The rhythm of his breathing bounced through my bones. He grabbed my wrist, raising it into a throwing position. Carefully, he wove his fingers between mine to move the dart around. His skin was tan compared to mine. And I remembered when I used to see our hands together and think they’d be intertwined forever.
Stress sweat entered the conversation.
Guiding me through the motions, Laken leaned in. “Just like that.”
When his body slipped away, I knew he missed the way his skin felt on mine from the way his breath hitched before he slowly retreated. He didn’t make a sound and wouldn’t lift his eyes to meet mine. Cold air filled the space where he’d stood against me. If I were honest, my mind begged to return to a dark place it had stayed for years. A place of isolation and abandonment. A place of,Why did he leave? Why didn’t he say goodbye?But I knew better than to go there.
With a focused breath, I threw the dart. Perfect bullseye.
I turned over my shoulder with a triumphant smirk. “Like that?”
His mouth parted, eyes bugging as they bounced between me and the board.
“Perhaps I have changed. Perhaps I became good at darts.” I winked, throwing the other two. I scored a twelve.He didn’t need to know I’d gone to plenty of pubs with Maggie, and I trained for this. Turning around, I flipped him off.
“You fooled me, McCarthen. I’ll give you that.” Laken grinned. “When did you learn?”
“I’ve been practicing for the past three years.” I lifted myself to sit on the top of his table, dangling my feet over the edge. “For three years, I’ve pictured your face on that board with each bullseye.”
“So what I’m hearing is you couldn’t stop thinking about me?”
“Not in ways you want me to.”
“Do any of them consist of me being tied up?”
I couldn’t help but buckle with laughter. Kinky son of a bitch.
Laken took his stance and continued to throw. “It’s fine.” He aimed. “You know I like a challenge.” Of course I knew; otherwise he wouldn’t have been interested in me in the first place.
Being here with him, I saw it. How fine he was. For the past three years, I’d battled with myself, wishing I knew where he was and if he was okay while also wishing to forget him entirely, secretly hoping he was miserable.
This—well and happy—wasn’t how I’d expected to find him. I hated him for it. Truthfully speaking, I wished he was hating himself and drunk, barely hanging by a thread—like I was. I wanted to see him crawling to his mother’s house, hungover and crying.
Really rude of him to be well, actually.
Laken threw and hit the third ring, his score not far behind mine. “So,” he began, “are you going to tell me about the flower shop?”
He didn’t deserve to know. “How do you know about the flower shop?”
Yanking his darts out, he kept his back to me. “You really think I spent the entire last month with your father and didn’t ask about you every day?”
“Why?” Instinctively, the word jumped from my lips.
Laken faced me. “To make sure you were good, that you were okay.”
Ah.“To make yourself feel better.” I nodded, taking the darts from his hands. I didn’t watch for his reaction, but I heard his loud silence.
“You plan on keeping the sanctuary?” Laken asked, his voice deepening.
What?“What? Why wouldn’t I?”
Empty-handed, he shrugged. “I don’t know, I wasn’t sure if you really cared that much for it after all these years.”
Laken’s question pissed me off for two reasons: One, he knew I’d loved my home when my mother was here and that I wished it never changed. Two, “It ismineafter all,” I argued. It was all I had left. Of my mother, my father, my whole family, in fact. I had nothing of my childhood save for a couple feathered assholes and an old house.
“I didn’t know you still wanted it—”
I turned over my shoulder, cutting my eyes. “Well, you should have.” Blood boiling, I balanced the metal between myfingers and threw, hitting close to the center. Taking my second dart, I needed to hit the same score ring or better to keep up. I closed one eye, focused, and…
