Who the fuck hit me over the head with a shovel? Because that’s how this feels like. Hit me over the head, and then kicked me in the chest for good measure.

Or… I’m sick. Right.

Tay said so.

Haven’t been sick in ages. Not physically sick, not like this, except when I drank too fucking much, but even then… This is like rusty nails being hammered into my skull, into the back of my eyeballs, into every joint in my body.

Guess it was a long time coming. The total destruction of Matt Hansen.

“You will lose what she has lost,” a voice whispers in my ear—or maybe inside my mind. The room swims in my eyes every time I open them, so I shut them again, and drift like a log on a river, gently spinning. “You will lose what’s precious to you.”

What’s precious? What’s the most precious thing?

My kids.

And Octavia. Her touch, her voice.

No, no. This makes no sense.

Nothing makes sense.

The river current gets stronger, whisking me down, over rocks, between logs, and it’s getting colder. I can’t stop shivering.

“Tay,” I whisper, because she can warm me up. She can pull me out of the water.

The other option is the bottom of his river, with the fish and the dead things.

“I’m here,” she says, and some warmth returns to my body. Blankets, I think, being wrapped around me, and something cool is placed on my burning forehead. “Rest.”

No choice but to do what she says. I feel like I’ve been running forever. I’m so fucking tired, I just can’t… can’t go on like this.

“Then let go,” Emma says. She’s sitting on the bed beside me, dressed in one of her favorite dresses, a black one with white polka dots. Her hair is gathered at the back of her neck and her face is grave.

“Of what?”

“Of me.”

A jolt goes through me, and I realize it’s fear. “I can’t. I fucking can’t, you know that.”

“You have to, Matt.”

“No fucking way. You can’t ask this of me.”

“I’m tied down.” And I know she’s telling the truth. “I don’t want you to go down with me.”

“Emma, no.”

She touches my face, and her hand is cold, so cold. “I want you to live, because I love you. Take care of our kids. And take care of yourself.”

I’m crying. I’m fucking crying like a baby, and I don’t care. I don’t want her to go, dammit. The tears rolling down my face are cold, like her hand.

“It’s okay,” she says.

But it’s not her.

I blink, and the pretty eyes looking into mine are familiar. “Tay.” I reach for her, and she lets me pull her down, close. “She’s gone.” I grab the back of Octavia’s head and drag her closer, until her face is pressed up to my neck. “Gone.”

She nods, the movement soft against my skin. “Yes, she is.”

I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper. “She’s not coming back.”

She shakes her head against my neck.

“She was right here with me. Emma was here.” I struggle to keep my voice steady. “What’s even real?”

A voice in my head says, “You will lose what she has lost.” Who said that? Who told me that?

“I’m real,” Octavia says.

She is. She’s here. Not a ghost, not a memory, but flesh and delicate bone, a soft voice and that smile that warms me up like the sun.

“Now you’ll make me blush,” she whispers.

Did I say all that out loud? “I feel drunk,” I inform her.

“You’re sick. You’ll get better.” She lifts her head. “Let me take care of you.”

I turn my face away. I don’t want her to see how fucking shattered I am after the dream, after the realization that came at its heels. I’m laid open, my control gone, my defenses crushed.

Don’t want her to see how I want to believe her, how much I fucking need her, now more than ever.

How I want her to take care of me, to stay with me.

She’s trying to save me, but I don’t think she can.

* * *

I wake up what feels like ages later. My eyes are gritty, and my whole body aches. It’s dark outside the window, and inside the room only my bedside lamp is on, casting soft yellow light.

The bed creaks and moves, and a shadow unfolds and approaches me. Fragile, slender, and I know who it is. I don’t think it’s Emma, not even for a second, which is weird, and I frown.

Octavia leans over me. “Hey, you. How do you feel?”

Maybe it’s her scent, so unique and sweet. Maybe it’s the shape of her body, of her hair, of her face as she comes into focus.

Or maybe she’s the one I expect to see.

And the fact I expect to see her tells you just how fucked I am. Not only because it means I don’t expect Emma anymore, that I’ve given up on that illusion—but because Octavia won’t be here always.

Or even for much longer. A girl like her, she’ll find a boyfriend her age, get married and have kids—or go to college. She only works for me, and yeah, we fucked twice, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Can’t mean anything, not to a pretty girl like her. So young. I know for some people twelve years aren’t that big of an age difference, but on days like this… yeah, tonight those twelve years that separate us feel like a century.

I guess tonight I just feel way too old for my twenty-nine years. Hey, I’ll be thirty soon.

Practically an old man.

“Matt?” She’s still leaning over me, and damn, I completely spaced out.

“Yeah,” I grind out. “M’good.”

She puts her hand on my forehead, and it’s cool and smooth, and my eyes close from the gentleness of the gesture. It hits me straight in the chest.

Yeah, she’s gonna break me right through.

Something’s nagging at me, though. I frown and open my eyes to look at her. “You didn’t go home tonight.”

“I’m staying.”

And fuck me for the hope that lights up inside me, reading her words in the way I want to read them.

So I do what I always do: I break the moment. Get a hit in before life kicks the shit out of me.

“Go home,” I mutter, and then drive the nail deeper. “I don’t need a fucking nanny. It’s my kids I’m paying you for.”

She flinches, and a sick pain travels through my head, my chest.

Because this is Octavia, and it’s just wrong. “Tay…”

“Don’t worry,” she whispers and turns away. She walks to the window, looking out. “This night’s on me. Call it a gift. If you know the meaning of the word.”

Fuck. You piece of shit, Matt. “Hey, listen…”

She doesn’t turn around. “I read the message you found on the door.”

Holy fuck, I forgot about it. “You will lose what she has lost,” I whisper.

“I called the police, told them about it.”

Good thinking, girl.

“They were asking if you know what it means.”

“I don’t.”

Is it about Emma? She lost… her life.

We lost her.

No, this makes no sense.

“Tay, come here.”

She hesitates.

I don’t fucking blame her. And I’m still turning over in my mind the fact I expected to see Octavia when I woke up.

Octavia, not Emma.

And I was glad that I was right, that she was the one I saw when I opened my eyes.

What the fuck does that mean?

My hands fist in the covers, and my stomach is churning, and I’m back in a cemetery, standing over an open grave, a red rose in my hand and a gaping hole in my chest.

I’m looking down at her coffin, at her face.

And then I’m looking down at myself, lying in that fucking coffin, fucking dead and gone and done with.

Hell.

“Matt.” Octavia walks back to my side. “Matt, look at me.”

I do, and her sweet face brings me back to the room, the bed, the goddamn scent of her that fills me up like hope.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” I tell her, my voice so hoarse I barely recognize it. I reach for her, tug her to my side until she half-falls on the bed. “I want you here. Christ, you don’t know how much.”

She curls up on the bed beside me as my mind spins in circles, the image of myself in that coffin flashing through my thoughts like it means something.

What, though?

I tried to end myself, bury myself. Bury the pain.

But the pain is inside me, an open vein spilling poison, bleeding out. Was that why I tried to cut myself open? To let the poison out?

Well, it didn’t work. I guess I’ll have to learn to live with it.

And my dream with Emma… Fuck, no. I don’t believe in this shit. Messages from the Great Beyond. This is all my own mind, making up excuses for myself.

And yet… Emma always told me she wanted me to be happy. Not to stop living. I just couldn’t bear to think about the possibility of life going on without her.

Until now.

* * *

My fever breaks at some point, and when I open my eyes in the gray darkness, I feel much better.

I’m not sure what woke me up until I realize I’m on my back with Octavia half-sprawled over me and my dick rock hard and aching.

“Tay…” I breathe against her loose hair, and she moans—a soft, feathery sound that shoots straight to my balls, tightening them.

Fuck…

She’s dressed in one of my T-shirts, I realize, huge on her, and the fabric is riding high on her hips, allowing a glimpse of her panties.

God, that glimpse is driving me crazy. She’s so hot, and she doesn’t even know it. All I want is to tear the soft cotton down her legs and bury myself inside her.

She shifts, another breathless moan escaping her, and I wonder if she’s dreaming. If she feels me underneath her, hard and so damn turned out I have to hold very still not to rub against her.

But apparently I don’t even have to try, because she’s doing it for me, shifting again, rubbing herself on me until my whole body tenses. My stomach clenches, and I groan, shoving my hand inside her panties, finding and parting her folds.

She’s soaked and scorching hot around my fingers. I push them deep inside her, stroking her, and she makes a mewling noise, her hips rocking.

God, she’s killing me.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I fingerfuck her, harder, faster. Her nipples are hard points pressing into my chest, the silk of her hair warm and smelling of flowers, wrapped around my neck.

She’s wrapped around me, and I don’t want her to release me.

That’s my last thought before she clenches hard, almost breaking my fingers, and lets out a small cry, writhing on top of me.

And I come.

My body seizes up, my cock spasms pressed between us, and I shoot my load with a long-drawn groan I can’t stop.

She blinks sleepily at me. Smiles a soft smile.

It undoes the last knots in my chest, and I close my eyes again, pulling her closer, tucking her against me until she’s once again sprawled like a starfish over me.

Drowsy, my every muscle gone lax, surrounded by her scent, I fall asleep once more, until morning.

* * *

Light is cutting through my lashes, stabbing my eyeballs, and I roll on my side with a grunt.

The shadow across the room turns into a pretty girl, and I blink at Octavia who’s puttering around my room, folding clothes and tidying up my meager belongings.

“I will talk to Ross,” she says, “This can’t go on.”

“What…?” I try to chase the fuzz from my brain—because I slept. Through most of the night. A fucking first. “Wait, Tay. No.”

“You can’t stop me.”

I roll this around in my mind. “Then I’m coming with you.”

How did that happen, how did I sleep when I haven’t been able to get any shut-eye for more than a couple of hours, tops, every night since Emma passed?

And then I remember Octavia’s body curled beside me, her arm over my stomach, her breath on my neck.

My fingers inside her as she came, her face flushed, her moans, and how I came all over myself like a teenager.

Damn. No wonder the front of my T-shirt is stuck to my chest.

Octavia is staring at me. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to come with me.”

I force my mind back to the conversation. “Yeah, I do.”

“I can do this on my own. If I took every nasty word everyone around here had for me, for us, I’d be rocking in a corner by now,” Octavia mutters, her eyes bright. “I have to face him. It won’t be the first time.”

She’s fierce. I realize I underestimated her. There’s nothing fragile about her now.

“Us? Who, your family?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What about?”

She shrugs, stops still for a moment, her expression closing up. “There are these… rumors that my mom slept around. She won’t say who our dad is, and everyone says each one of us, me, Gigi, Merc, have a different one. And then I had the braces…”

“Braces?” I rub a hand over my eyes, trying to focus, because damn, everything’s fuzzy.

“Yeah, braces.” And she bares her teeth—perfect, small, white teeth. She looks like one of those laughing foxes they show sometimes on Discovery channel.

A cute fox, and I find myself laughing quietly.

What is she doing to me? I want to laugh, and weep. I want to hold her, protect the bright flame of her mind, and beat up the goddamn bullies for notching scars in her confidence.

“Fucking bullies,” I mutter. If she just points me the right way, and I’ll punch them for her, but she doesn’t want that. She wants to face them on her own.

But I really don’t want her alone with Ross again, because that motherfucker is just—

“Hey.” I focus on her. “What are you doing with those?”

“I’m going to trim your beard,” she declares, coming at me with a pair of scissors I didn’t know I owned.

“Where did you get that?”

“Your bathroom.”

Huh. I put my hand on my beard protectively. “But I should get ready for work.”

“You’re not going in today.”

I blink at her. “Says who?”

“Says me.” She winks. She fucking winks! “I already called the garage.”

“You did, huh?”

Can’t remember the last time someone took care of me, and don’t know how to deal with it, but my mouth keeps wanting to smile, so I give in and shake my head, grinning at her.

I swear, this girl…

“Lean back, and close your eyes,” she says, all bossy and shit, and no matter how battered my body feels, it can’t stop my dick from stirring.

“What the fuck will you do, trim my beard in the shape of a heart, or what?”

She blushes. “Just shorter.” I don’t close my eyes as she leans in, staring at the determined look on her face. She’s wielding those scissors kinda dangerously. “Have you always had a beard?”

“Since I was five,” I tell her solemnly.

She snorts and snips away, her brows arching before her expression returns to its former focus. “Really.”

“No.” I finally close my eyes, just for this. “Since Emma died.”

She pauses for a few seconds, not touching me. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she whispers.

I say nothing, squeezing my eyes tighter, as if that will block the pain.

After a moment, she starts trimming again, her fingertips light on my cheekbone, on my jaw, on my neck, the snick snick of the scissors soothing.

“Have you checked on the kids?” I ask when she stops and tugs on my beard, as if checking to see how her work looks.

“They had breakfast and are watching TV.” And before I speak, she goes on, “On your phone, you had some messages from a Zane, and a Kaden. Also, yesterday… we called Grandma.”

I open my eyes, shocked. “My mother?”

She straightens, bites on her lower lip. “Yes. The kids wanted it.”

“Dammit.” Anger fills me. Then guilt and sadness. Then relief. “Good. I should’ve done it long ago.”

“Well, your mom’s fine. If you were worried.” She seems to doubt that.

“I know. I asked Kaden and Zane to keep tabs on her.”

“Who are they?”

“My adopted brother. And my blood brother.”

She nods. “You should call them back. They were asking if you’re still alive.”

“Fucking drama queens.” I did answer their calls from time to time, to avoid having them come down in person to check on me, but just not all the time.

Okay, not most of the time.

The temptation to close my eyes again and ignore the world is strong. So damn strong. It’s how I’ve coped all this time.

But the gate is open now, battered down, and I know she’s right. I should call them.

“Anything else you feel you should tell me?” I grouse.

Too many truths for one single fucking morning.

“You look good with your beard trimmed,” she says without missing a beat, the little minx, smirking at me. “Promise to think about shaving?”

Speechless. I’m fucking speechless.