I pour another glass. Set it down. Look at it for a long time. Don't drink it.
When the sun comes up — slow and grey and indifferent through the windows — I'm still in my chair. The bourbon is gone. My phone, its screen cracked, sits across the room where I threw it. My back has graduated from protest to something that will require serious management tomorrow.
The house is still empty.
She is still gone.
And I am still in love with her, which means I have no idea what to do with any of this, which means that sunrise is just the next part of the disaster rather than any kind of end.
15
VALENTINA
It's beenfour months since Xavier kicked me out of the clubhouse, since he looked at me with devastation in his eyes and saidno longer mine, since my entire world collapsed in the space of thirty seconds while seventy people watched and judged and whisperedmurdererlike it was my new name.
Four months of living in this depressing apartment with its beige walls that were probably white once upon a time before years of other people's lives stained them into this sad, neutral nothing. The furniture came with the place—a couch with springs that dig into your back if you sit wrong, a coffee table with water rings permanently etched into the cheap wood like fossilized evidence of a hundred forgotten drinks, a TV that's older than my bike and has picture quality so terrible everything looks like it's happening underwater. The bedroom is worse: a full-size mattress on a metal frame that squeaks if you breathe too hard, one lamp with a shade that sits crooked no matter how many times I adjust it, and exactly three hangers in the closet because apparently that's all a person needs when they've lost everything that mattered.
But tonight I'm not thinking about the depressing apartment or all the days of slowly learning how to exist without Xavier or the particular kind of loneliness that comes from loving someone who hates you.
Tonight I'm sitting cross-legged on the questionable carpet with a deck of cards spread between me and Zay, both of us stripped down to almost nothing because strip poker got boring after the first month and we needed to find new ways to pass the time between his club responsibilities and my attempts to rebuild something resembling a life.
"Go fish," I say, grinning as Zay's face does that thing it does when he realizes he's about to lose another article of clothing.
"You're cheating," he accuses, but there's no heat in it, just the warm amusement that's become the soundtrack to our stolen hours together. "There's no way you have four jacks."
"I absolutely have four jacks." I lay them out on the carpet with deliberate precision, watching his eyes track the movement of my hands like he's cataloging every detail. "Which means you lose, which means—" I gesture at his boxer briefs, the last piece of clothing he's wearing. "Off they go."
"You're enjoying this too much," he observes, but he's already hooking his thumbs in the waistband, already stripping them off with the unselfconscious grace of someone who's comfortable in his own skin, who knows exactly what the sight of him does to me.
And God, it does things to me.
All this time and I still haven't gotten used to how beautiful he is—all lean muscle and warm skin and the kind of intensity that makes you feel like you're the only person in the world worthlooking at. He still shows up at my door with that particular smile that says he's thinking about all the ways he's going to make me forget about the loneliness, about Xavier, about everything except the present moment and the heat between us.
"Your turn," he says, settling back against the couch with absolutely no shame about his nakedness, with his cock already half-hard just from the way I'm looking at him. "Ask me for a card."
But I don't ask him for a card. I'm done with the game, done with the pretense that we're here to play Go Fish when we both know what this is really about—the need to feel something other than the constant ache of loss, the need to be touched like I matter, the need to forget for a few hours that Xavier exists somewhere across town probably not thinking about me at all.
I crawl across the carpet toward him with deliberate intent, watching his eyes darken as he tracks my movement, watching the way his breath catches when I settle myself in his lap with my thighs bracketing his hips.
"I'm done playing cards," I murmur, my hands sliding up his chest to rest against his shoulders.
"Yeah?" His hands find my waist, fingers digging in just hard enough to make me gasp. "What do you want to play instead?"
I answer by kissing him—deep and hungry and desperate in a way I probably shouldn't let him see but can't quite hide. Zay has been here for all of it, showing up when I needed someone, holding me when I broke down crying at two in the morning, making me laugh when I forgot I still knew how. He's never once made me feel like I was a burden or a complication or someonehe was settling for because he couldn't have what he really wanted.
He kisses me back with equal hunger, one hand tangling in my hair to angle my head exactly how he wants it while the other slides down to grip my ass, pulling me harder against him so I can feel exactly how much he wants this, wants me.
"Bed," I gasp against his mouth, already grinding against him in a way that makes coherent thought difficult.
"Too far," he growls, and then he's flipping us somehow—a tangle of limbs and momentum that ends with my back against the questionable carpet and Zay braced above me with heat in his eyes that makes my stomach clench with anticipation.
His mouth is on my neck, teeth scraping against sensitive skin in a way that makes me arch into him with a sound that's half-gasp, half-moan. His hands are everywhere—sliding under my tank top to palm my breasts, pinching my nipples just hard enough to ride the line between pleasure and pain, making me writhe beneath him with need that's building so fast I can barely breathe through it.
"Zay," I manage, my own hands sliding down his back to grip his ass, trying to pull him closer even though there's no more closer to get. "Please?—"
"Please what?" He pulls back just enough to look at me, his pupils blown so wide there's barely any brown left. "Tell me what you want, Val. Use your words."
"I want you inside me," I say, past the point of pride, past the point of playing coy. "I want you to fuck me hard enough that I forget everything except your name."
