Page 65 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter sixty

Mira

W hen the Uber dropped me off at my house, I rolled my bag inside and dropped my tote onto the floor. The post office could wait until tomorrow—two weeks’ worth of mail wasn’t going anywhere. Tonight, I didn’t even want to think about my to-do list.

I sent a quick text to Anne and Dillon to let them know I was back. I told them to give me a couple of days and then we could plan something. I’d pretend I was a person again.

I unzipped my roller bag and dumped everything into the laundry pile, pausing only when I came across a few pieces I’d washed at Baird’s.

His detergent. His cedar-lined closet. They still smelled like him. I held one shirt to my face and inhaled, sharp and deep, and instantly I was back in his arms, his scent wrapped around me like memory. I set those clothes aside, not ready to wash the last traces of him away.

Just a breath of it made my heart ache—and brought a flush to my skin, the kind of involuntary reaction that reminded me with aching clarity of the way he’d touched me.

Of how he’d made me feel like my body was no longer mine, but something he understood better than I ever had .

One sniff, and the ghosts of orgasms past came swirling through me like smoke.

I stared at my tote bag sitting on the floor.

It held my tools, my heavy canvas apron, which Baird had used to wrap around and cushion the box with the necklace, my travel pillow, and my Kindle.

I pulled out my Kindle and shoved the bag with all its contents into the hall closet.

I just couldn’t go through all that. I’d deal with that later, when my mind started to clear, and distance made it easier to recall the sweet memories without unleashing a deluge of tears.

The next few weeks stretched out before me, long and heavy. I kept waiting for the sadness to lift, for the ache to ease with time. But it didn’t. It lingered like mist that clung to everything, changing the taste of my mornings, the texture of my thoughts.

It wasn’t like the grief I’d felt when my parents died—that had been sharp and consuming, but pure. This was something that was becoming murkier.

Grief tied up in anger.

Anger at myself, for being so unwilling to believe. For needing so much proof, as though this proof could be found in a textbook or some mathematical formula, instead of just felt. For holding part of myself back, the part that could feel, until it was too late.

And anger at Baird too. Since that photo, he hadn’t sent a single word.

No hope you’re well.

No missing you.

Nothing .

I wondered if he could still feel me—that bond he’d spoken of, the one that began to form when he drank from me. But maybe that wasn’t real. Maybe it was just what he’d said about me wearing my heart too plainly on my face, too easy to read.

Because if he could feel me—truly feel me—he’d know I was struggling. He’d know how badly I ached for him, how that ache deepened instead of fading, day after day.

And if he knew…and didn’t reach out?

Then I was even angrier still.

I knew none of this was rational. It didn’t matter.

I was unraveling in tiny, quiet ways. And I started to wonder if I’d ever feel like myself again—if there was still a self to return to.

Maybe something in me had changed permanently.

Maybe I was turning into one of those tragic heroines from a 1940s drama, the kind who never got over the stranger who swept through town and vanished into the night.

But that wasn’t fair.

Baird hadn’t disappeared.

I had.

Regardless, I seemed to find a new way to be mad at Baird almost daily. Fresh angles. New grievances. Little tortures I crafted just for myself—picking at the scab before it could even think about healing.

If it ever could.

One afternoon, I stopped at the liquor store and bought a bottle of Scotch. I didn’t even like Scotch. But I left it on the kitchen counter, a constant presence.

Each night before bed, I poured myself a glass. A ritual.

It wasn’t about the taste .

It was about going back. About conjuring the memory of whisky-tinged kisses from Baird’s lips, that sharp bitterness, the taste of peat and smoke, winding itself around his pain and making it my own.

It was my way of calling his ghost into the room.

So I could yell at him.

So I could sob and beg him—silently, shamefully—to let me go.