Because I was acutely aware of her.
I stopped pacing in the middle of my living room. A sudden, almost deafening stillness descended in my head. The internal argument, the constant battle to suppress and deny, simply ceased.
And a single, stark realization hit me with the force of a snapped anchor line in a storm.
I couldn’t fight this anymore.
I didn’t want to fight this anymore.
The energy it was taking to resist, to maintain this constant, exhausting state of vigilance against my thoughts, my body, was more depleting than just giving in.
“Enough.”
The word was a murmur in the hushed room, but it sounded like surrender. To what, I wasn’t entirely sure. To her? To this… this consuming, relentless craving that had taken root in my body and refused to be dislodged? I didn’t care anymore. The control I’d maintained over my life, over my emotions, for thirteen long, hard years had finally, irrevocably, shattered.
I needed this to stop. I needed her.
The thought was terrifying. Liberating.
And utterly reckless.
A grim sort of acceptance settled over me, cold and hard as a submerged reef. Let it happen. I yanked open my front door, the familiar scrape of wood on wood a jarring sound in the sudden, intense focus of my new resolve. I didn’t grab a tool. Didn’t concoct an excuse. Didn’t even pause to consider the monumental risk of what I was about to do.
I just started walking.
My stride was heavy, purposeful, each step a deliberate act of will. It carried me across my neatly edged lawn, through the narrow gap in the hibiscus hedge that separated our properties, onto the overgrown, chaotic territory of Heron House.
Toward Iris.
The unforgiving late-afternoon sun beat down on my face, but I barely registered it. The crunch of shells and dry, untamed grass under my boots was a rhythmic counterpoint to the frantic hammering of my heart against my ribs.
Heron House loomed larger with every step. But it wasn’t the mansion I was focused on. Iris’s shadow crossed behind a third-floor window. One of the demolished bedrooms.
No more thinking. No more fighting it. I was going inside and straight upstairs. No knocking on the front door this time.
And whatever happened, happened.
I was beyond caring about the consequences. I needed the consuming, relentless fire in my mind and body to either be quenched or to burn me straight to the damn ground.
Chapter Fifteen
IRIS
The chunkof plaster hit the pile in the center of the third-floor bedroom after I tossed it, sending up a puff of golden dust in the late-afternoon light. It was a pointless task, tossing debris from one spot to another, but it kept my hands busy. My mind, however, was a different story.
The last few days had been an exercise in exquisite torment. A low-grade, pulsing tension followed me from room to room. A constant awareness of Austin, just a stone’s throw away in his fortress of solitude. His brief yet frequent visits had only made me want him more. Each brush of his skin against mine, every shared, increasingly loaded look wound the spring between us tighter and tighter.
The way his eyes would catch on my mouth when he thought I wasn’t looking, how his entire body would tighten when I got too close. The two of us were a storm building just offshore, the air growing staticky and electric before the first drop of rain.
A heavy thump from the doorway made me jump, my heart leaping into my throat.
I whipped around.
Austin stood framed in the empty doorframe, looking… undone. His hair was a mess, as if he’d been dragging his hands through it. His face was tight, his jaw locked, and his gray eyes burned with a raw, intense emotion I’d never seen before.
Not anger. Not annoyance.
Something else. Something elemental.
