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But when you were hated by literally everyone, human touch was hard to come by.

Hell, the first person to touch me in years was Black.

I could tell you each and every time he touched me over the years that I’d known him.

Five times to be specific.

One had been a brief pat on the back when my grandmother had died.

One had been a hand on top of my head as he helped guide me into the back of his cruiser.

One had been when he’d helped me up off the ground when I’d tripped and fallen on my way to the grocery store entrance.

The last two times were both times that he had spent the entire night with me, worshipping my body.

Though, we’d touched more than once. I was still counting it as one experience.

The only other touch that I’d received was when I went to the doctor and they had to do doctorly things.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself today.

My period had arrived, and like always, the stupid birth control that I was on made it almost impossible to deal with.

When I’d first gotten onto the pill—it’d been suggested to me by my gynecologist to help with the flow of my periods—I’d been hopeful that it would help regulate them and make them not so horrible.

But over time, I realized that they were actually getting worse.

Not to mention I always felt like I had a little bit of the flu.

Hence wanting to stop birth control.

The side effects weren’t worth it for me.

My sorry state was why I’d braved a trip into town to get a burger.

They seemed to be the only thing that I could stomach when I felt this way.

A greasy burger and lots of fried fries sounded lovely.

What wasn’t lovely was having to be humiliated by the staff.

What also wasn’t lovely was running into my brother who was supposed to be thirty minutes away in a town where he was stuck because he didn’t have a car.

What the hell was he doing here?

And what had he done to my car?

I knew he’d done something.

I could practically feel the anticipation in the air as he waited for me to find what he’d left for me.

“I didn’t leave you anything, dear sister.”

I turned around and started to walk away, but Leo called out to me.

“It’s just a cat.”

I stiffened.