Page 2 of Touch In Excess

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Skye shook his head. “I think I’m gonna go for a run, actually.”

Avan eyed him carefully. “Alone?”

Skye didn’t want to be annoyed, but he couldn’t help it. Avan was right to be concerned. Skye’s Ménière’s disease had sent him toppling down the stairs from vertigo eight months before, and he’d suffered a pretty nasty concussion from it. He walked around with a goose egg for a week and then two delightful black eyes for a few weeks after that.

Only a few of his clients weren’t put off by the look, which meant postponing eighty percent of his schedule, and while money wasn’t tight, he was the kind of person who panicked when things weren’t going his way.

Luckily, one doctor’s appointment later, with a big needle and a medication injected directly into his eardrum, and the vertigo eased. It came at a cost, of course. He lost almost all of his hearing on the right side. His follow-up audiogram showed he’d gone from hard of hearing to medically deaf—moderate on his right side, profound on his left.

But it was worth the price. It meant he could go running again. It meant he didn’t have to walk with his cane everywhere. Vertigo still swept his legs out from under him from time to time, but the spells were fewer and further between. And they weren’t as obnoxiously intense as they had been.

No more vomiting into his bedside wastebasket once a week and lying in bed for hours at a time with a warm cloth over his eyes to stop the spinning. It allowed him to feel more humanagain, and honestly, he’d come to terms with the fact that he was going to end up deaf at the end of his road anyway.

He’d sped up that timeline with his newest treatment, but he was fine with it.

He just wanted the people he loved—and really, hedidlove them—to quit being up his ass every time he wanted to be on his own.

“I’m going to be fine. I haven’t had a spell in two months.”

Avan eyed him, but Skye took comfort in the fact that he didn’t argue. He just shrugged and signed, ‘Text me if anything comes up.’

If you fall on your ass. Or if you fall on your head. Or if your legs go jelly and your eyes go wobbly and you can’t get home.

It was an annoying request, but it was one he could live with, so he lifted his hands. ‘Sure. See you later.’

He made his way up the stairs and into the lobby, waving at Hen, who was fixated on his phone. Hen didn’t notice him, and Skye wasn’t in a hurry to change that. He didn’t want to have another conversation filled with well-meaning warnings. He just wanted some space.

No. He wanted to go for a run. A nice, long run without eagle eyes watching him so he could finally clear his head and feel like he was himself again.

Slipping out the side door, he darted across the lawn and made his way to his little cottage and grabbed his running shoes. He ordered a ride on his app to take him to the beach because running on the coastal highway brought him a lot more peace than running through their uptight, boujee neighborhood where all the residents looked at him like he was the Devil incarnate.

Which wasn’t far off the mark, considering what he did. At least in their eyes.

But by the ocean, he had peace. He couldn’t really hear the waves anymore, not without his hearing aids and only when he was right at the shore, but the ocean spray and the gentle breeze were enough for him.

His life was lonely. And it was quiet in more ways than one. It wasn’t the worst way he’d ever lived, but he was starting to wonder if maybe this was all he was going to get. He wasn’t sure how to make peace with that yet, but he’d be damned if he didn’t try.

The spot Skye liked to run most was called Artist’s Hill. Back in the fifties and sixties, a bunch of artists owned vacation homes on the coastal road, and they’d show up for the summer to get inspiration from the ocean. He wasn’t really sure what became of the artists, but he knew young money and coastal real estate clout were responsible for internet celebrities buying up the spaces.

It was a relic of what it once was, but one of the homes still bore the mark of the previous owner. The architecture was unique, and it had a bunch of sculptures behind the wrought iron gates. He liked to stop and imagine what it was like inside whenever he passed by, and something about the place gave him a swooping sensation in his gut.

Maybe he’d retire on a street like this someday—a far cry from the life he was living now and a far cry from the life he might have lived if he’d never met the Sins. He didn’t like to think about that though. Even if he and the Sins stayed close, retirement sounded…lonely. And he was tired of being lonely.

His feet hit the pavement, and the thud of his shoes on the jogging path rippled up his spine. He kept his feet moving inan almost melodic rhythm, music playing in his hearing aids—instrumental cello renditions of heavy metal songs because he’d long since lost the ability to understand lyrics. He had a playlist of his favorite songs that his brain could connect to and fill in the gaps where his failing ears lost the words, but he got tired of it pretty quickly.

And besides, he did enjoy being able to picture the cellist who was absurdly good-looking with his black-framed glasses and his nerdy bow tie. It was nice mental eye candy for his run when he lost sight of the ocean.

He was halfway through a rendition of “Fade to Black” when suddenly, the world turned upside down. Or, more importantly,heturned upside down. He felt the pain a good ten seconds after he hit the ground, and it took him even longer than that to realize that he’d damn near somersaulted into the grassy front yard of the very home he’d been thinking about.

He’d squeezed his eyes as he tried to catch his breath, and when he opened them, the sky was spinning in sharp circles, and his ears were ringing so loudly he couldn’t hear anything else.

“Fuck,” he gasped. His voice was barely audible over the raging tinnitus.

“…okay? You…the…almost…someone.”

Skye took a deep breath as the sharp ringing started to fade, and then he opened one eye and turned his head to see a man kneeling in the grass beside him. He was very, very pale—no, wait. He wasn’t pale. His arms were covered in some sort of paint or plaster.

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