“I had forgotten how it felt…” he rasped, a crease forming on his brow. “How is it possible to forget such fear? Such pain? Such loss?” I tried to get up, needing to escape the burning hot cage of his body but his hands hardened on me, his muscles tensing in warning. “Do not leave,” he growled, the command weakened by the quiet desperation lacing those words. “Without you, I will return to that vacant place, that hellish nothing.”
