Page 41 of Don't Forget Me
I am magnificent.
He was pretty sure no truer words had ever been spoken.
“I want to keep dreaming,” she whispered against his lips as she worked her sopping shirt up over her stomach.
Nick didn’t know if she meant she wanted to imagine herself with the Nick Jacobs, but he wasn’t sure if he cared. His hands covered hers, stopping them from pulling her shirt off.
“Don’t.” She tilted her face up, letting her eyes settle on his. “Don’t stop me.”
His resistance fell away, and he slid her shirt the rest of the way up. She lifted her arms, and he pulled it off over her head.
His fingers slid over the creamy skin of her stomach and up the curves she’d hidden beneath the baggy shirt she’d borrowed from him.
Her skin was clammy beneath his touch, and he wanted to warm her from the inside out, to take away every bit of discomfort.
“You aren’t real.” She couldn’t be. From the woman who’d cried abduction to the one making him food and sharing secrets like it was easy, she seemed impossible, a puzzle that wasn’t meant to be figured out. The kindness in her gaze and her smile created the kind of woman who could only exist in this dream world, somewhere between life and death.
Her arms slid up around his neck, and as she leaned in, her breath grazed his lips. “We aren’t real.”
14
ELIZABETH
Warmth weighed Liz down, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well for so long. By the time she opened her eyes, it was the middle of the night. She’d fallen asleep with Nick in the afternoon, both exhausted from the constant push and pull of whatever friendship it was they’d developed.
Nick’s arm was wrapped tightly around her waist, their legs tangled together underneath the heavy blankets. Her limbs, frozen and stiff before, now rested peacefully.
She’d changed into dry clothes before falling asleep, so the discomfort from the cold was gone.
Her head rested on Nick’s chest, her hair crimped where it dried weirdly. She couldn’t hear his heartbeat, but she imagined she could, its steady rhythm matching her own.
This wasn’t how she’d ever imagined a coma to be, and even the thought made her chuckle silently to herself. No one ever imagined a coma. Of course, she’d seen them on TV shows—she’d certainly watched enough of them while she was sick. She’d seen TV characters wander hospitals, visiting those they’d known who’d died and learning something about themselves before deciding to go back, to not die.
This was… different. They weren’t in a hospital, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to learn.
Then, there was Nick. She hadn’t known him as more than an actor in some of her favorite movies, and now here she was in his bed?
But it wasn’t really her, was it? Were they the spirits of themselves? Was it all in her head?
It certainly felt real.
She lifted her head and stared down into Nick’s face. It was the first time she’d seen him looking so relaxed, so calm. Normally, there was a tension to everything he did, everything he said. Maybe that was part of being famous, or maybe it was his brother’s loss that made him this way. Yet, she’d seen something else in him, something that made her want to peek inside that mysterious mind just a bit.
Touching her fingers to his cheek, she studied his features in a way she hadn’t been able to before. A dark beard coated the lower half of his face. She couldn’t say she hated it. Delicate cheekbones balanced out the ruggedness of his look, leading to the hard eyes that stole her breath when they softened.
He’d always been attractive, since his very first movie, but there was something so different about viewing such beauty through a television screen and seeing it up close.
Untangling her legs from his, she did her best not to wake him. She slid from beneath his arm and tucked the blanket back around him before climbing from the bed.
They’d stopped themselves before going too far. Nick was a near stranger, and it had taken almost a year and an engagement for her to become that comfortable with Corey.
And look how that turned out.
This time, she had no illusions about their future. One day, she’d wake up in the real world and all of this would become nothing but a memory—if she remembered it at all.
The only way to protect herself was to keep them from getting too close.
Even if it was too late for that.
