same kind of missing, obviously. But maybe we can help each other through the bad nights.”
“I’d like that,” I said gruffly. I engulfed her small body in my arms. I didn’t use a sling anymore, but I was careful not to scratch her with the fiberglass cast wrapped around my left wrist.
She hugged me tight and then kissed my cheek. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Have a safe flight, Violet.”
I closed the door and stepped back into a living room that was littered with food plates, glasses, and a few beer bottles. Party residue. Laughter and loud talk came from the kitchen. It sounded like my uncles were getting Dad good and drunk.
“Stellar idea,” I muttered and found a mostly full bottle of Heineken on our coffee table. I took it with me upstairs, draining half of it on the way.
Inside my room, I sat heavily on my bed, the beer bottle in my hand, shoulders slumped. The silence was too loud. Since the night we’d left the hospital, I’d been playing music and reading until three or four in the morning. I’d read until my eyes drooped and pass out when my head hit the pillow so I wouldn’t lie awake in the dark, thinking.
Remembering.
I loosened my tie and started to take off my jacket, and that’s when I smelled it. Him. Clove-laced smoke, cedarwood cologne, vodka.
Slowly, I turned my head. He was in all black, leaning against my dresser. His silver hair gleamed, and I’d never seen his eyes so green. Like the peridot gem but red-rimmed and glassy instead of hard.
Fucking beautiful bastard.
I hated how my heart crashed against my chest, beating for him. I hated how my blood heated and moved faster through my veins, burning through the numbness, awakening the feelings that had been sedated.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I seethed. “Now? You’re here now?”
Holden had no time to answer. A wave of turbulent emotion swelled and crashed in me, and I rushed him, grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and slammed him against the wall, our faces inches apart. My eyes burned as they bore into his.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Holden faced my murderous, feverish glare unblinking. “Saying goodbye.”
His words sank in, stabbing my heart and yet I felt him everywhere his body was pressed to mine.
I let him go and staggered back a step. “Get out.”
He straightened his rumpled coat and jerked his shirt into place.
“Did you hear me? Get the fuck out.” I turned my back on him.
Holden walked past me, and for a few horrible seconds, I thought he was doing what I ordered. But instead of leaving, he locked the door and then pressed his back to it.
“Goddamn it. What are you doing?”
“Giving you what you need.”
He moved slowly toward me, his eyes dark and dilated, a dash of color slashing his sharp cheekbones.
“I don’t need anything from you. You’re leaving—”
“Yes, tomorrow. I’m leaving because I have to.” The predatory glint in his eye slipped and I saw the pain beneath. His cold voice wavered. “Because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me now.”
“I’ll hurt you worse if I stay.” He moved closer, his gaze roaming my face, lingering on my mouth. “We have tonight.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, but my voice tapered to a ragged whisper. Because I knew what he meant. The promise of sex was all over him, as tangible as his scent and more potent.
Holden nodded, reading my thoughts. He was close enough I could feel his breath on my chin, warm and smelling sharply sweet—what I imagined absinthe would taste like. He pulled the tie off my neck and tossed it aside, and then his hands went to my belt. He whipped it out of its loops, and it’d hardly hit the floor before his nimble fingers had undone my button and zipper. I stood still, trembling with a thousand emotions; pure, unbridled want rising to the top the fastest. Desperate for escape. For release.
“You need this.” His hand slipped inside my pants, finding my cock hard and aching. He gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to give it to you.”
“Holden…”
“You need it,” he said again, his lips brushing mine. “You need to fuck.”
My blood caught fire. A growl erupted out of my chest, and I gripped him by the nape of his neck and crushed his mouth to mine. The growl melted into a helpless groan as I tasted him for the first time in what felt like years. My mouth devoured his and he opened to let me in. And then I knew what he’d planned. To let me have him like this all night. To take and take because he thought he had nothing else to give.
“No.” I wrenched my mouth from his. “Holden…”
“Yes,” he whispered, his eyes suddenly shining. Pleading. “We have tonight and then you have to let me go.”
Before I could speak, he was kissing me again, hot and hard, while he pushed the jacket off my shoulders. With every touch of his hands on my skin, with every sweep of his tongue, I gave myself up more and more. My grief and need became the same thing—a ravenous hunger. A need to fill the void he’d leave behind. Loving him and already missing him so badly.
We have tonight.
I yanked off his
