Page 25 of Honey Pot

“Do you ever…” I stopped trying to find the right words—ones that wouldn’t have him running to Ella or Arlo to tell them I was slipping or losing my mind. “Do you ever feel like you aren’t fully awake?”

He set the bags on the island and started removing the boxes from inside, his boyish face confused. Van was pretty, simple as that. He had shaggy brown hair that he kept tight on the sides and long in the back, massive honey-brown eyes, and a soft, inviting smile that made it impossible to hate him.

He licked his bottom lip as those too-kind-for-his-own-good eyes flickered up to me. His half-baked inner therapist was slipping out as he watched me with caution.

“Today has felt like one long nightmare or maybe a dream?” I slide a jar of sauce across the island, trying to organize my thoughts. “No matter what I do, I can’t jolt myself from it. It’s like I’m trapped inside without the option to wake up.”

“Maybe you just need a push?” He mumbled, dark strands of his hair falling against his forehead as he rounded the island toward me.

I laughed and shoved him off as he attempted to jostle me around.

“Seriously,” I said. “What do you do when things get too much?”

I couldn’t ask Dean these questions because he was what Ididwhen things got too much, but after our interaction today, I felt that I was the last person he wanted to see or sympathize with. On occasion, more often than not… I felt bad for using him the way I did. Guilty feelings and shame crept in like they belonged there, but there was also so much love for Dean. It was messy, complicated, and ours.

“Talk to Zoey,” he sighed.

“I don’t have a Zoey.” I rolled my eyes and ground my teeth together. “No one has a Zoey,” I added with a smile when Van scowled at me.

The truth, for once, was that no one was like her, and Van was the luckiest bastard in the Nest next to Arlo. I rolled my tongue against my teeth and slid onto the counter, letting my feet swing lazily over the side.

“I’ve never seen you sodoom and gloom.” Van shook his head and wiggled his long fingers in the air to look menacing. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

A pitiful, defeated laugh fell from my lips.

“Aside from the usual?” He added between turning the oven on.

“The reporter.” I stared at the bracelet on my wrist. “I know her.”

Van stopped what he was doing to look at me. “That’s right, Texas. So?”

“Iknowher,” I repeated, and leaned back against the island to stare at the lights hanging from the ceiling above.

“Holy shit,” Van swore under his breath and slapped my slack thigh a few times as he figured it out. “She’sthatgirl.She’slavender girl.”

Lavender girl. I couldn’t help but giggle at the nickname. It had never been a secret that there was a girl back home; it was just a topic they all tip-toed around. It took nearly four years for me to turn her into a ghost and, when I finally did, she was nothing but a whisper between them.

But somehow she was still a poltergeist with the power to uproot my entire life with a flash of her smile. Frustration rumbled from me. I hadn’t thought I would ever get the pleasure of chasing the chaos and high she created ever again.

And now I didn’t know what to do with myself now the opportunity had arisen.

“Why is this a bad thing? Talk to me,” Van said, poking me with the end of a wooden spoon.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged, rolling my head to the left so I could see him.

“Cael Cody, at a loss for words. I never thought I’d see the day that anyone could make you silent.” Van laughed, but I didn’t find the statement very funny.

Clementine had my tongue all twisted and my feelings in knots like they hadn’t been in a very long time. I didn’t know where to start untying them as the emotions flooded me like a tidal wave. I was drowning in the past and the present all at once. My hope of rescue dwindled with every second she remained at arm’s length from me.

Having her inside the Nest was going to kill me.

“I just don’t know if she…” I sighed. “...wants me like that anymore?”

That was a lie.

I could still feel the electricity that licked like a live wire at the edge of a pool of water from our conversation earlier that day like it was fresh. There was so much left unsaid between us.

So much heartbreak, anger, lust, and need.

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