Page 43 of Laced in Longing

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, his voice dropping to that register that vibrates through my bones. “I have never fed from you.”

The confession catches me off guard, and my head whips in his direction. “Why not?”

“Because you are not sustenance…” He trails off, but the unspoken words hang between us. You are mine.

We reach the entrance to my building, and I pause with my hand on the door. “You’re not going to leave if I tell you to, are you?”

I sense rather than see his smile—what I would give to see him smile. See any part of his face, really.

His head shakes along with his shoulders. “No.”

My lips twitch. The honesty is almost refreshing; no pretense or manipulation to be seen. Just the simple truth: he’s not leaving, no matter what I say or do. The truth of it should not flutter in my stomach as it does.

I shove through the door without responding, my feet carrying me toward the stairs automatically. The climb to the sixth floor drags on longer than usual, each step heavier than the last. Ash follows, his movements making no sound on the worn wooden treads.

Inside my apartment, I drop my keys on the counter with a clatter. The space feels smaller with him in it; as if the walls shift toward his presence, while the ceiling begs to touch him. Or maybe it’s just the weight of his being. The density of whatever power radiates from him, demanding more room than this place has to offer.

I shed my coat, tossing it to the floor in a heap of fabric. What does it matter? Nothing matters. Not the state of my apartment, not the dishes piled in the sink, not the laundry I’ve been ignoring for days. Nothing matters because I don’t matter—have never mattered—to anyone or anything except, apparently, a god.

A hysterical bubble of laughter escapes my throat, which I don’t bother to suppress. I’m losing my mind. That’s the only explanation that makes sense. I’m having a psychotic break, and instead of hallucinating demons or monsters, my brain has conjured up a devoted god who’s been pining for me across lifetimes.

Because that’s more believable than someone actually wanting me.

“Maven.” Ash’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “Your mind is racing. I can feel it.”

“Stay out of my head,” I snap, pivoting to face him. “It’s bad enough you won’t leave my apartment. My thoughts are still mine.”

“I cannot read your thoughts,” he says, remaining by the door as if giving me space. “But I can sense the turmoil, and it radiates from you.”

My hands clench into fists at my sides, nails digging half-moons into my palms. I’m going to explode. “What do you expect? You show up in my life, tell me everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong, claim I belong to you, and then refuse to leave when I ask. How am I supposed to feel, Ash?”

“I understand your confusion⁠—”

“No, you don’t!” The words tear from my throat, raw in their delivery. “You don’t understand anything about me. Or about my life. Or about what it’s like to be so fucking empty all the time that you can barely remember why you bother to keep breathing.”

He takes a step toward me, and I back away before bumping into a wall. “That emptiness,” he begins, his voice gentle in a way that makes my heart ache, “is because your soul knows it doesn’t belong here. It’s calling for home.”

“This is my home,” I insist as my arms flail toward the sparse apartment. “This life is—it’s all I know.”

“It’s all you remember,” he corrects. “But your soul remembers more. It remembers where it belongs.” He keeps saying that, but what the fuck does it even mean? I want to scream until my lungs give out and I can finally be done with living.

“With you,” I say, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “In your palace in the Otherworld, where it’s always twilight and you have a garden you tend yourself and everything else I can’t think of right now—oh, where I’ll never want for anything because you’ll give me everything my heart desires.”

“Yes.”

Exhaustion seeps from my bones. I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest as though I’m hiding from a monster.

But the monster—if that’s what he is—doesn’t leave. He crosses the room and lowers himself to sit across from me, the same as he did all those nights ago.

“Why me?” I ask, the question barely a breath. He’s told me so many times, but I need to hear it again.

“Because you are my counterbalance,” he says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world. “The light to my shadow. The completion to my beginning. The answer to a question I’ve been asking since the moment I came into existence.”

“But I’m nothing.” The truth of it burns my throat. “I’ve never been anything to anyone. I’m just…empty space, really. The white static on a TV.”

“You are everything,” he counters, leaning forward. “You are the reason stars burn and worlds turn and gods like me continue to live despite millennia of being forgotten by the mortals we once walked among. You are the point of it all, Maven.”

I laugh at that, wincing as my head drops against the wall. “Right. That’s why my life has been one long exercise in misery and isolation. Because I’m so fucking important.”