Page 147 of Unholy Obsession

I haven’t shared a bed with a woman for twenty-seven years, and suddenly, I can’t imagine sleeping alone for the rest of my life. No one will ever replace Moira. No one ever could. She’s a gemstone with a million unique facets, brilliant and dazzling and completely irreplaceable. The hole of her absence in my life is a wound that will never heal.

So I do what Quinn said.

I let myself feel it.

I let the grief swallow me whole. I wallow in it like a pig in mud.

Because at least in the pain that stretches my chest like a doctor’s chest spreader, I can feel her presence.

She’s there in the ache, in the absence, in the all-consuming devastation of losing her. She is the pain, and that’s the only satisfaction I will get tonight.

But the salt on the open wound is the fuckingwondering. The not knowing. She exists somewhere in the world, but God only knows where.

Is she sleeping peacefully right now? Is she missing me? Or is she tucked up in some warm bed without me—in some other man’s bed?

The thought sears through me like acid, burning a hole straight through my gut.

Or is she just back at her apartment, our time together meaning as little to her as all the men who came before me? Was I just another flavor to taste?

Or maybe—maybe she just needed time away from me.

You fucking egotistical, self-involved bastard.

I turn over in bed and punch the mattress, then do it again. Harder. Again. Until my knuckles sting and the ache in my hands is something solid. Something real. Something to ground me in this stupid goddamned night that won’t ever fucking end.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to sleep again. I try to block out the images of her in my mind. But she’s everywhere—in every inch of this bed and every shift in the sheets. She is everywhere, but she’s gone.

Oh fuck, she’s fuckinggone.

I shove my face into the mattress and howl in fury and rage and grief.

When the sky begins to lighten, I give up.

The night is done with me. Sleep never came.

I move to the shower, stripping off my clothes and stepping under the hot spray. The water scalds, but it doesn’t cleanse. It doesn’t burn away the phantom weight of her body against mine.

I scrub harder. Hard enough that my skin turns red. Hard enough that my muscles strain with the force of it. Hard enough that if I just keep going, maybe I can scrub the ache from my bones.

She’s not here. I have to face it. And I can’t show up to the prison today looking like a whiskey-soaked wreck.

I promised Caleb.

Wallowing isn’t getting me anywhere. I don’t think I even know how to sit in my pain right. I think Quinn intended some sort of meditation, some sort of quiet reckoning.

But I am not a man who sits still. I am not a man who finds peace in stillness.

Fuck sitting still. Fuck meditation.

Movement is the plan of the day.

Soon enough, I’m on the road to Waco, two hours away.

The drive should be a distraction. It should be something that pulls me out of my own head. Instead, it’s just another reminder. I have to slap myself awake several times when my eyelids grow heavier and heavier as exhaustion sets in. Each slap is a punishment, a reminder—Moira should be here. She shouldbe in the passenger seat, chattering away and filling the car with her endless energy.

I never thought I’d miss her chatter.

But my life is so fucking quiet without her.

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