Page 35 of Dropping Like Flies

“I know.” I prized the rest of the alcohol miniatures out of his hand and held them up. “But this isn’t the answer. You think Whitney would want this? I know she wouldn’t. She’d want you to live your life.” I tossed them on the bed before he could make a grab for them. At least he’d stopped trying to get me to move out of the way, seeming to see how futile it would be. “If you’d been there,” I said gently, “it might not have been that night, but you’re fooling yourself if you don’t think she would have found a way, eventually.”

“You don’t get it,” Griffin said, his voice brittle. “It wasn’t about stopping her. It was about getting there in time.”

My hand slid from his shoulder to cup his neck. “In time?”

“To bring her back. To speak to her one last time.”

Realization hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I wondered how I’d never worked it out before. Griffin was a necromancer. He spent his days bringing back the recently deceased, so that loved ones could say their last goodbyes. Why wouldn’t he have wanted to use it on his own family?

“Oh, God,” I said, my fingers stroking his skin, the simple contact between us seeming so natural. “I’m so sorry. Why did you never tell me that? Everything would have made far more sense if you had.” Griffin hadn’t just been grieving his sister’s death, he’d been grieving the lost opportunity to speak to her one last time. She’d left a note, but it wasn’t the same. What would she have said if he had spoken to her? Would it have made him feel better? And if I was asking myself these questions three years later, then how many times must Griffin have tortured himself with the same questions? No wonder he drank.

I thought about Griffin’s sister. On her good days, she’d been a beacon of light. It was just that her dark days were far more frequent. “Whitney wouldn’t have wanted you to be miserable. She wouldn’t have wanted you to punish yourself.” Because I got it now. Griffin ending things with me hadn’t been about blame, as I’d always assumed. It had been about punishing himself, Griffin believing that he didn’t deserve to be happy. So he’d severed a bond that was the most important thing to him. Or at least he’d tried to sever it. In reality, we’d both discovered the hard way that there were no take backs with a fated mate’s bond. There was only carrying on and trying to ignore the gaping hole where someone else should have been. Maybe that had been part of the self-inflicted punishment. Because there was nothing that cut deeper than being able to feel what someone else did.

Something wet touched my hand, and I jerked my gaze to Griffin’s face to find him crying. I’d seen him sad, but I’d never seen him cry. Had he cried since Whitney’s death? I suspected not, Griffin doing everything in his power to avoid giving in to that emotion. Tears were cathartic, and he hadn’t allowed himself to go there, but it was long overdue.

I gathered him in, pulling his head onto my shoulder and rubbing soothing circles on his back as I held him as tight as it was possible to without breaking something. He cried harder, great racking sobs that almost tore me in two when I had to feel them as well as witness them.

Chapter Thirteen

Griffin

I couldn’t have said how long I cried. Only that it was long enough for Ben to steer us away from the door to the bed so we were lying down, his body enfolding mine while I let everything out against his chest. My guilt. My frustration. My anger. My grief. He’d whispered things while I cried—words of endearment, comfort, and encouragement. Given how badly I’d treated him both three years ago, and recently, I didn’t deserve any of them. That didn’t mean I didn’t soak them up like a starving man desperately in need of nourishment.

“I missed you,” I finally said when there were no tears left to cry and words became possible once more.

Ben’s hand paused from rubbing soothing circles on my back for a beat, before continuing the motion. “I missed you too. I thought it would get easier, but it didn’t.”

“How could it when we were still bound?” I raised my head from where I’d had it buried in Ben’s damp shirt, knowing I must look like shit, my face swollen and red. I used my sleeve to wipe my face, Ben’s gaze never leaving mine. “I looked into it, you know, a way of severing it properly so we weren’t stuck in limbo.”

“And?”

“It can’t be done, apparently. Or at least no one has ever done it before. I had a few people get in contact. When it came down to it, though, they were all wackos, and I wasn’t keen on drinking the blood of a newborn lamb who’d been born on the third Wednesday of a leap year under the light of the full moon.” I let out a shuddering breath, my body and mind still a tangle of emotion. “It was like you said, the only fix would have been if we never met.”

“I never said that!” Ben’s voice was hoarse. “I asked if you’d ever considered it.”

When I opened my mouth to respond, he placed a finger over my lips. “I wasn’t in a good place that night. What with there having been another murder, and bringing Rupert back, and then having to watch him die again. I said it mainly to annoy you. I didn’t need an answer then, and I certainly don’t need one now.”

“You don’t?” He shook his head and then rolled onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, the loss of his touch like a physical ache. “Who were you with the other night?” I asked.

He flicked a glance my way. “The olive night? Or a few nights later when you wouldn’t let me have an orgasm the first time?”

I winced. “Both.” I heaved myself up to one elbow so I could get closer to him, steeling myself for the answer.

“One-night stands. Two different men. The second only happened because the first one ended terribly. Thanks to you.”

“I would say I was sorry, but I wouldn’t mean it.”

Ben laughed, rolling his head to the side so he could make eye contact. “I meant what I said, you know.”

“About?”

“You have to stop punishing yourself.”

“Yeah.” My throat was tight, tears threatening once more. It seemed I had some left after all. “What does that mean, though?”

Ben smiled. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but cutting down on the drink. Letting people back into your life.”

“People?”

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