Page 108 of Restore Me

“My dad was a bastard, Sloane. He’s still one, except now he’s old, dying and getting all the toxic shit he put out into the world back tenfold. You know how he treated me, how he treated my mom?” I nod. “That is the kind of person who deserves to never be happy, to never know peace or joy or love. Everything he did—every hateful word he said, every punch he threw—it all came from a dark place he chose to go to. Did you choose to hurt Eric?”

His eyes widen a bit to drive home the point he’s trying to make. I shake my head, finally understanding. “No. I wasn’t trying to hurt him, but none of that matters because I did. I hurt him and he died, Dom. I can’t ever forget that, I —”

Dom grabs my hands, stopping me from digging my nails into his chest. Stunned, I blink down at where his long fingers wrap around mine. I didn’t even realize I was doing it, and I can’t tell if I was fighting to get away from him or latching onto him like a lifeline.

“You’re hurting right now, angel, and that’s okay.” He murmurs, waiting until my fingers have relaxed to let me go. “You lost a lot in a short amount of time, and I don’t know anyone who would be completely whole after that. But this idea you have in your head about not deserving to be happy is ridiculous. If anything, life owes you some good, joyful moments to give you a break from the grief you’ve been carrying around all by yourself.”

Every word that comes from his mouth—coated in understanding and compassion—feels like a physical blow to my body. I can feel my muscles tensing with every breath he takes, knowing that it will come with another kind word I don’t want to hear.

“No.”

“Yes,” Dom growls, his eyes burning into mine. “Being happy doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten what you’ve lost. Grief doesn’t work that way, Sloane. Human emotion is more complex than feeling one thing at a time, and happiness doesn’t erase grief, it enhances it. It makes the knowledge of what you’ve lost more acute, but it also makes it possible for you to open yourself up again, to make room for what you’ve lost to come back to you in a different way.”

I open my mouth to respond to him, but the only sound that comes out is a strangled sob that cracks my chest wide open. In some distant part of my brain, I wonder if I should be embarrassed about this. About being reduced to a blubbering mess of tears and sobs with my face buried in the crook of my husband’s best friend’s neck while he holds me like he’s never, ever going to let me go.

Yes, you absolutely should.

I’m almost tempted to believe the small voice screaming in my head, but then Dom kisses my temple and it’s swallowed whole by a wave of tender emotion that rushes through me and stops my tears in their tracks before they begin anew.

Only this time they’re tinged with happiness, soaked in the familiar, yet foreign, feeling of love swelling in my chest, clogging my throat with a painful knot of realization.

Love.

I love him.

I’m in love with Dominic Alexander.

Except I can’t be. Not just because I still feel like I don’t deserve this, but because there’s nothing I can do about it. This relationship we’re in has an expiration date on it. One that I put there to keep this exact thing from happening, to keep myself from falling in love and dreaming of doing something stupid like blowing up my life and destroying my relationships with Mama and Mal.

This is my husband’s best friend we’re talking about, and he’s the last man on Earth I should ever want, let alone love.

But here I am.

Wrapped around the only man who’s felt like home to me since Eric died, heart thundering in my chest and bones sagging with exhaustion. Dom rubs my back, crooning softly in my ear and telling me to breathe. To settle. To relax because he’s here with me and he’s not going anywhere.

Against my better judgment, I follow his gentle commands, letting myself relax into his hold until my eyelids grow heavy and fall closed.

.

33

Sloane

Now

When I wake up, my mind is fuzzy and still clinging to the slivers of a dream about meeting a guy whose face I never see at my first college party, dancing with him all night long, and connecting on a level that shouldn’t have been possible for strangers. I haven’t had it in months, but I’ve always thought of it as my subconscious attempt to rewrite the parts of the night that were ravaged by alcohol. Still, I can’t imagine why my brain would choose today of all days to call that particular fantasy up. I stare at the wall and try to figure it out, then decide not to dwell on it because a tired, grief-riddled mind can’t be trusted to adhere to logic.

Groaning, I turn onto my back and realize I’m in bed alone. There are beams of orangish-red light streaming through the windows, letting me know it’s early in the evening. I sit up slowly, bracing myself for the throbbing pressure behind my eyes that indicates the start of the headache I always get after spending hours crying.

Surprisingly, the pain doesn’t come, and I’m able to go to the bathroom and make myself presentable without any issue.

When I’m satisfied with my appearance, and completely over the puffiness around my eyes I can’t do anything about, I head back downstairs to find Dom. Everything in the house is still, golden rays of sunlight stream in through all the windows, and there’s no sign of him anywhere. I’m almost convinced he left, but then I see that the light in my home office is on.

As I pad down the hallway, his gravelly baritone filters out through the slight opening in the door and calls to me on a cellular level. I stop short, waiting for my heart to slow to a more manageable rhythm—something that doesn’t feel like I’m about to go into cardiac arrest—before tapping on the door and pushing it open.

Twin pools of midnight greet me, looking both surprised and delighted to see me standing in the doorway. I hold his gaze and hope like hell I’m not as easily read as he is right now because my heart hasn’t slowed down one bit. In fact, it’s galloping at warp speed, trying to beat its way out of my chest and take its rightful place in the palm of his hand.

God, I forgot how devastating it can be to stare into the eyes of the man you love.

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