Page 104 of Severed Heart

Desire.

So much desire.

Shame threatens to consume me for the last as I nurse the pint until I’m numb to it all. Sometime later, I feel myself being lifted, warm lips pressing to my temple as I’m deposited into bed. Pulled under from too much drink, I feel the gentle brush of his fingertips along my profile just before his whisper of promise surrounds me. “I’m coming back. I swear to God, Delphine, I’m coming back to you.”

“Soldier,” I finally croak, willing myself to rouse, to open my eyes. But when I finally manage to, he’s gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

TYLER

“SLIPPIN’” BY DMXcroons from a nearby speaker playing background to Sean’s latest philosophical rant. One I’ve tuned out of from where I sit in a child-sized bean bag on Dom’s bedroom floor.

“You’re missing my point, man,” Sean argues while pinching the joint between his fingers. Ankles crossed, his dirty boots hang over the edge of Dom’s decades-old twin mattress. Perched against the wall at the head of it, Dom flips the page of the book in his lap.

“I don’t think you have a point,” I grumble, peering through the gap of Dom’s bedroom door to the vacant room across the hall. Tobias’s recent extended absences are more notable since he gambled his way into becoming a millionaire and forming Exodus. That power play starting a pendulum swing, its underside serving as the chopping blade now gradually lowering toward Roman.

With Sean stepping up and my current army positioned, I’m as comfortable as I can be leaving. Aside from the guttural ache for the woman somewhere in this house, that has me mentally pushing back the departure date further and further away. I’ve exhausted myself in the days since our fight to give her space. Continually running past my recruiter’s office to avoid the signature, pulling extra shifts at the garage, upping my workouts, as well as wearing my fucking wrist out in the shower—the usual.

Growing more and more anxious to get to her with every hourly chirp of my watch, my hope rides on that if we can work things out, I’ll be stationed close. Luckily enough, there are plenty of bases within driving distance, so I can keep a close watch on the club while lengthening our growing roster. Hopefully, while still earning the woman I’m growing desperate to claim.

That isifI can get her to give in. Aside from the physical, it’s been surreal to get so close to her. If the attraction wasn’t so fucking brutally apparent now, I might’ve been able to settle for our friendship alone. Now that it’s out there, I can’t let it go. The torture is evident in my obvious agitation in these last few days and only made more apparent when Sean brings his Zippo to the end of his newly rolled joint.

“Don’t light that shit while I’m in this room,” I snap.

Dom flips another page without looking up. “Don’t be a dick. You know his piss has to sparkle.”

“Is secondhand smoke a myth?” Sean quips with the click of his Zippo, running the flame teasingly along the joint. “Shall we find out?”

“Fuck you.” I stand to make a quick exit while giving him a withering look. Closing his book, Dom, too, glares at Sean, no added words necessary.

“Jesus, I wasn’t going to light it,” Sean says, ducking under our wrath-filled stares. “I was just fucking around.”

“Remember the last time you fucked around and ended up with a piss puddle in your panties?” Dom clips, rubbing salt in the long-healing wound between Sean and me, his brand of brash far worse than his aunt’s.

“Jesus, Dom,” I expel on exhale, shooting him a cutting look.

“Sorry, man,” Sean clips toward me, eyes lowering.

“It’s cool, brother,” I assure, after noting his long swallow. “I’m just in a shit head space tonight.”

His stinging eyes lift at my tone, holding mine for a beat before he nods.

“I think I’ll go for a run,” I give in an excuse to make my exit.

“Don’t stray too far,” Sean says, “we shouldn’t be long.”

Their mission tonight is to do recon for their upcoming heist. One I had a major hand in devising but am not allowed in any way to participate in. An order doled out bybothKing brothers because of how close I am to marching.

“I’m good. I’ll just catch up with y’all tomorrow.” As I start to make my exit, I spot the plastic-wrapped cap and gown hanging on the back of Dom’s bedroom door and glance at him. “Tobias coming?”

Dom lifts a shoulder without looking up. “Wouldn’t know. You talk to him more than me these days.”

Sean catches my gaze, giving me a subtle shake of his head that the subject of Tobias is off-limits. While Tobias might skip the ceremony to keep a low profile, I know he’ll be here to celebrate after in some way.

Closing the door of Dom’s room as they spark up, I stalk through the house, following the drift of French music to spot Delphine’s boom box on the ledge of the open kitchen window—a tape playing, pouring a melody through the open screen.

As I approach the sliding glass door, I spot dozens of drafts of the maps I requested on the table. The sight of what looks like endless hour’s worth of effort has my insides rattling. Confirmation that she’s been thinking of me since the night I scooped her from the kitchen floor for the first time in months. Gutted thatIwas the reason for her overindulgence that night as I tucked her in and whispered my promise. Knowing she heard me, her eventual return whisper saying as much as she called my name in summons just after I reached her bedroom door. It was all I could do to continue to give her the space she asked for. It was both brutal and beautiful to watch her realize her feelings for me. So much so it’s been a different kind of fucking hell delaying whatever decision waits for me on the other side of the glass door.