...she wanted her parents with a painful intensity that was almost humiliating...

That was what was gone from Julian, she thought, shivering again. The thousands of emotions that had always lived behind his expressions, the love-for her, for his siblings-behind his eyes. Even his worry seemed to have gone, and that was stranger than anything else.

Yeah,” he said, eyelashes lowering as his gaze traced the movement of her fingers. “It hurt me being away from you. It feels like there’s a hook dug in under my ribs, and there’s something pulling at the other end. Like I’m tethered to you, no matter the distance.

He was beautiful. The most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She wanted to crawl inside his skin, live where he breathed.