Page 6 of A Moth to the Flame (Utopia #1)

Chapter

Four

DUKE

I awake with a start. For the first time in days, my gasp for air doesn’t feel like it’s burning me up from the inside.

Did Cordelia leave town already? I can’t feel her as much when she’s living her fancy life hours away, but I can’t imagine she’s settled all her granny’s final affairs so fast either.

She might be a know-it-all snob, but no one could ever question how much she loved her grandmother. She’d never let someone else handle tying up the last loose ends of her only family.

I roll over with a groan and try to ignore the way nothing feels quite right.

It never does when she’s around, and I fucking hate her for it. I hate her for a lot of things.

Mostly, I hate her because I’m right back to where I always start—thinking about Cordelia Diane McCoy, first thing in the morning in my own bed.

I crack open my eyes. I think about Cordie.

I go to work. I think about Cordie. I eat lunch.

Think about Cordie. Go to the bar for some drinks.

Get hammered enough not to think about Cordie.

Family dinner with my daddy, brothers, and nephews?

I can keep track of five different conversations. While still thinking about Cordie.

It pisses me off more than ever.

Why? Why can’t I get her out of my damned mind?

What in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with me?

I’m thirty years old and still asking myself the same questions.

I’ve always been able to feel her in a way that isn’t normal, but it really freaks me out that I felt her pain, her grief. Ever since her Granny died, I swear I can taste her sorrow on my tongue. I’m no stranger to misery, so I know that it doesn’t have a fucking flavor.

I haven’t been able to wash the sour taste out of my mouth for days, no matter what I eat or drink.

That’s not the only thing I haven’t been able to do in days either.

I slide my tongue against my teeth. Doesn’t taste like the depths of hell in there this morning.

There’s a hint of sweetness that I can’t explain, something familiar and comforting as much as it’s foreign.

I have a headache, but my chest isn’t on fire.

My body feels weird. I guess that’s no surprise.

Can’t remember ever having an episode this bad before.

Not even when I lost my v-card and was pretty sure I was having a heart attack at the ripe old age of sixteen.

No sense thinking about the past. I have enough trouble in the present.

Starting with fixing my damn truck that Cordie egged the night of her granny’s wake.

My tense muscles relax a little. That’s why I’m thinking about her.

I don’t have an incurable obsession with Cordie McCoy.

I’m thinking about her because she’s still fucking with my life.

I crack open my eyelids and see the same thing I always see first thing in the morning.

My plain white bedroom walls. The closed closet door to my left. The dresser to my right. Nothing on top and barely anything inside.

The same.

I breathe in and let my familiar surroundings center me the way they always do.

Empty is good. Empty helps me feel like I’m not losing my mind a little more with every passing year. Empty doesn’t have any trace of her in it, just like the past decade without her here in Utopia.

There’s nothing here to remind me of her, nothing to tempt my wayward thoughts toward the woman who takes up way too much space in my head.

No books. No trinkets. Nothing red. Nothing green.

I breathe out and look toward the plain white blankets that I kicked to the bottom of the bed in the middle of the night.

Instead, I see perfect tits. Cordie’s tits. I shouldn’t know their size and shape by memory, but I do. Wild horses couldn’t drag that confession out of me.

I laugh to myself. It’s better than screaming or crying or punching something. I know because I’ve tried it all. I’ll snap out of it eventually. Been living with this disease for half my life.

This latest relapse is her fault anyway. She came back to Utopia, and my life went right back to misery. I just had to go to The Flame to see if I was right. I was.

And now I know what her skin tastes like. That’s the problem.

I know things I shouldn’t know.

I’ll forget in a few days, and everything will go back to the way it’s supposed to be.

I crawl out of bed with that hope in mind. I only have to make it until she leaves town again. This time, for good. There’s nothing here for her anymore now that Granny McCoy has passed on.

My chest feels too tight all of a sudden. I fight for every breath as I stumble into the bathroom, pulling down my pants and grasping for my dick to point toward the toilet.

My hand closes around air.

Fuck.

I shut my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose.

Probably safer to pop a squat when I’m like this. It’s not like anyone can revoke my man card for sitting instead of standing. I live alone. Who’s going to know?

My ass meets the cool porcelain seat, and I open my eyes.

I’m calm. I’m cool. I’m collected.

I’m losing the rest of my mind .

I glance down and stare. And stare some more.

I close my eyes and open them again. The sight beneath my gaze doesn’t change.

I rub my fists against my scratchy eyeballs until they make a squishing noise.

My legs still look…too right.

These are not my legs that are bent at a ninety-degree angle. Not a hair anywhere. So much perfect, creamy skin. These are the thighs I’ve dreamt about leaving handprints on before wrapping them around my head.

The fantasies I can’t seem to shake have never gone this far before. Definitely not while I’m sitting on the goddamn toilet.

I flatten my hands and hold them out. No scars. No jagged nails, no calluses, no oil stains. These are long, slender fingers.

I know these hands, too. I’ve seen them clutching a book, curled into fists, grasping the straps of a worn backpack.

I’ve had vivid hallucinations of these hands wrapped around me in places that made me beg for mercy.

Fuck. I’ve really lost my whole damn mind this time.

I don’t know if I’ve even pissed yet, but I don’t give two shits.

I bolt off the toilet and dash for the mirror over my sink.

And then I scream.

Staring back at me is a face that’s haunted me for years.