I didn’t care.
He whispered words of encouragement, his comfort an undeniable force behind me.
I didn’t care.
The sun fell outside my window, the tears still flowing.
I didn’t care.
I was broken.
Shattered.
Irreparably lost.
And…
I didn’t care.
Except that was all a lie. I cared about every minute detail. Which was precisely the problem. I cared entirely too much.
That was what destroyed me.
My actual inability to let it all go, to just accept my fate. And maybe I would eventually. But not tonight.
Tonight, I mourned.
For Rick. For the bar and anyone else I hurt. For my friends that I would never see again. For Elana’s house. For the girls I almost hurt outside hours ago.
And most importantly—I mourned for myself.
For Claire. For the woman I used to be. Because she didn’t exist here.
It’s only me.
Exos
Water.
Why am I in water?
I tried to shake off the strange dream, my nose catching in Claire’s lavender-scented hair. My arms tightened around her reflexively, some ancient part of me pleased by her nearness—the part that called for our bond.
Falling asleep with her body pressed up against mine had felt natural. Almost too natural. But she needed comfort, and I wasn’t strong enough to reject her. The spirit essence inside me recognized his mate, whether I liked it or not.
No other Spirit Fae had connected to me the way Claire had, and all through a meager kiss. She’d floored me, knocked me off-kilter, and ruined me for anyone else.
What made it worse was it seemed she required a mate for each element. It wasn’t necessarily unheard of for Spirit Fae to have two mates because of our ties to two elements, but most only bonded with one fae. However, on the occasion when a Spirit Fae took two mates, it was one for each element.
And Claire had access to five.
Fuck.
I never saw myself falling into the mating rites, having opted for a life of guardianship. My brother was the one meant to settle down with another and try to create more Spirit Fae.
If he saw me now, he’d laugh. Cuddling. An activity I never engaged in, even post-sex.
I almost laughed, then remembered how Claire had giggled over the sandwich and broke down in sobs. Her emotions were all over the map, making it very difficult to predict her reactions. Holding her as she slept was the only comfort I could offer her, and I worried it wasn’t enough.