Page 146 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Watching Marc hang a shelf was an experience I was entirely unprepared for.
He’d lined up everything on the bathroom counter with a precision that would have felt excessive if the result wasn’t so clearly going to be perfect—laser level, anchors, the right drill bit selected and set aside with the same focused attention he gave everything. He pressed two fingers to the wall and made a mark with a pencil. Checked the level twice.
Then the drill started and something in my brain went offline and my body was an inferno of lust.
“Your sexiness just went up two points,” I announced.
He didn’t pause. “What was I at before?”
“A solid eight.”
He looked at me over his shoulder with a grin that did additional damage. “Then that makes me a ten. I’ll take it, Hart.”
I backed out of the doorway before I made a decision I’d regret before the shelves were finished. I had priorities.
The living room was safe territory. I stood for a moment in the middle of it, taking in the particular late-night quality of the apartment. Then I went to my suitcase to throw clothes together for later.
I unzipped it. Reached for my favorite sundress. And stopped.
My hand stilled on the fabric.
The suitcase sat in the middle of the living room floor like it had since I’d arrived. I’d been living out of it for months, pulling things out and putting them back, navigating around it in the morning. I’d told myself it was practical. That it made sense to keep things consolidated when the closet was full and the bedroom closed and everything was …
The bedroom was right there.
Down the short hallway. Door closed. The same way it had been since mid August when I’d come back for her funeral, stood in the doorway, and couldn’t make myself go in.
Aunt Jem’s life was still in that room. Her reading glasses were probably still on the nightstand. Her robe was likely still on the hook behind the door. Everything exactly where she left it because she hadn’t known she was leaving.
The thought arrived without warning.
I always thought we had more time.
Why didn’t we have more time?
I didn’t know how to fully live my life without the one person who made me feel whole. The one person who made me feel seen. The one person who thought I was enough just as I was.
The tears came before I could brace for them. Unable to hold myself up, I pressed against the wall. A sob racked my body as my legs gave out. I slid down the flat surface, instinctively pulling my knees to my chest because it was the only thing my body knew how to do. A hollowness deep within my soul, that had formed the day I walked into this apartment, with that suitcase and refused to enter her room, split wide open.
My hands clutched my stomach where this unbearable pain had settled beneath my ribs. A whimper escaped my lips as my heart cracked in half once again. It was like reliving the news that she’d passed. I barely survived that the first time, and now it was like it was happening all over again. The emotions I’d told myself I’d dealt with. That sorrow that lived in my bones had not been buried deep enough, and tonight they burst forth from beneath the rubble of my denial, my anguish, my anger at her being gone.
Tears tracked down my cheeks faster than I could brush them away.
I was on the floor crying over a suitcase. And I couldn’t stop.
I could practically hear Aunt Jem’s voice in my ear:It’s time sweetheart.
It should’ve been comforting, but no amount of comfort could make what lay beyond that door okay.
The drill went silent. I should’ve checked in with Marc, but my muscles stopped working.
“Hey I finished—Delaney!”
The clatter of something hitting the tile registered. Then he was across the room on the floor next to me, and I was in his arms. He embraced me, my face tucked into the hollow of his throat, his hand making long strokes up and down my back. “Hey, I’ve got you. Take a breath.” His voice reached me through the panic. I held on to it, let it anchor me, my breathing catching his rhythm. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “I’m f-fine.”
His hand kept moving, tracing my spine—slow, never stopping. “You’renotfine. Tell me.”
