[never with]

[every single day. He was never without them, yet never with them. They were always there, the three of them, those three lost loves.

To think of any one of them would make him smile—the fun they'd had, the shared moments of bliss, of fear, of boredom—but now they were lost, and there was always that sadness. He missed each one terribly, even now, and he didn't know why that was. He couldn't understand. All the same, it was there, every day, the deep pain of each loss.

They said that in life there would be pain as well as happiness. But now the thought of adding a new person to the list was torture, a terrible]