45. Levi
LEVI
My eyes slide to the portal waiting for me. My bedroom lies just beyond. Logic tells me to go. My heart, my body, my soul tell me to stay. That’s three against one, but still I hesitate to go after her. To pull her into my arms as everything within me screams to do so.
The look on Violette’s face is made of ice, but I can see the darkness and despair filling her eyes.
At my hesitation to do what we both want, she turns and shuts the bathroom door behind her with a finality that makes my gut churn.
It’s enough to force myself through the portal.
The moment I step into my bedroom, the portal seals shut.
Fuck.
This is wrong. I know it in my soul. I should be there with her. Instead, I’m committing to this semi-broken life of solitude, peppered with vapid encounters and meaningless sex once a year or so to fill a biological need.
I open my nightstand drawer to check my burner phone. A handwritten note is folded on top of it—the handwriting looks like mine, but I don’t remember writing it. Nor have I had the chance to do so.
Find Somnus, you absolute jackass.
If I wasn’t so unsettled, I might laugh.
What in the actual fuck?
I sit on the edge of my bed vengeance and burner phone momentarily forgotten as my mind reels. I cast my gaze around the room as if I might find some kind of answer. After several moments, I drop the note on the nightstand and finally pick up the burner phone.
I’m too distracted with thoughts of Violette, Somnus, and whoever the fuck left this note to feel any disappointment that there’s still no update from my contact in relation to my starling returning home.
However, it does confirm my suspicion that time in Violette’s realm passes differently.
It’s still the same night Violette kidnapped me.
Only a few hours since. And time to get ready for a day of work on Gideon’s ranch.
I’m more than a little relieved for the distraction, lest I wallow in self-pity and remorse I can do nothing about.