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The twins moved to either side of him and crouched to get good looks at his face. “Ryker,” Nova said, and Logan said as if finishing her sentence, “Talk to us, man.”

Ryker gave them a glare that held nothing back to protect friends. He couldn’t knock them unconscious as he could humans, but a vampire’s gaze was potent against his own kind when he wanted it to be. The siblings flinched and backed away.

Claire brought her fist down on his desk with a force shy of cracking the wood. “What in the world is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Get out. All of you.”

“Nah.” Mackey leaned in and met Ryker’s glare without a blink. “Claire’s right. Something’s wrong. So spill it, because we’re going nowhere.”

“Then sit here and watch me work. I don’t care.”

He didn’t care about anything. Only about his work. He was good at that. He wouldn’t fail at that. No more failing. No more falling.

“You’re so pathetic, Ryker.”The memory of Jacqueline’s voice was so visceral, it seemed her specter had joined them in the room. Ryker shuddered hard.

“Hey,” Philippa said. She stepped around Nova to stand beside Ryker and rest a hand on his shoulder, and her light touch tried to break him, but he wouldn’t let it. Steel. Toughen up. “Come on, tell us.”

No. He stared at his computer screen. He scrolled the document in front of him, but he couldn’t see the formulas he’d plugged in, couldn’t add two plus two as his head pounded.

“Leslie,” he whispered.

He shouldn’t have spoken her name. The moment he did, all the energy drained from his body, from his limbs. He folded forward in his chair, pressed his palms to his burning eyes.

“What about Leslie?” Claire said.

“We broke up.”

The words physically hurt. He couldn’t think, could only feel no matter how hard he tried to stop feeling.

“Oh,” Philippa said with a gentle texture behind her voice that nearly brought him to tears. “Ryker, honey. Tell us what happened.”

He did. They listened.

“And then what?” Logan blurted, crossing his arms over his chest. “You called her back, right?”

“No,” Ryker said. “I…I came home to work.”

“For crying out loud, man. Call her.”

Ryker lifted his head. “You weren’t listening. I can’t fix it.”

“It’s not like you to give up. Ever. So why aren’t you fighting for her?” Mackey was watching him with his usual focus, midnight-blue eyes that shone almost black, obsidian when he was engrossed in probing the whys of the universe. He looked like that now, in fact. As though Ryker’s devastation were something to be dissected.

“She hung up on me,” Ryker said. “It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.”

Crap. He’d said that last part out loud.

Instead of calling him on it, Philippa said, “She thinks she’s stuck in a long-distance relationship forever.That’swhy she hung up, Ryker. But you have a solution, honey. You’ve been mulling the long-distance problem since you met her, right? You were just waiting for the right time to share your thoughts on it.”

He nodded. His chest still felt empty and all twisted up. Had his heart given a single beat since Leslie said she was sorry, gave a final sob, and hung up?

“Ryker, come on,” Logan said. “Call her.”

“I don’t think she wants me to,” Ryker whispered.

A low murmuring hiss came from every last one of them. It was enough to pull him up from the quagmire he couldn’t seem to shake. He opened his eyes and met theirs—Mackey’s flashing blue-black, Logan and Nova’s bright teal that gave away their status as siblings, Philippa’s pale purple washed to mother-of-pearl in her distress for a friend, and Claire’s deep purple-blue glittering with challenge.

“What?” Ryker managed.