Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,22
chest. “Symphath, remember? I can read your grid. You’re getting worse and not better—”
Trez burst to his feet and headed for the exit, opening the door. “I gotta get back to work. Thanks for stopping by. Tell Ehlena hi—”
The door slammed shut on him, the knob ripped from his hand, the lights flickering throughout the office.
In a low, evil voice, Rehv said, “Sit the fuck down. This conversation is not a two-way.”
Trez pivoted around. His former employer, one of his best friends, was looming beside the desk, his purple eyes flashing, the tremendous bulk of his body seeming to have gotten even bigger. It was a reminder that even though the big bastard was a happily mated male who had settled down, Rehv was still the kind of force you didn’t want to cross.
“I know where you’ve been going,” Rehv said in that symphath voice. “Down by the river. I know what you think about when you’re behind the wheel of your car. I can see your emotional grid collapsing, and I am very well aware of your sudden fondness for cold fucking water.”
Well, Trez thought. Put like that, what could he say? Disneyland?
Rehv pointed his cane at Trez. “Do you think I have any interest in living the rest of my nights in regret after I know all this and do nothing? Huh? You think that’s a burden I want to strap on and carry around with me until I die?”
Trez cursed and paced around. On his second trip back and forth to the bathroom, he found himself wishing his office was big as a football field.
“In light of the way I use dopamine,” Rehv continued, “I went to Ehlena and asked her if there was anything that could help you. An antidepressant. Or what I’m on. I don’t fucking know. I don’t know how it works. She said you should come talk to her and Jane—”
“No!” Trez put his hands up to his head and prayed he didn’t get another one of his migraines. Holding in the urge to scream was a helluva trigger. “I’m not going on some kind of drug—”
“—to see what your options are.” Rehv raised his voice, talking right over the protests. “And get an assessment. They may be able to help you.”
Trez sat his ass down on the sofa because he didn’t trust himself not to try to push Rehv through the glass behind the desk. Then again, there was no possibility of him pulling a sneak attack. That symphath sonofabitch no doubt knew he had switched from suicidal to homicidal, and there was only one other bag of carbon-based molecules in the room to target that impulse on.
“Listen to me,” Rehv said in a softer voice. “All those nights I had to go up to that cabin, you were with me. You were there. You protected me and you saved my life too many times to count.”
“I owed you,” Trez countered bitterly. “I was servicing my debt.”
“That wasn’t all there was to it. And don’t lie just because you’re pissed at me for calling you on your shit. I can read your grid.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I know and that’s why I don’t want to hear it.” Trez looked over. “I get that you think you’re helping, and thanks for that. But I just want some privacy, okay?”
“So you can kill yourself in peace?”
“It’s my life to take,” he said roughly. “You have your own life and it’s a good one. You’ll get over it.”
Rehv’s brows came down hard. “Like you’re getting over Selena so well? How’s that party you’re throwing, to borrow your phrase?”
“She was my shellan. I was just a friend to you.”
“Bullshit. You’re my family. You’re iAm’s blooded brother. And you’re also family to a whole shitload of people who would suffer like hell if anything happened to you. And cut the shit with the past tense, asshole. You’re still breathing—at least until I choke some sense into you.”
Trez held that purple stare, which was every bit as angry as he himself was feeling, and as he considered where they were both at, he was really glad they hadn’t taken out their weapons. Yet.
Except then he laughed… or Jesus, maybe it was more of a giggle.
And the levity came from God only knew where. Someplace even deeper than his grief, he supposed. But as the totally inappropriate sound came up his tight throat, he didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping it in.