December 18, 5:00 PM
I didn’t realizethe fire had gone out until I couldn’t feel my hands.
They were just… there. Numb, hanging over my knees, my fingers slack around an empty tumbler. My side throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a hot, dragging ache under the bandages. Every breath scraped over the stitches. It should have been a reminder that I was alive.
Instead, it just felt like proof that the universe had bad aim.
Chrissy was gone.
She was gone, and she’d taken the only thing that mattered with her: the possibility that, someday, she might look at me and not see a monster.
The room was starting to fade around the edges, shadows creeping in as the hearth cooled. Someone had banked the fire earlier — probably Henry, probably while I’d been too drunk ortoo drugged to notice — but I’d let it dwindle into ember dust without moving. Without caring.
What was the point of heat in a house she wasn’t in?
The glass slipped from my numb fingers and hit the rug with a muffled thud. I didn’t even flinch.
“Sir.”
Henry’s voice came from somewhere behind me, calm and steady and annoyingly alive.
I didn’t look at him.
“You gonna yell at me about the whiskey again?”
“Tempting,” he said. “But no.”
My mouth twisted.
“You finally running out of lectures?”
“What I’m running out of is patience,” Henry snapped.
That got my attention. I lifted my head and looked at him over my shoulder. He stood near the doorway, arms crossed, expression flat in that way I’d learned meant he was only keeping from losing his shit by sheer force of will.
“You should be in bed,” he said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Chair’s closer to the fire,” I mumbled.
“You let the fire go out quite a while ago, it seems.”
“Not my best decision,” I muttered. “But trust me, I’ve made worse ones.”
His jaw flexed.
“Yes. I’m well acquainted with all your bad decisions.”
I deserved that, so I didn’t bother to argue with him.
He strode past me, leaned down, and added two thick logs to the ashes, rearranging them with practiced movements. He ignored me as he worked to get the fire re-lit. In another life he could’ve been a damn fine butler instead of an ex-special forces head of security and the man who knew where every one of my bodies was buried… metaphorical and otherwise.
A mental image of him dressed up in a spiffy suit like Alfred materialized in my mind and I snorted out a soft laugh.
A spark caught. Flames licked up. Heat pushed outward, but I was still cold.
“You need to eat something,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
