Chapter Twenty-Four River
Twenty-Four
River
The staff in the oncology department recognized us; we’d been frequent visitors for a year, and they did the math. Four of us went to the hospital that morning. Three came out. The front desk staff didn’t ask questions. They smiled gently as we filed by, silent and stupefied by shock and grief.
“I thought I was ready,” Amelia said dully from the back seat of the car. “She’s been sick forever. I…I thought I was ready.”
From the passenger seat, I craned my head around to look at her. She stared out the window, passing streetlights reflected in the glass. She wasn’t crying. Neither was I. Or Dad. He drove like a robot, eyes on the road, saying nothing.
Shock isn’t always a sudden impact, knocking the sense out of you like a blow to the head.
This shock felt like I’d been stuffed full of cotton, my skin dry and tight, no blood moving through my veins, my eyes staring at everything and seeing nothing.
On the radio, the DJ was hawking concert tickets.
It sounded like a transmission from an alien planet, something that had no bearing on my life.
I moved through the days after Mom passed in that same stuffed-cotton shock.
Plans were made, phone calls were placed.
More of our small family trickled in, familiar faces belonging to strangers.
They talked to me, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
I just nodded, knowing this step outside reality wouldn’t last. The shock would wear off, and I’d have to handle it. Take care of my dad and sister.
I kept turning corners in the house, expecting to see Mom, but she was never there.
***
The funeral happened under a gray sky. Mourners in black gathered around a casket bearing a huge spray of daisies and sunflowers; Mom loved white and yellow. Except for Violet McNamara, none of my friends showed up.
Holden didn’t show up.
While the priest droned about life eternal, my gaze aimlessly wandered among the headstones, expecting to see Holden lurking. The vampire. I’d given him my heart, and he’d sucked it dry and left the husk.
Violet gave my hand a squeeze, bringing me back to the present.
The service was over. Everyone rose, and Dad, Amelia, and I tossed flowers into the hole in the ground.
Dad sobbed behind his hand while one of his brothers, Uncle Greg, wrapped an arm around him.
Amelia stared vacantly—still cocooned in shock.
Good. Maybe it would stick around, and she’d get through these first days without feeling the enormity of it.
At the reception at our house, Uncle Tony handed me a beer, and I drank it.
Then another. Figures in black drifted from room to room, talking in low voices and eating the food Dazia had arranged to have brought in.
I think the earth would have stopped rotating if she hadn’t been there to keep it spinning.
Hours oozed past, and finally, the guests started to depart. Family headed back to their hotels. Violet sat beside me in a corner of the living room.
“I want more than anything to stay with you as long as you need me, but I have to hit the road.”
“I know you do.” I smiled weakly. “You’ve postponed your trip long enough.”
Violet was heading to Baylor in Waco, Texas, to begin her med school career. She was supposed to have left days ago but stayed for Mom. And for me.
Unlike some fuckers I could name.
I wasn’t drunk but getting there. I took another pull from my beer.
“You look like you could use some sleep. Your dad’s fine,” she said when I started to protest. “He’s with your uncles, and Dazia took Amelia to bed a long time ago.”
The house was nearly empty. When everyone left for good, that emptiness was going to swallow us whole.
I got to my feet a little unsteadily and walked Violet to the front door.
“Thank you for being here. Through all of it. You took…” My throat tried to close. I swallowed the tears down. “You took really good care of her. She loved you.”
“I loved her too,” Violet said, tears shining in her deep blue eyes. “I think everyone who knew her did. She was extremely lovable. And so are you.”
Not lovable enough. Not enough to make him stay.
“I mean it,” Violet said, reading my doubt.
“You and I started out on a weird path, but I’m so glad we got a friendship out of it, River.
Let’s stay in touch, okay? When you get sad, call me.
Any time. Day or night. And I’ll do the same when I’m missing Miller.
It’s not the same kind of missing, obviously.
But maybe we can help each other through the bad nights. ”
“I’d like that,” I said gruffly. I engulfed her small body in my arms. I didn’t use a sling anymore, but I was careful not to scratch her with the fiberglass cast wrapped around my left wrist.
She hugged me tight and then kissed my cheek. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Have a safe drive, Violet.”
I closed the door and stepped back into a living room that was littered with food plates, glasses, and a few beer bottles. Party residue. Laughter and loud talk came from the kitchen. It sounded like my uncles were getting Dad good and drunk.
“Stellar idea,” I muttered and found a mostly full bottle of Heineken on our coffee table. I took it with me upstairs, draining half of it on the way.
Inside my room, I sat heavily on my bed, the beer bottle in my hand, shoulders slumped.
The silence was too loud. Since the night we’d left the hospital, I’d been playing music and reading until three or four in the morning.
I’d read until my eyes drooped and pass out when my head hit the pillow so I wouldn’t lie awake in the dark, thinking.
Remembering.
I loosened my tie and started to take off my jacket, and that’s when I smelled it. Him. Clove-laced smoke, cedarwood cologne, vodka.
Slowly, I turned my head. He was in all black, leaning against my dresser. His silver hair gleamed, and I’d never seen his eyes so green. Like the peridot gem but red-rimmed and glassy instead of hard.
Fucking beautiful bastard.
I hated how my heart crashed against my chest, beating for him. I hated how my blood heated and moved faster through my veins, burning through the numbness, awakening the feelings that had been sedated.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I seethed. “Now? You’re here now?”
Holden had no time to answer. A wave of turbulent emotion swelled and crashed in me, and I rushed him, grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and slammed him against the wall, our faces inches apart. My eyes burned as they bore into his.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Holden faced my murderous, feverish glare unblinking. “Saying goodbye.”
His words sank in, stabbing my heart, yet I felt him everywhere his body was pressed to mine.
I let him go and staggered back a step. “Get out.”
He straightened his rumpled coat and jerked his shirt into place.
“Did you hear me? Get the fuck out.” I turned my back on him.
Holden walked past me, and for a few horrible seconds, I thought he was doing what I ordered. But instead of leaving, he locked the door and then pressed his back to it.
“Goddammit. What are you doing, Holden?”
“Giving you what you need.”
He moved slowly toward me, his eyes dark and dilated, a dash of color slashing his sharp cheekbones.
“I don’t need anything from you. You’re leaving—”
“Yes, tomorrow. I’m leaving because I have to.” The predatory glint in his eye slipped, and I saw the pain beneath. His cold voice wavered. “Because I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me now.”
“I’ll hurt you worse if I stay.” He moved closer, his gaze roaming my face, lingering on my mouth. “We have tonight.”
“What are you talking about?” I said, but my voice tapered to a ragged whisper. Because I knew what he meant. The promise of sex was all over him, as tangible as his scent and more potent.
Holden nodded, reading my thoughts. He was close enough I could feel his breath on my chin, warm and smelling sharply sweet—what I imagined absinthe would taste like.
He pulled the tie off my neck and tossed it aside, and then his hands went to my belt.
He whipped it out of its loops, and it’d hardly hit the floor before his nimble fingers had undone my button and zipper.
I stood still, trembling with a thousand emotions, pure, unbridled want rising to the top the fastest. Desperate for escape. For release.
“You need this.” His hand slipped inside my pants, finding my cock hard and aching. He gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to give it to you.”
“Holden…”
“You need it,” he said again, his lips brushing mine. “You need to fuck.”
My blood caught fire. A growl erupted out of my chest, and I gripped him by the nape of his neck and crushed his mouth to mine.
The growl melted into a helpless groan as I tasted him for the first time in what felt like years.
My mouth devoured his, and he opened to let me in.
And then I knew what he’d planned. To let me have him like this all night.
To take and take because he thought he had nothing else to give.
“No.” I wrenched my mouth from his. “Holden…”
“Yes,” he whispered, his eyes suddenly shining. Pleading. “We have tonight, and then you have to let me go.”
Before I could speak, he was kissing me again, hot and hard, while he pushed the jacket off my shoulders.
With every touch of his hands on my skin, with every sweep of his tongue, I gave myself up more and more.
My grief and need became the same thing—a ravenous hunger.
A need to fill the void he’d leave behind.
Loving him and already missing him so badly.
We have tonight.