The leather headboard groaned as Pete shifted his weight, the sound swallowed by the heavy silence of the room. Two bodies lay draped across his chest—warm, soft, breathing in tandem—but he felt none of their weight. The overhead light cut harsh yellow across the dark wood floor, catching the crumpled silhouette of his suit jacket where he'd dropped it hours ago.

The Colombian girls had worn themselves out trying to please him. He could feel the faint tremor still in the smaller one's thigh where it hooked over his hip, the aftermath of her enthusiasm. They'd given everything they had—mouths, hands, the practiced rhythm of professionals who knew exactly what a man like him wanted.

He couldn't remember either of their names.

The sheets beneath him were damp and wrinkled, still carrying the sour smell of sex and sweat and the cheap floral perfume they'd doused themselves in before coming up. His cologne clung to the fabric too, the familiar sandalwood and smoke that had once made Tisha's eyes go dark when he walked into a room.

He stared at the ceiling. A crack ran from the corner of the plaster down toward the light fixture, a thin dark line like a vein. He'd stared at it before. On nights when sleep wouldn't come. On nights when the girls had already drifted off and he lay here counting the ways his life had gone to shit.

The restaurant in Mykonos. He'd agreed to it because Marco wouldn't shut up about it—his cousin, the only family member with enough nerve to push him on anything. "Good investment, Pete. Prime location. Tourism's booming. Get your head out of your ass and look at the numbers."

The numbers were fine. The location was fine. Everything about it was fine, which was exactly the problem. Nothing felt like anything anymore. Food tasted like ash. Money piled up in accounts he never looked at. The men who came to him with problems and left with solutions—or stopped coming at all—were just faces in a rotation he'd stopped caring about.

He'd doubled his work. Tripled it. Took meetings he would have delegated a year ago, flew across the country to put his name on deals that didn't need it, made examples of men who'd have been smarter to stay quiet. And every night, he brought someone to his bed. Sometimes two. Sometimes more.

It never worked.

The smaller girl shifted against his chest, making a small sound in her sleep. Her hand was splayed over his sternum, fingers curled like she was holding on to something. He watched her face for a moment—young, pretty, unmarked by the things he'd done. She'd be gone by morning. They always were.

Tisha had stayed.

That was the difference that ate at him. Every other woman who'd passed through this room—through his life—had been a transaction, a warm body to fill the space until it was time to move on. But Tisha had stayed. She'd slept in this bed with her head on his chest and her hair spilling across his arm, and she'd looked at him like he was something other than what he was.

And then she'd left.

He could still see her on that runway. The way she'd walked—not like the others, not performing. She'd been alive in a way that made his chest hurt. Eighteen years old with the world in her hands and no idea that a man in the front row was already deciding she belonged to him.

He'd been wrong. That was the thing he couldn't forgive himself for. He'd thought she was like the others—something to be taken, used, discarded when the shine wore off. He hadn't known she would get under his skin like a splinter he couldn't dig out.

The smaller girl made another sound, this one closer to a whimper. Her hand tightened on his chest. He looked down at her, at the dark lashes against her cheek, at the way her lips were still slightly swollen from what she'd done to him earlier.

She'd choked. The memory surfaced unbidden—her mouth stretched around him, too eager, too fast, trying to impress him with a greed she thought he'd like. Her throat had convulsed, and he'd felt the panic spike through her body before she pulled back, coughing, eyes watering.

He'd pushed her head down again, slower this time. "You have to go slow," he'd said, his voice flat. "Not greedy. If you want the juice, you need to get fucked first."

The other girl had laughed, a bright sound that didn't belong in this room. "He's right, mami. Slow is better. He'll last longer."

He'd almost told them to leave then. The whole thing felt like a performance he wasn't in the mood for, two women working to please a man who couldn't feel any of it. But the other girl had leaned in, her breath warm against his thigh, and said, "Let me show you something. Something you've never tried."

"What's that?"

"Lift your ass up. I'll lick you while she sucks you. You've never had that, have you?"

He'd never had his ass licked. It wasn't something men in his position talked about, wasn't something he'd ever thought to ask for. But curiosity had flickered in the dead space where his interest used to live, and he'd let them arrange him the way they wanted.

The first touch of her tongue had been a shock—a wet, insistent press against a place no one had ever touched. He'd felt his body respond before his mind caught up, a groan pulling from his chest as the smaller girl took him deep again, slow this time, learning the rhythm he'd taught her.

It was something. Not enough—nothing was enough—but something. The sensation had rolled through him in waves, the two of them working together, reading each other's movements, giving him everything they had.

He'd come in the smaller girl's mouth a minute later, his hand fisted in her hair, his body arching off the bed. It had been good. It had been better than good. It had been the first time in two years that he'd felt anything close to release.

And even then, even with his cock still twitching and the taste of his own spend on the smaller girl's tongue, his mind had drifted. To Tisha. To the way she'd looked at him that last night, something broken in her eyes that he'd put there. To the way she'd walked out of his house without looking back.

He'd been so sure she'd come back. That was the arrogance of a man who'd never been denied anything in his life. He'd thought the money, the power, the sheer force of his will would pull her back to him. He'd thought she was his, the way everything else was his.

The girls had fallen asleep on his chest, their limbs tangled with his, their breathing slow and even. He'd let them. He'd needed to feel something heavy on him, something that proved he was still alive.

It wasn't working.

The ceiling crack stared back at him. The overhead light cast his shadow across the dark wood floor, the discarded suit jacket a black stain in the corner. The room smelled like sex and sweat and the ghost of something else.

Tisha's perfume.

It was still there. After two years. After a dozen women had come and gone through this room, after the sheets had been changed a hundred times, after he'd had the room repainted and the furniture rearranged—her scent still clung to the air. Faint. Almost gone. But there.

He'd never been able to get rid of it. He'd stopped trying after the first six months. It was the only thing he had left of her, and the thought of scrubbing it away felt like a kind of death.

He shifted again, and the smaller girl murmured in her sleep, her hand sliding from his chest to his stomach. He watched her for a moment, then let his gaze drift to the empty space beside him.

Tisha used to sleep there. She'd curl into his side with her head on his shoulder and her hand over his heart, like she was checking to make sure it was still beating. She'd mumble in her sleep, soft sounds in Tagalog he'd never learned, and when he'd ask her about them in the morning she'd blush and change the subject.

He'd never told her he loved her. He'd never known how. The words had stuck in his throat every time he'd tried, and then it was too late, and she was gone, and he was lying in this bed with two strangers asleep on his chest and nothing but a ghost in the air to keep him company.

The smaller girl rolled over, taking the other one with her. They settled into a tangle on the far side of the bed, leaving him alone on his side, the sheets pulled away from his body and the cool air raising goosebumps on his skin.

He didn't reach for them. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of everything he'd done pressing down on his chest like a second body.

The restaurant in Mykonos. He'd agreed to it because Marco had been relentless, because the numbers made sense, because it gave him something to think about besides the hole where Tisha used to be. But he didn't care about it. He didn't care about any of it.

He cared about her. That was the problem. That had always been the problem.

He closed his eyes, and she was there. Walking toward him down the aisle in a white dress that had made his throat close up. Looking at him across a crowded room with those dark doe eyes that saw through every wall he'd ever built. Pressing her lips to his cheek in the morning before she left for a fitting, leaving a trace of warmth he could still feel two years later.

"Tisha," he breathed. The name felt foreign on his tongue, like a word he'd forgotten how to say.

The girls didn't stir. The ceiling didn't answer. The room stayed silent except for the slow, even breathing of the two women who'd given him everything they had and still left him empty.

He'd tried to move on. That was the cruelest part. He'd tried so hard—the threesomes, the work, the endless parade of bodies—and none of it had touched the place where Tisha lived. She was still there, lodged in his chest like a bullet he couldn't dig out, and he'd stopped pretending he wanted to.

The phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He turned his head, the motion slow, reluctant. The screen was lit up, a name glowing in the dark.

Marco.

His cousin. The one who'd been pushing him about the restaurant in Mykonos, the one who wouldn't let him wallow in the wreckage of his own making. Marco called at all hours, asking questions, demanding answers, forcing Pete to engage with a world he'd stopped caring about.

The phone buzzed again. Marco would call again if he didn't answer. He always did.

Pete looked at the sleeping girls, their limbs tangled, their faces peaceful in a way his hadn't been in years. He looked at the empty space beside him, where Tisha used to curl into his side. He looked at the phone, still buzzing, Marco's name a bright demand in the dark.

His hand hovered over the screen.

The name glowed. The phone shook. The girls slept on, oblivious to the man beside them who was falling apart in slow motion.

He stared at the screen, and for a long moment, he didn't move. The ceiling crack watched him from above. The ghost of Tisha's perfume hung in the air. And Pete Bianchi, the man who took whatever he wanted, lay frozen in his own bed, unable to reach for anything at all.