They say when you lose a limb, you still feel it for a while. Phantom pain. Nerves firing into nothing.
That’s what it felt like.
Like Darian’s touch was a phantom woven into my skin, impossible to wash away. His scent was worse—chocolate mint threaded with earth and storm air—branding itself into the folds of my mind. No soap could reach it. No water could drown it.
Tabitha growled at me, frustrated, furious. Stop it, she snapped from the corner of my mind. He’s ours. His touch belongs on us. His scent belongs on us. You’re hurting us—
I shut her out.
Silence. Cold, punishing silence.
She was sulking now, punishing me with her absence, and the quiet was deafening. Without her steady growl, her anchoring presence, my thoughts began to spiral.
One scrub.
Another.
Another.
Too much
