Page 73 of Protect Me
“You used to like it?”
Reluctantly, he nodded. “Yes, but now it’s . . . I don’t know. Zara and I are friends, that’s it.”
My mouth opened, but the question wouldn’t slip out.What changed? Why do you look so torn up? Somehow, I felt it wasn’t my place. I turned to look out the window, closed my eyes, and let the flapping breeze cool my fevered skin.
I’d never be friends with Vik.
All or nothing, that was all it could ever be. I’d been too in love with him, for far too long, to dance around it with friendship. Living with him had only drawn the line more firmly in the sand.
Would he deal with that?
He hadn’t in the past. Commitment? He ghosted. No reason to stay, no risk to take. Yet, people changed all the time.
“Do you regret it?” I asked.
He turned to me in a glance as quick as hummingbird wings. In the fleeting thing, I could see that he knew what I really asked.That lifestyle, was it really worth it?Hair fluttered over my face, dancing across my eyes. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“All the time.”
“Are there any of the women that you miss?”
“None.”
I swallowed. He spoke more definitively than I’d expected. Maybe that’s what I’d feared. In all these years, he’d never attached enough to say goodbye, so what made this situation special?
Why would I be any different?
If I lost Vik, I could lose everything.
As if he read my mind, Vik reached over, grabbed my hand, and threaded his fingers through mine. My breath stopped. I held it in my chest, waiting to see how it would feel if I didn’t pull away. It seemed to make a statement when I did nothing.
The lonely little girl in me sat up and took notice.It’s happening,she thought. The long feel of his fingers, soft and firm at the same time, was exactly what I had always imagined they would be.
Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I tightened my hold on his fingers with a light squeeze, then turned my face to the breeze. Vik gave no explanation and no answers. Would it be fair to ask it of him? Not now. We all had demons to face. He hadn’t left me alone when I faced mine.
I wouldn’t abandon him either.
An angry bellow woke me out of a dead sleep.
I gasped awake, upright in bed. Covers pooled around my waist. Humidity lay in the air, thick. Outside, lightning flashed, crackling across an ominously dark skyline. A blast of air conditioning danced over the top of my skin, cooling the sweat I’d broken into.
Dreams.
Nightmares.
With a groan, I shoved out of bed. Walking back and forth across the room oriented me out of the sticky tendrils of dark dreams. Something in thethudof my feet on the floor broke loose the uncertainty, oriented me in the now. A distant clap of thunder, more roll than bang, made me flinch. The sporadictick, tick, tickof raindrops hitting the window set my teeth on edge. A growl sounded in my ears.
I grimaced.
“Not real.” My thumb pressed into my pointer finger. “It’s just a dream. I’m safe. I’m home. Timothy is not waiting in the shadows.”
Lightning branched through the air, illuminating the umbra. I swallowed past a distant scream, the memory of my own. To assist my return to what was real, I flipped on a lamp. Opened my closet, nudged the door to the hall wider so I could see behind it.
No monsters.
Just the ones in my head.
Damn the storm. Damn Timothy. I’d done so well. Slept through countless thunderstorms the last year or two. Of course he’d haunt me now, when I had a hope of disappearing into the horizon with him at my back.
