Forbidden Imprint [Book 5] ✔️

3 • Blood Splatter & Advice

EMBRY'S POV

Two months...five days...13 hours...11 minutes...28 seconds...

Step.

Two months...five days...13 hours...11 minutes...29 seconds...

Step.

Two months...five days...fuck! I stopped walking through the woods to berate myself.

I had to stop this. I had to stop counting the minutes...hell, the seconds...since I last saw Rebecca. I hadn't seen or spoken to her since Jacob's wedding. From what Jacob told me, she and her husband got into a fight shortly after I left the reception, which was unusual for them considering they were the perfect couple who never argued. I wondered what triggered the argument. When I left the reception, they were practically dry humping each other.

Pain shot through me at that reminder and I cursed some more. It was ridiculous that since the wedding my life had gone into a downward spiral to hell. Everyone else seemed cheery as shit. Even Sam had calmed down after Ryan imprinted on his kid and he now...grudgingly...let Ryan have as much time as feasible with Gracie.

Ryan and Gracie were even more ridiculously cute together than Quil and Claire were when Claire was that age. The few times I had been to Sam's house, Ryan was either carrying Gracie around every where he went, or she would toddle by his side holding his hand, always seeking his attention. They worshipped each other...Ryan constantly hovered over Gracie like an overprotective brother and she lapped it up. So Ryan was happy...great, glad his imprint worked out for him.

What bugged the shit out of me was the fact that you'd think I'd get a break from the constant pain I was in. But nope, not me. Every day was a struggle for me. I felt like I was grieving someone's death. When I didn't feel a sickening emptiness inside me, I felt like I was living in the pits of hell. My body and soul hurt.

Why didn't the pain ease up? If all Rebecca wanted from me was friendship, then why wasn't that enough to release me from my torment? We're supposed to be what our imprint wants.

Except the idea of being "just friends" with Rebecca made me feel physically ill. First off, we weren't friends...friends talked to each other. I didn't even have her number to call her. Secondly, the whole idea of being friends just felt...off. It didn't make sense to me. So did that mean Rebecca needed me as more than a friend and she didn't know it? Because I knew I sure as hell needed her.

I was man enough to admit that I was in love with her and had been since I was thirteen. The crush that I thought had gone away never really had. It only deepened into something more profound without me knowing it. No wonder none of the women I had dated before I'd imprinted ever measured up. I dated plenty in high school. I had even lost my virginity before Quil and Jacob. But I never felt whole.

The incompleteness I'd always felt left the moment I laid eyes on Rebecca and then returned tenfold when Rebecca left town with her idiot husband. The only way I could deal with the longing I felt for my imprint was by repeating my conduct after I left Jacob and Ness's reception.

I got drunk almost every night and slept around. I didn't go back to Ali, the girl I met the night of the reception. Instead, I found another girl...Aerial. I slept with her a couple of times a week. I met her when she dropped her car off at the garage. She was some rich girl from Port Angeles who was out visiting friends. It took one dinner date to get her into bed. She wanted to "slum it" by sleeping with a lowly mechanic, and I got the sweet, pain-ridden oblivion I was becoming addicted to by sleeping with someone who wasn't my imprint. We were "fuck buddies." Nothing more. And after the first few times, I was even able to stop puking right after sex.