Make Me Whole Read Online Free PDF Page A

her go, grateful for her unwavering support and friendship for the last five years and finally at a point where he could tell her. It was like he’d been stunted since the night of Bryan’s accident, a part of him ripped away, and he hadn’t been able to find a way to fix the empty hole inside of him.
    Being at the museum and watching his dream come to life helped. He felt almost normal until he went home and the echoing loneliness hit him. Time had eased it even more. And Nick had borne the brunt of his inability to let anybody new close. If he had one regret in this last year, Nick was it.
    He turned to the final statue, struck again by the way it stirred him up inside. The man lay on his side, his arm curled around as if clasping another body to him, his head bowed with a tender expression on his face. “You really loved him, didn’t you?” Galen crouched down and slid his fingers down the length of the man’s arm.
    “Make me whole.”
    The low, deep voice with a strange accent sounded right next to his ear. Galen jumped and fell back on his ass at the murmur and glanced around the room only to find that Knox had left and Ella had gone back to her mural. “What the hell? Did you say something, Ella?” No, that had been a man’s voice, no mistaking it.
    Ella shook her head, her face inches from the wall while she worked on some small detail. “I didn’t hear anything.”
    He got to his feet and dusted himself off while he stared at the statue. Man, he was losing his mind. Maybe Suzane was right—it was time to get out of the museum for a bit. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he left the room. It had been a couple of days since he’d called Nick, and he’d been thinking of him even more. A little thrill of anticipation raced through him. It would be good to hear his voice again, and maybe hearing about the mysterious statues would pique his interest enough for a dinner date. Nick liked talking art. It wouldn’t hurt to try, and if Nick didn’t want to see him again, he only had himself to blame.
    But maybe, just maybe, the heavens were smiling down on him and Nick was still interested.
     
     
    N ICK hung up his suit coat and opened the cockatiels’ cage. Rory chirped and twittered before he climbed to the door and squawked. His mate, Amy, cocked her head, let out a trill of greeting, then went back to preening her feathers. “Let me change, and you can help me cook dinner.” He brushed a finger down Rory’s brilliant yellow crest, and the cockatiel rewarded him with a tender nip on his finger.
    He yanked off his tie, tossed it over a chair, and was already shrugging out of his dress shirt by the time he reached the bedroom. This was the best part of the day—getting home and changing into something comfortable with birdsong in the background. Ten minutes later, dressed in track pants and a Team Zissou jaguar shark T-shirt, he returned to the kitchen and grabbed a can of soup to heat up on the stove.
    Rory glided into the kitchen and landed on his shoulder. His talons dug through the thin T-shirt as he shifted and found his balance. Amy called out to him from the living room and Rory answered with a series of whistles before ending his conversation with a gentle nibble on Galen’s ear.
    “Oh, you have time for me now, is that it?”
    Nick’s cell phone sat on the kitchen counter and the lit-up message icon mocked him. When he saw Galen’s name on the screen after all of these months, it had been a shock, and it brought back a whole flood of desires and feelings he’d thought he’d dealt with and shoved away. Apparently not. Even now, he was still wrestling with them. He wanted Galen, and not just in his bed. The memory of Galen’s smile still captivated him and made him want to see it again. He’d never smiled enough.
    So Galen had called back. Nick had honestly thought he wouldn’t. The first twenty-four hours he’d debated whether or not he should pick up the phone first. The second,