Page 29 of Torn

She hugs me tighter. “Don’t be sad. We can share my daddy.”

I can’t help but smile. “Thank you, Kenzi. That’s very sweet.”

She soon falls asleep against my chest like she always does. The sound of her breathing is calming, and not wanting to wake her prevents me from getting up to raid the liquor cabinet and get drunk off my ass to numb the pain.

My father is gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye or thank him for being such a great father and supporting all my dreams.

Dreams that I now have to let go, to take care of his family and his shop. It’s what he would want and expect, and I owe him that.

Kenzi stirs and I look down at her peaceful sleeping face. She’s a little younger than my sister, Tesla. I should probably be with her, comforting her, telling her everything will be okay, but I don’t have it in me to be there for all of them tonight.

Tonight, I just need someone to comfort me for once.

KENZI

His door is closed.

I stand outside it in the hallway, in a state of utter confusion. He’s never closed his door before.

Why today?

I have to believe it means something, this suddenly closed door. Is he trying to tell me something? Did I do or say something to make him mad? Have I been too clingy?

Is he drawing a line where there never was one before?

The scent of the lasagna cooking in the oven makes my stomach growl in protest as I stare at the door for a long time, contemplating its meaning.

I knock softly and wait. I don’t hear a sound on the other side, so I knock harder. Still nothing. I bang harder.

“Tor?”

I press my ear against the door and the sound of his light snoring is all I can hear.

Screw it.

I open the door and step inside his room, feeling slightly guilty, but that quickly turns into something entirely different when my eyes land on him, lying on top of his white down comforter innothing but black shorts. I literally freeze midstep and just stare at him, my breath caught in my throat as a swarm of feelings I’ve never felt before possess me.

I’ve seen Toren practically every day of my entire life. I’ve seen him as a teen and I’ve seen him as a man. I’ve seen him happy, sad, sick, drunk, behind bars, on a motorcycle, in a truck, grieving, pissed off, loving, playful, and serious. But I’ve never seen him look like he just fell out of some magical portal of hotness.

I knew he started working out a lot again over the winter, but I had no idea how big and muscular his entire body had become. Or maybe he was always like this? The ink I noticed earlier and tried not to look at spans across his defined abs—words in Gothic script that I can’t read from where I’m still frozen, and a portrait of a female warrior takes up most of his torso and rib cage. A black raven covers one of his pecs, its wings seeming to flutter with his breathing.

Inching closer to the bed, I notice his hair is untied and damp, falling across half his face. I desperately want to reach out and push it away because he hates his hair in his face, but a little voice inside me says touching him right now, while he’s lying in bed nearly naked, would be crossing a line.

Another new line has mysteriously popped up. I’ve touched Tor a million times. But today, now, like this… it feels wrong because something about it also feels so right, so needed, so demanded, so naturally instinctive that it shakes me right down to my toes. And that can only mean something really, really good, or really, really bad.

Swallowing, I say his name softly. “Tor?”

He doesn’t move or wake.

The man sleeps like the dead.

I gently nudge his shoulder, warm and hard under my hand. “Tor? Wake up.”

His eyes open and slowly focus on me, and goose bumps sprinkle across my flesh when he smiles sleepily at me. It feels faintly sensual, knowing I am the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.

“I’m… I’m sorry… I knocked but it didn’t wake you,” I stammer, feeling even more exposed than he is. Can he tell I was looking at him while he was sleeping?

He sits up and stretches his arms over his head, flexing his fingers, and my stomach does the flippies again at the sight of his chiseled chest and abs straining as he arches his back.