Two weeks.
That's how long it had been since Val left, though it felt like the days had dragged their heels just to spite me. Two excruciatingly slow weeks of not having her near.
Sure, she called when she could. I got to see her face through a screen, hear her laugh echo through the speaker, and even Duchess made appearances, looking noticeably fatter than before. And yes—Val had, true to her word, sent that boob pic. She called it motivation. I nearly died laughing.
But none of that compared to holding her in my arms, to feeling her warmth when she curled against me on the couch, to brushing her hair back when it fell into her face, to staring into those stormy eyes that always seemed to be on the edge of chaos. A screen couldn't capture the way her eyes shifted when she was hiding a smile, or how her heartbeat felt under my hand when she drifted to sleep against me.
Two weeks without that, and even with the calls and the teasing, the ache still gnawed at me.
