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I squeezed her hand three times before letting go.I love you.

“Is that true? What did you call it, Focal D-dys…?”

“Focal Dystonia. It’s neurological, my brain doesn’t send the right messages to my muscles. It’s worse in my right hand and I don’t have the dexterity I need to play.”

“Pan. Why didn’t you tell us?” I whispered.

He looked away, his gaze traveling where we couldn’t follow.

“I thought you’d be pleased.” His lip curled like it was a joke. “Now I’ve lost the only thing our parents ever loved about me. The only thing I was truly good at.”

“That’s not—I would never,” I protested.

Pan clenched his hands and shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can we drop it?”

“Are your parents always like that?” Tully took his lead as she rubbed her forehead.

Pan cleared his throat. “They’re usually worse,” he said.

Silence was a taut string between us, and I didn’t know how to slice through the tension. It had been brewing for years. Pan had all their love, drowned in it, while I was banished to a desert. Is that why he kept his injury a secret?

“Why do you put up with it?” Tully folded her arms over her chest.

Pan winced and scrubbed the pain off his face with a small smile. “Blood is blood.”

Tully snorted before a haunted look hooded her gaze. “They’re right, though, my parents would be disappointed in me.”

My fingers curled ineffectually by my side. I wanted to comfort her. Pan shook his head and walked over to the dining table. He pulled over his journal and selected a marker.

“I know our pack is proud of you, if that means anything. Are you proud of yourself?”

Tully trailed after him, and my gaze zeroed in on the way the hem hit the back of her thighs. My groin tightened, and I jerked my eyes away. Not the time. Not the place. But damn, did I want to make love to her. She’d defended me, and it tasted as sweet as her luscious fig scent.

“What’s that?” Tully peered at the journal.

I wondered how long it would take her to notice. Four journals, and a communal pile of markers, stickers and tabs. Everything someone might need for a bullet journal.

“We started our own journals.”

“My therapist suggested keeping something similar, and I remember how much you loved yours.” Pan blew his fringe off his face and colored his mood tracker with a bright orange.Happy.

Tully reached out to finger the page, frowning at the myriad of dark colors. Sick, tired, sad, anxious, angry. I felt the echo of those emotions like a bubbling storm under my paper-thin skin.

“Bleak month,” she tried to joke.

“Everything is without you, angel.” Pan shut the journal with a sigh.

“It’s a way for us to feel close to you.” My warm breath hit the back of her neck.

She chewed her bottom lip and some of the uncertainty returned.

“Pan, your hands—” she tried. “Can you work with a therapist?”

“There is no point. I’ll never play like I used to and if I can’t have perfection, I don’t want it. Talk about something else.” Pan’s jaw clenched, and he added a whisper, “please.”

“Are you all ready for tomorrow?”

Tully wanted to do a livestream on her channel in response to the leaked pictures. Tully withdrew, taking her sunshine with her.