Page 73 of Lost Touch
And he stepped back and took his hand away.
I could still feel its imprint, the heat of his palm arrowing into the center of me, the outline of his fingers.
Without anything to lean on, or to hold onto, I swayed where I stood, the branch scraping the nape of my neck and making me wince. Pain. I’d missed it, but it added another layer of misery onto the more-than-enough I already had to deal with.
Drew’s face had hardened into a neutral mask that nearly broke my heart. I could still throw myself on him, pull him down into a kiss, tell him I’d changed my mind and beg him to take me…
“I’m not letting them fuck with me any more right now, though,” he said. “I’ve had enough of warlocks and shamans fiddling with my head and my body. You don’t have to pretend to be my mate if you don’t want to. I’ll deal with it. I’ll be stable enough without it.” He paused, maybe waiting for me to argue, but I was all argued out. My throat felt like it had a giant hand wrapped around it. “We’re going to head to your hometown and deal with that situation, unless you have a better idea.”
I didn’t. I shook my head.
“Then I’ll let them know, pay our bill, and we’ll get out of here.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and strode away, down the length of the garden and back to the house. Watching him go felt like saying goodbye to everything that could’ve made me happy.
Principles were so fucking overrated.
I stayed in the garden for a while, so no one could see me cry but the flowers and the bees.
Chapter 21
Two Beds
With Drew fully in command of his faculties, I didn’t have a damn thing to do once we got in the car. He knew where we were going, he could use his own phone and nav system without any help from me, and he certainly didn’t seem inclined to start a conversation, driving a little too fast and in grim, thoughtful silence.
I’d have given a lot to know what he was thinking about, but on the other hand…probably better not to ask.
Midafternoon sun slanted in through my window, too bright and hot without the mitigating effect of the cool breeze outside.
I tried rolling my window down a few inches.
The noise and the wind in my face drove me nuts.
I rolled it back up again.
Drew didn’t say anything.
It’d taken us a little while to get on the road, time I’d spent sitting awkwardly in the kitchen with Nate, who’d made two giant pots of coffee while we waited. When I’d come back to the house, he’d told me Drew was off somewhere talking to Calder.
“Three guesses where Calder and Jared went after breakfast,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes. “Their sex life is so fucking annoying to hear about. Jared’s my ex, and he’s also Ian’s cousin…”
The story he told me, with a lot of gesticulating and a lot more TMI, would’ve been riveting as an unusually violent and gruesome and X-rated soap opera, but in my current state of mind it barely distracted me.
Still, it meant I didn’t have to do anything but sit there, drink Nate’s endless supply of coffee, wonder how he hadn’t had a heart attack with the amount he sucked down, and nod once in a while.
The crushing sensation in my chest probably had more to do with my heart cracking in half, but I chose to blame the coffee. I’d been drinking it in such small amounts lately that it made me buzz like a hummingbird.
Finally Drew reappeared, and we got out the door, the whole crew popping up like Jack-in-the-boxes to wave us off. Jared hugged me hard, said, “Anytime, Ash, I mean it,” and slipped me an old receipt for pizza with his phone number scrawled on the back. I put it in my pocket, the crinkle reassuring me of its reality.
One person in the world besides Drew who cared whether I lived or died. I didn’t know how to thank him; I couldn’t find the words. It didn’t seem to matter. He patted me on the shoulder and nodded, stepping back so I could get in the car.
And then it was just me, Drew, and my incipient cardiac murmur, off to Southern California to try to find out why I’d stolen a car.
A real party on wheels, in short.
I glanced at the dashboard display. Total travel time: nine hours and seventeen minutes. Time elapsed: twenty-three minutes.
Settling back in my seat, I tried to ignore the glare in my eyes and stared out the windshield.
