“Inside,” he repeated as he followed the order as if compelled, trudging along with his feet scraping the ground.
Wren’s heart was still racing as he watched him go, then he met the woman’s gaze.
“He’s not feeling well,” she said, voice shaking. “That’s all. Work has been hard lately and he’s going for a promotion.”
“Whatever this is, it needs to stop now,” Wren told her.
“Nothing is going on. Leave us the hell alone.”
Shaken, Wren let her go, Midas’s words replaying in his mind. He looked down and grabbed the syringe, looking at the tiny amount of liquid inside.
What was this?
Chapter 3
Teddy
Little Bird,
I can’t say for certain what it is, but it’s like you’re even more alive in my mind since I saw you again. It’s like I can feel your scent lingering on me. Like I can taste you all over again.
I can barely believe you were in front of me after all this time and I never even got to hold you. You were so careful to make sure we never touched. Like you were punishing me. Like you knew how much it would heal my soul and you wouldn’t allow it.
But I know you’d never be so cruel. You never had a cruel thought in that beautiful head of yours. So it might just be my own mind letting me know that maybe I deserve to be punished. Maybe I don’t deserve you after all.
I’d still be willing to do anything to be next to you again. I’d be willing to let the entire world stop to just have you in my arms for one second more.
I have so much I still want to tell you…
His fingers tightened around his pen.
The piece of stationery paper under his hand slid and rustled as the pen left a defeated streak across it. Not words. For the first time, he was all out of words.
He stared desperately at a box full of that same paper. And each piece was filled to bursting with his words. Words he wished he could speak out loud to the only one who’d ever heard what he was truly saying. Words that didn’t belong to anyone else but his little bird. Words that hurt and slashed open and healed all at once.
All gone now.
Stolen like their time together. Stolen like Wren’s breath on his collarbone and his fingers tucked into Teddy’s shirt.
He let the pen drop, leaning his head on his palms and squeezing his eyes shut to keep the memories at bay.
He knew them by heart now. The order in which they came. The intensity with which each of them flashed. The pain each one brought with it.
He deserved it. And he could take it. He would take it.
Just not right now.
He couldn’t right now.
His phone pinged and he resisted the urge to swipe it off his desk until it shattered. He glanced at it, anger and defeat swelling at the name on his screen. He knew he had to answer it. Knew there would be consequences if he didn’t but…
The door to his room creaked open behind his back.
“Family meeting,” Trace’s whiskey and smoke voice said.
He turned around, careless of his red-rimmed eyes and the hollowness of his expression.
Trace was the closest thing he had to a brother. He was the only one who truly knew what Teddy was going through, so he didn’t mind him seeing the state he was in.
