Page 1 of A Sorrow of Truths

Chapter 1

Gray

One week later.

Manhattan traffic appears endless again.

I sneer at it and back away from the windows, dismissing the night along with it and heading into shadows of my own. Night. It seems only a few hours since I got in the jet and left somewhere I’m still longing for, clear blue skies leading the way back here. It isn’t. It’s a week. A long week of days that are monotonous and dreary in comparison.

Frowning, I look around the desolate apartment and watch shadows play over objects and art. She called me that. Or my suit, anyway. Called me dreary in comparison to her and her dress. It’s true. Was then. Is now. The dark is descending again, bringing more thoughts that don’t belong to me anymore and memories I would rather dismiss than keep considering as relevant to my life and it is becoming irritating.

I sip at the red wine and wander my way back through the halls, occasionally swaying to music that isn’t actually here with me. It’s loud to me, though. Sensual. Rolling and cascading. Painful to tolerate. It’s an overture that should be appreciated. Listened to, revelled in, remembered and imagined in its full glory. Dark hair. Dark lips. Dark words. And the beat is so strong. Heavy and powerful, as if overriding all other music that has ever been played.

My hand slips into my track pants of its own accord, pulling the gold chain out so I can twine it around my fingers again. It should be easier than this. Easier to dismiss. Easier to forget. Easier to discard. It isn’t, and for the moment I can do nothing other than keep feeling this chain in my hand as a reminder and hope that eventually it will become easier to discard.

Nothing is changing.

I look into the dusky confines of each room, barely seeing them for the images still circulating in my mind, and let the memories come without counter. I hope she still hurts as much as I do. She should. I left enough on her, and in her, for her to remember for weeks. My lasting possessive gift to something I don’t own in any way.

Chuckling lowly at that, I start heading for the study, both amused and glad to have her squirming for as long as she will. She deserved it, and I wanted what she asked me for. We were good together like that, and bound for a time by something other than the drugs and the lust that place causes.

I sigh at the thoughts, as I wander into another dark room and look over the stacks of files and the low, dim light casting my usual gloom around. With any luck she’ll keep staying with Malachi for a while longer, assuming she’s still there, and let the memory of me dissipate as she loses herself in whatever hedonism he offers to distract her. It’ll give us both more time. Time for me to fall back into normal mundanity and research, and time for her to realise that I am not anything more than I was for the few nights we had.

She’ll evolve passed me then. Grow and find her new life without me in it. Maybe then she can come back to the apartment I own and choose to leave it rather than torment me with the floors between us, because those same floors are already tempting me. They seem to creak and groan beneath me, as if they’re in my bones and blood even though I know she’s not in the apartment yet.

Leaving will be best when she gets here.

Her leaving will be easiest.

I eventually sit at the desk and open up spreadsheets and data files, correlating the specifics into manageable details for analysis, and let the chain drape the desk beside me while I do. It glitters under the low light, distracting me from my task just like it has done all the time I’ve been back here. But I can’t seem to let it go. Don’t want to. I want it close, as if the torment of the memory is needed. Hours go by in here. Real hours. Hours that are managed by time and clocks that tick through minutes. I should be lost in them – working. I miss the sense of nothing the chain provided, though, and I miss the sense of everything she gave me in that nothing.

More time passes and I end up rubbing the bridge of my nose, pushing the pads of my hands into the corners of my eyes to ease the tension of looking at screens and data. Still no useable results. I’m not surprised. I haven’t concentrated on anything successfully. It’s just been a process. An ongoing, unfruitful, and entirely unproductive process.

And it’s my own damn fault.

The thought makes me lean back and stare at my phone, damned fingers itching to pick it up and call him, ask about her. I shouldn’t. I know that. But it’s eating me up not knowing where she is. Maybe she’s left already, headed to see family rather than come back here. I shake off the thought and stare back at the screens, a long breath pulled in. Data. Work. I’ll see him soon enough anyway. Can’t avoid that. It’s the one event he manages to get me to, or has done for the last few years at least. I could avoid it, I suppose. Maybe I should this year.

Chapter 2

Hannah

Idon’t know how long it’s been. As always, hours and days seem to blend into each other here. No clocks on the walls, no alarms to get you ready for the day to begin. I roll onto my stomach and look out through the window, eyes gazing at the storm outside. No clear skies today. It’s raging out there, wind and snow howling passed us in this place. No one cares, me included, but it is calling me out into it, tempting me to walk in it so I can feel the chill it offers. I’m too warm here. Too languid and, now I’m thinking about it, bored.

The sound of the door into my room opening makes me look over at it and watch as Malachi wanders in and heads for the chair in the window. I say my room. It’s our room really, mine and Gray's, or maybe just Gray’s, but he’s not here with me. I’m alone, regardless of all the offers I’ve had since he left. No one else but him. I don’t want anyone else but him.

Including Malachi.

He sits and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, raking me up and down with his gaze. “Why are you in here?”

“It’s quiet,” I reply.

“You didn’t come here for quiet. Quiet is out there in the other world.”

“Where Gray is.”

He frowns and slowly looks outside rather than at me, huffing. “We’ve discussed this already. Find something else to fuck.”

“I don’t want anything else. And you said you’d help. And then you stopped helping and told me to go play with things until I was ready for your help.”