and pleasure. She shuddered, but she couldn’t quite suppress
the longing. Of course she couldn’t. This woman was her
partner. Her wife now. The physical longing between them
would naturally be there, even if it was stifled at the moment.
“I guess so.”
They ended up in the living room. The smell of half cooked
eggs, peppers, and onions wafted from the kitchen, even
though the house was huge. It made Giana feel vaguely sick.
Or maybe that was the blankness in Coralyn’s eyes, the
vacancy on her face, when she sat down on the couch. Giana
didn’t want to crowd her, but she didn’t sit as far away as she
had before.
“I’m not…” Coralyn exhaled sharply. “This is such a mess.
It’s so wrong. I’m not one of those people who can turn my
feelings on and off. That’s what started all this. I did
something incredibly wrong and stupid. We’re not…we’re
broken, Giana. You aren’t a good person. I mean, you weren’t.
You were cold. Hard. You were mean.”
Flashes of something. Not images, but more like a sound
with bright lights. A sound that echoed through Giana’s head
and reverberated through the rest of her as a full body shiver.
She’s right. She’s telling the truth. Giana didn’t feel like a bad
person. But the parts about her being hard and cold? Yes. That
was the truth. Because it was necessary.
It hurts.
Don’t reach for it. Shut it down. Shut it out. Now.
She skirted away from the urge to dig deeper, to reach a
hand into that blackness. It wouldn’t just be a bite she felt. It
would be torn away completely, along with her heart. That
made her gasp more
