An irrational anger curled in Trez’s gut. “I’m not a symphath.”

“You’re suffering.”

“My shellan fucking died. You think I should be throwing a party?”

“I know where you’ve been going,” Rehv said calmly.

“To work, here, every night. Yeah. So—”

“In your mind.” Rehv touched the center of his chest. “Symphath, remember? I can read your grid. You’re getting worse and not better—”

Trez burst to his feet and headed for the exit, opening the door. “I gotta get back to work. Thanks for stopping by. Tell Ehlena hi—”

The door slammed shut on him, the knob ripped from his hand, the lights flickering throughout the office.

In a low, evil voice, Rehv said, “Sit the fuck down. This conversation is not a two-way.”

Trez pivoted around. His former employer, one of his best friends, was looming beside the desk, his purple eyes flashing, the tremendous bulk of his body seeming to have gotten even bigger. It was a reminder that even though the big bastard was a happily mated male who had settled down, Rehv was still the kind of force you didn’t want to cross.

“I know where you’ve been going,” Rehv said in that symphath voice. “Down by the river. I know what you think about when you’re behind the wheel of your car. I can see your emotional grid collapsing, and I am very well aware of your sudden fondness for cold fucking water.”

Well, Trez thought. Put like that, what could he say? Disneyland?

Rehv pointed his cane at Trez. “Do you think I have any interest in living the rest of my nights in regret after I know all this and do nothing? Huh? You think that’s a burden I want to strap on and carry around with me until I die?”

Trez cursed and paced around. On his second trip back and forth to the bathroom, he found himself wishing his office was big as a football field.

“In light of the way I use dopamine,” Rehv continued, “I went to Ehlena and asked her if there was anything that could help you. An antidepressant. Or what I’m on. I don’t fucking know. I don’t know how it works. She said you should come talk to her and Jane—”

“No!” Trez put his hands up to his head and prayed he didn’t get another one of his migraines. Holding in the urge to scream was a helluva trigger. “I’m not going on some kind of drug—”

“—to see what your options are.” Rehv raised his voice, talking right over the protests. “And get an assessment. They may be able to help you.”

Trez sat his ass down on the sofa because he didn’t trust himself not to try to push Rehv through the glass behind the desk. Then again, there was no possibility of him pulling a sneak attack. That symphath sonofabitch no doubt knew he had switched from suicidal to homicidal, and there was only one other bag of carbon-based molecules in the room to target that impulse on.

“Listen to me,” Rehv said in a softer voice. “All those nights I had to go up to that cabin, you were with me. You were there. You protected me and you saved my life too many times to count.”

“I owed you,” Trez countered bitterly. “I was servicing my debt.”

“That wasn’t all there was to it. And don’t lie just because you’re pissed at me for calling you on your shit. I can read your grid.”

“Please stop saying that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I know and that’s why I don’t want to hear it.” Trez looked over. “I get that you think you’re helping, and thanks for that. But I just want some privacy, okay?”

“So you can kill yourself in peace?”

“It’s my life to take,” he said roughly. “You have your own life and it’s a good one. You’ll get over it.”

Rehv’s brows came down hard. “Like you’re getting over Selena so well? How’s that party you’re throwing, to borrow your phrase?”

“She was my shellan. I was just a friend to you.”

“Bullshit. You’re my family. You’re iAm’s blooded brother. And you’re also family to a whole shitload of people who would suffer like hell if anything happened to you. And cut the shit with the past tense, asshole. You’re still breathing—at least until I choke some sense into you.”

Trez held that purple stare, which was every bit as angry as he himself was feeling, and as he considered where they were both at, he was really glad they hadn’t taken out their weapons. Yet.

Except then he laughed… or Jesus, maybe it was more of a giggle.

And the levity came from God only knew where. Someplace even deeper than his grief, he supposed. But as the totally inappropriate sound came up his tight throat, he didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping it in.

“You have such a way with interventions,” Trez said as he tried to cough himself back to being serious. “I mean, there’s tough love, and then there’s the symphath version of it. Did you just call me an asshole while you’re trying to get me not to shoot myself in the head?”

Rehv’s smile was slow. “I never promised I was good at interpersonal stuff.”

“Let me tell you, you’re straight-up awful at it. I believe you also just threatened me with bodily harm.”

“I would have sent Mary, who’s a professional, but you would have given her a hug and then tossed her out.”

“True.”

“So you’re left dealing with me. Sorry, not sorry.”

Trez looked down at his hands as his mood shifted away from any levity. But at least it didn’t go back into the rage. “So my grid doesn’t look good, huh. Don’t know why I have to even ask. I’m living it.”

“I don’t want you to do something stupid. That’s all.”

“You know what’s crazy… even with all this? With everything that happened after my Selena died? I have no regrets about being with her. Even though she’s gone and it hurts like hell… and there’s no end in sight? I do not regret a thing.”

Rehv came over and sat down on the sofa. “Listen, I don’t know how else to help. That’s the reason I came. I don’t want you to think it’s a failure if you go on some meds, either. Look at me. I’m the poster boy for better living through chemistry.”

Trez shook his head back and forth. “I just don’t care. About anything really.”

Rehv reached out and Trez felt the male’s heavy hand land on his shoulder. “But I care. And that’s why I’m here.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Three prime ribs of beef. Full cuts, not the princess stuff. Two plates of the osso buco. A plate of pork pappardelle and an order of the chicken scarpariello. Seven different sides including rollatini, risotto, and the polenta—as well as a single, desultory dish of peas that the male had explained was for the fiber.

Although on that theory, Therese decided as she tallied up the check, the little side bowl was a drop in a bucket, nothing that was going to make any difference to the guy’s colon.

Standing at the automated cash register, she realized she hadn’t done the appetizers. Okay, so the male had had the minestrone soup. A caprese salad—more fiber there, actually. The antipasto assortment and the crostini. Wait, also the bruschetta. Was that everything? She was fairly sure. And what about dessert? He’d had the tiramisu, the cannoli, the tartufo, and profiteroles.

“I think I’ve got it,” she said to herself. “Now, she had—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Therese jumped and glanced over her shoulder. When she saw who it was, she nearly dropped her order pad.

“Oh, Chef.” She inclined her head. Then bowed fully. “I’m sorry, Chef.”

She had no idea what the hell she was apologizing for. But she had been late, and she needed this job, and even though the head of the house managed the waitstaff—when a storm wasn’t sending him home at the start of the shift—this was the big boss, the male in charge. iAm, blooded brother of Trez.

The male smiled a little, but the expression didn’t last more than a heartbeat on his handsome dark face. She had the feeling that he didn’t like her, but he was never mean, and she wasn’t even sure it was personal. He was a silent presence in the kitchen, unlike the stereotypical master-chef types who thundered around, red-faced and yelling—and somehow, the quiet was more powerful, more intimidating.

“They’re comp’d,” he said as he nodded out to the dining room, to the couple Therese had been waiting on for the two hours it took the hellren to be part of the clean plate(s) club.

With a quick surge of composure, she hid her disappointment, that tip she had been looking forward to going poof. “Of course. Certainly, Chef.”

“You can leave after they’re done.”

“Oh. Okay. Thank you, Chef.”

iAm paused, and she braced herself for a command not to come in the next night or any night thereafter. Because she had been late two times. And because… whatever else she’d done wrong on any shift she had ever been on in any position she had ever held, going back to the moment of her birth.

Not that she was catastrophizing. At all.

“Listen,” he said. “About my brother.”

Therese was aware of her heart stopping and her breath stalling in her throat. “Yes?”

“He’s…”

“He’s what?”

For some reason, she wanted to know whatever was next with a single-minded focus that bordered on addiction.

Except iAm shook his head. “Never mind. You just finish up here and head home.”

Before she could stop herself, she reached out and touched his arm. “You can tell me. Whatever it is.”

“It’s not my story, and that’s only part of the problem.”

iAm turned and went back toward the kitchen. And as she watched him go, she wanted to chase after him and make him talk to her. But that wasn’t her place, and not because she was only a waitress. You didn’t get between siblings. She used to live that firsthand with her own brother.