He has wrung the last of my energy.
“Made for me.” Darius nuzzles into my neck as he jerks inside of me.
He squeezes me to him, and I do the same. Filling him with as much love and affection as I can.
We are both empty batteries, charging each other instead of ourselves, but that's okay.
Eventually we draw apart. On wobbly legs, I make my way to my feet. “Meet me upstairs? Your room?”
“My room?”
“Like old times sake? Watch movies?”
Darius’s eyes light up. “Please.”
***
Cleaned up for the third time, I find my way to Darius’s bed. He has left my spot open for me, and I crawl into it.
“Horror, right?” he jokes, and I give him a soft tap to the shoulder.
“I know, comedy it is. Let’s watch the one about the spy that was frozen.”
And that is where we stay, until my eyes grow heavy, and eventually Darius readjusts until I am laying on him completely, my head on his chest.
I make it through about ten minutes of the movie before I fall into a deep sleep.
41
October 9th
“How did I know I would find you here?” Axel shoulders open the office door.
Grayson glances up from the stack of papers in front of him. “Because there isn’t anywhere else I would be. It’s not like I have any hobbies.”
Axel steps further into the room, kicking the door shut behind him before settling into the chair across from Grayson. “She doesn’t understand when you leave like that. She’s going to think you’re angry with her.”
“How? How could I possibly be angry with her? The only person that I am upset with is myself. Not only for Sunday, but Darius too. All that they went through. Not only this lifetime. But all of them. I was always one step behind.” Because of their mother, Grayson has never drank, but right now he is craving it.
Something,anythingto take the edge off. To provide a reprieve from the pain and guilt and grief that threaten to swallow him whole.
“It isn’t your job to keep us all safe Grayson.” Axel sweeps forward, gathering the papers into his hands, flipping through them. “Isn’t it lonely up there? You keep forcing Darius and me away. Making yourself nearly untouchable. Soon enough you’ll shove Sunday away too. And then what?”
Grayson narrows his eyes. “She’s too young. I should never have allowed myself to…to…”
“To fall in love with her? Well it’s too late now.” Axel’s lips quirk. “Looks like the restaurant is booming, even after you closed it for the last week, but we need to replace a few hires. Fucking Rick. When he called her munchkin, I suspected, but I hoped it wasn’t true.”
They had decided to shutter the doors temporarily after Sunday was taken. “What are we supposed to do now?” The question tumbles from Grayson’s lips before he can catch it.
Axel sets the papers down and levels him with a stare. “You need to pull the stick out of your ass. To stop getting in your own way. You need to show Sunday how much you care about her, how much you love her.”
“But I don’t deserve her!” Grayson jumps to his feet, the words echoing around his office. It is in the back of the restaurant. The place he always goes to get ahold of himself.
“None of us do! But all of us? All of us together? We can take care of her. Be everything she needs. And she will heal, she will make it through this. She’s tougher than you give her credit for,” Axel speaks levelly, reclining further back in the chair.
“That’s rich.” But Grayson doesn’t argue, he rakes his fingers through his hair. “What if she doesn’t want this? What if we’re all too much for her? Fuck, I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve never had a girlfriend!”
“Technically you’re in your thirties if we include all the time loops, which means Sunday is in her twenties,” Axel jests, but at Grayson’s glare, he puts his hands up in surrender. “Jokes aside, Grayson, you need to just open your eyes. She cares about us. All of us. And she has for a very long time. Maybe not at the beginning of all of this, but along the way, Sunday has become ours.”
