Page 42 of Lover Forbidden
“Fuck,” he shouted into the wind.
Lowering his head, he felt his rage swell. But it wasn’t at his mate. It was at the fucking war, and the fuckingglymera, and the fucking throne.
He’d come back after thirty fucking years to exactly the kind of mess he’d left.
The only difference being that everyone he’d loved had suffered for three decades—and his son had grown up to be as disaffected and angry as he himself had been at his worst.
Same shit, new night.
Fuck.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There were a lot of reasons to work the night shift—better pay, less conversation, lower profile—but if you sucked at sleeping like Dev did? Well, then it was a win-win. If he wasn’t getting shut-eye, he might as well be earning money, right?
And bonus, his physical job made him so tired that his body had at least a chance of unplugging from his mind.
Not today, motherfucker. Not today.
A ghost was walking around his studio, and as much as he tried to ignore her, she was the only thing he could see.
Then again, he took minimalistic decor to a frat boy level, so there wasn’t much distraction.
Thanks to his blackout drapes, he was able to get the shoebox nice and midnight no matter the hour, and that was usually the last brick in his REM wall. The others were following his sleep hygiene ritual, and damn it, he’d done everything right after work had been called for those high winds: He’d taken his shower, thrown a frozen pizza in the oven, and avoided caffeine in all its forms—Cokes in the fridge, coffee ice cream in the freezer, Green Mountain pods by the Keurig.
Seven a.m. he’d been tucked in like a good little boy, and after that, he’d given the eyes-closed thing a shot.
And gotten fucking nowhere.
Maybe the problem was the early send-home that had cheated him out of another three to four hours of working out—
“Bullshit.”
That blonde was the problem. She’d danced around at the foot of his bed in that shimmering dress all fucking day long. And because she somehow had his remote control in her goddamn little hand, he’d just laid there against his two pathetically flat pillows, with his arms crossed over his bare chest and the rest of his naked body under the mismatched covers, watching the hallucination like it was his favorite frickin’ TV show.
Tell me your mental health had punched out for the day without…
With a groan, he sat up and rubbed his hair. His eyes were sandy and his jaw cracked as he yawned on purpose, not because he had to. He also had a monster hard-on.
Quick glance at his phone: “Thank fuck.”
Five p.m. Finally. Some people waited for that hour to have a drink. Him? It meant he could get out of bed and move about the proverbial cabin.
Getting up, he went into the bathroom and tried to take care of business for the benefit of his bladder. As he was sporting a two-by-four for a dumb handle, he had to brush his teeth and walk around, thinking of baseball—still not the season, but it did the trick—until things deflated enough to function. Back out in the open, he went to his dresser and grabbed his insulated running tights and his nylon socks. He didn’t bother with a shirt, just pulled on his windbreaker and a hat. Brooks Glycerin 55s went on like gloves—and then he put his actual gloves on.
The last thing he did was grab his phone and his earbuds.
The text telling him there was no work again was front and center where he’d left it when it’d come in at three in the afternoon. Day shift foreman still couldn’t get all the interior electric to come on after that crane at the receiving deck had wiped out the transformer as well as the generator.
Fine, he’d just try and outrun that blonde on the icy pavement. Best-case scenario his route took him to Vermont and back. Worst case? He slipped, fell, and gave himself a concussion that put him in a coma.
At least he’d get some sleep that way.
As Dev stepped out into the hall and locked his door, a voice said, “I made you the dinner then.”
Closing his eyes, he flattened his lips. Then he forced a level tone. “Mrs. Aoun, I told you, I don’t need—”
He shut his mouth as he turned around to find his five-foot-tall, white-haired, aproned neighbor planted directly in his path with a tray full of food. No doubt her door had been propped open—because of course it had—and he was willing to bet she’d been lying in wait for him to come out.
