Page 5 of This Time Around

A minute later, Abby sniffed the air around her. “What is that smell?”

Jane snapped shut the lighter in her right hand and stared at the small plastic groom in her left, smirking at the blistering hole where his genitals used to be.

“Give me that!” Abby said, snatching the lighter out of her hand.

Jane shrugged, unrepentant. “What? You took my cake away.”

Her friend sighed and slowly shook her head, but there was no real censure in her expression. More an indulgent acceptance that she was stuck with the crazy lady in the wedding dress as her best friend forever. “Come on. We’ll take you home.”

“We?”

Wolf appeared behind Abby and draped his suit jacket around her bare shoulders. “It’s getting chilly out,” he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. Then he lowered his mouth to her ear and said something that made her smile.

Jane wanted to grin at them like she usually did, to bask in the heat of their adoration for one another and celebrate their happiness for the miracle it was. Ordinarily she was their most enthusiastic cheerleader, but now her lips were frozen in a permanent flatline.

She had nothing left to give.

Not today.

So she just stared at them, watching as Wolf stroked Abby’s cheek with the blade of his finger, one corner of her mouth lifting at whatever he was murmuring in her ear.

And Jane simply felt… cold.

So cold.

And not from the chill in the air, either. No, this chill came from inside her, deep down in the dark place she tried so hard to hide from the world. The place that held all her darkest memories and unfulfilled desires and all the broken pieces of herself that she’d never figured out what to do with or how to fix.

Thirty-two years of shit just swirling around in the pit of her soul, draining every ounce of happiness out of her.

Usually it was easy for her to keep it all locked away, like a monster in the basement.

Usually.

Unable to look at her friends any longer, she turned away. “Let’s go.”

Shoving the kitchen door open so she could peek outside, she spied the Bennett twins still standing guard. Both of them watched her as she stepped into the hallway.

“How’re you feeling, sweet pea?”

Toby’s nickname for her had always made her smile, made her feel like she really was one of the family, but today…nothing.

She felt nothing.

Apathy shrouded her every move, every thought.

She did hear something though. “Let me through, you walking man-bun.”

“Make me, you pompous arsehole.”

“Let me see my sister.”

“She’s more my sister than yours, dickwad.”

Peering between the wall of muscle that was Toby and Charlie Bennett, Jane saw their younger brother, Oliver, arguing with her older brother, Richard.

She reached up and tapped Charlie’s shoulder. “Let him through,” she said quietly.

“Ollie, stand down,” Charlie said, then stepped aside to let Richard through.

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