He missed Tuesday fiercely. It had been over a week since he’d seen her last. Touched her last.

He looked at the satin pillowcase on the pillow she slept on—oh who was he kidding—on her pillow.

They’d had a breakthrough of sorts the night they’d gone to her parents’ house. But there’d been so much between them that night he’d ended up in a panic when they returned and it had been a contest of sorts for him to see how long he could go with not seeing her. As if he could prove to himself that he could kick Tuesday if he had to.

Goldfish came to stand on his chest and Peanut decided to lie over his face.

“We’re past passive-aggressive scratching my couch to attempted suffocation?” he asked as he moved her to the side. She gave him a look and kneaded his forearm with a little too much claw.

“She’ll be back soon. Harvest is over and her grand opening is tomorrow night. I have plans for her after that so don’t get any ideas about hogging her when I bring her back.”

He sat up, sending animals scampering in all directions. Talking to his cats. He, the guy who’d filled tens of thousands of seats in arenas on a regular basis, was now a crazy cat lady.

If he got out there now and worked a solid four or five hours he had the time to run into town to pick up his beauty and spend some quality time with her.

It wasn’t until he was out in the middle of an empty field that it hit him. He used to make deals like that at the beginning with heroin. If he just did these four things he had to do he’d get high as a reward.

And then it was three things. And two. And, hey I’ll get high first so I’m not thinking about getting high while I’m trying to get stuff done. And then he’d just got high and done nothing.

Everything in his life had been about getting heroin, doing heroin, thinking about how to get more and being unconscious. Opiate highs had been his favorite so he’d simply considered himself a connoisseur instead of a junkie until it was far too late.

He’d sort of been feeling that this thing with Tuesday was substituting one addiction with another but now, the corollaries seemed inescapable. She’d be the one craving that would slowly take over his entire life until he’d forgotten everything else.

The need for her crawled over his skin and he was going to reward it. Need? He didn’t need her, he craved her. Craved.

Loopy head butted him and he reached down absently to pet her as he reeled. He hadn’t been so needy for something since heroin.

Violet grunted at him.

“Yes, yes, let’s keep moving.” He continued on, pretty much on autopilot as he tried to figure out how to think about the issue.

Two hours later and the muscles in his arms burned as he struggled through pull-up after pull-up. He’d already jumped rope for so long his legs still twitched.

“What are you doing to yourself, Ezra?”

He opened his eyes. His mother stood a few feet away, glaring at him.

“Exercise, Mom.”

“Try again.”

He dropped down and hoped he covered that little bit of a wobble before his mother saw it.

“So you think working out until you can barely stand is exercise? Do you need to work on the concept of moderation again, boy?”

He groaned as he headed to the fridge to get some water. He was going to be sore as hell in the morning. But first he had to deal with Sharon Hurley, who was on the scent of something. She didn’t know what it was, but she would stop at nothing until she figured it out or broke him open to get a confession.

“Mom, I work out pretty much every day. I don’t know what you’re upset about.”

She leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. One of her brows slid up ever so slowly as she dared him to keep it up. How she could even know he was troubled he didn’t know.

“Well, you told me at six this morning that you were going to head down to grab Tuesday to see if she wanted to come to dinner. And yet, an hour ago when I retrieved your pig, who ate my carnations again I might add, and brought her back here, you were jumping rope and listening to music so loud I didn’t want to bother you. And I come back to check in, to let Tuesday know your dad and I are so excited about her opening tomorrow night and I find you still working out and looking so tense and miserable there’s no way I’m going to believe you when you say there’s nothing wrong.”

“It’s just something I’m trying to work through. It’ll be fine.”

“Let me guess—you realized how happy you were and decided you weren’t worthy. You’re going to go off and do something stupid. Don’t you break up with that girl—she’s so, so strong, but you’ll break her into a million pieces if you’re careless and you don’t handle your own fear first.”

He dug deep for patience.

“I’m not breaking up with Tuesday.”

Right? Because that would be stupid. He just needed to keep some space between them as he worked through how he could see her without craving her. Being with a woman was one thing; replacing one addiction with another wasn’t a road he could survive.

“So you’re going to bring her back here tonight then? Shouldn’t you be on your way to her now?”

“Jeremy’ll be here tomorrow morning. There’s a band meeting and I have a lot to do. She’d just get bored up here and I can’t really pay her any attention until her opening. She has things to focus on right now. I’ll see her tomorrow night at the gallery.”