I pinched the bridge of my nose. “No, roses won’t do. I need lilies. They—”

The phone was snatched from my ear before I could say anything else.

“She’ll call you tomorrow,” Rowan barked at the florist before he hung up the phone.

“Hey!” I scowled at him. “You cannot just snatch the phone from people.”

Rowan did not respond to this. He was too busy sliding my phone in his pocket and lifting me over his shoulder.

“Hey!” I shouted again. “Put me down.” I banged on his back for emphasis. Which did nothing. I may as well have been hitting steel.

Rowan closed the door behind us as Maggie followed, still not speaking until he plonked me down on the barstool.

“You’re gonna sit there,” he cupped my face with his hands, his tone kind but firm. “And you’re gonna stay there.”

“I’m not a dog,” I protested.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re my woman. And you’ve lost something important. Part of yourself. You’re hurtin’ in a way that I can’t fix. Can’t even take the edge off.”

I bristled in my seat, hating that I was being forced to remain sedentary, that he was speaking about the thing I had been avoiding all day. He was making my chest burn and acknowledging that cavernous empty space inside of me unavoidable.

Rowan’s hands were firm on my face, his eyes intent. In that moment, I felt a surge of pure hatred toward him. For forcing me to sit there, with my feelings. With my pain.

“I can’t do anything to make you hurt less,” he said quieter, in a tortured tone that made that hate melt away. “But I can make sure you don’t freeze to death outside. He rubbed my arms as if to warm me. As if that were possible. “I can make you somethin’ to eat.” He stroked my face.

I opened my mouth to tell him that despite the emptiness inside of me, there was absolutely no way I could swallow a single thing.

“I’m not hungry,” was what I managed to rasp out. Mere minutes ago, I’d been on the phone talking about lilies, sounding perfectly normal, my voice clear and strong. Yet it was crumbling right now, full of cracks. Frail. I sounded weak and broken.

“I know you’re not hungry,” Rowan replied. “But I’m gonna make you somethin’ anyway. And you can eat it or not. But it’ll be there. And you’ll have something to draw strength from. So tomorrow you can make calls. So you can do whatever you need to do.”

Tomorrow.

Such a benign word. An everyday concept. There was always a tomorrow, wasn’t there?

But now there wasn’t. There wasn’t a tomorrow. Because my brother was lying on a cold slab in a morgue somewhere.

“There’s a word for orphan,” I whispered. “For widow. But there’s no word for this. There’s no label to give the woman who lost her brother. But he’s not just my brother—”

My voice broke, agony spearing through every cell in my body. Rowan’s presence, his touch, usually so strong and reassuring, did nothing now.