I pull off on the side of the road and smack Mickey awake before gathering my bags.
“What was that for?” he cries.
“We’re here. It was just a love tap.”
“Love tap, my ass,” he growls as he gets out and summons some undead to carry Torin to the Door.
“Are you coming through?” I ask.
“I’ll deliver him, but then I have to head back,” Mickey says, trudging after us before reaching for me like he thinks I should carry him because his undead are busy carrying Torin—not very successfully, I might add, since one drops him and then they all go stumbling.
Mickey kind of just… falls against my back, and when I reach back to steady him afterthinkinghe tripped, he merely hops on as though it was an invite.
“Just don’t watch them carry him,” Mickey says, cupping my eyes like his hands are blinders before hesitating and doing it to Kit instead. I try to smack him off but he’s like a parasite that’s attached to me.
When we reach the Door, I head through first, and then Mickey and his chaotic crew follow.
“Oh daaaaaaamn. No wonder you want in this man’s pants. I’d be in his pants too for this place,” Mickey says as he eagerly looks around. “Tell him my pants are always open.”
“Just shut up and help me get him to his bedroom. It’s on the second floor.”
“It’s so shiny,” he enthuses, immediately distracted. I decide dealing with the undead is better for my well-being. So the group of us get Torin to his bed before we leave him to find Mickey who has gotten himself happily lost.
“I changed my mind, I want to stay here,” Mickey says, eyeing a rather cushiony chaise.
“I thought you had things to do, like decipher that book.”
“Yeah, but we could just live here instead,” he suggests as his undead pick him up and start carrying him toward the Door. “No! Stop! There’d be no obligations here! Please!”
I watch him go and then head back up to stare at Torin for a while. When that doesn’t seem to be fruitful, I head outside for some fresh air and freeze when I discover that half of his beautiful garden is dead. My stomach tightens as I fear what this means.
No… things are supposed to be getting better. His power is supposed to be returning to him…
I touch a leaf and it crumbles in my fingers. I back away from the dying garden and bump into the inanimate creature. I press my hand against the stone and find that the warmth it usually held is almost completely gone.
Anxiety washes through me as I turn around and race back into the palace where I can hide from the reality of what’s happening. I hurry back to Torin’s room and stare down at him while I question what to do.
“Dammit. Dammit. FUCK,” I shout, able to scream and yell about whatever the hell I want with no one here to listen. No one at all.
I slowly sink down to my knees as I realize how oppressing the loneliness is. Of course I have Kit and I love her, and I don’t know how I’d live without her, but…
Why was this place a paradise when I was here before, but now… How did Torin live like this, all alone for nearly two hundred years? And I’ve just been alone for mere hours.
My mind drifts back to the group homes I grew up in. The academy.
Alone for a couple of decades of my thirty-six years of life… still nothing compared to Torin.
I have Kit, Mickey, Imani, and Vinny. I’m not alone… yet why did I feel so alone before this man dropped right into my life and inflicted chaos upon it?
Have I really never faced the fact that I felt so much loneliness until I discovered what it felt like to wake up every morning and have someone to talk to, someone to notice whether you came home at night?
But Torin’s a god of love. He’s not mine. He’s made it quite clear how proud he is of loving anyone and everyone. And maybe I’d suffer through that to keep from being alone… no matter how much I hated it.
I kick my shoes off, grab Kit, and curl up against Torin with Kit tucked against my chest and my arms thrown over Torin’s body. My fingers press into his side while I question whether I made a mistake bringing him here.
“Torin, I can’t do this without you, so you better wake the fuck up,” I whisper. I squeeze Kit closer as I close my eyes and drift off to sleep with the feel of his broad chest beneath my hand.
Chapter Twenty-Two
