Page 43 of Lucky Laces
Ah, the lies I live to tell myself.Still…I don’t move.
Except to hit the button on the smart remote to turn off the TV, another to turn on the fan and off the lights overhead.
Except…maybe to shift a little closer, to allow my eyes to slide shut, and to let sleep drift up and drag me under again.
I sit up on a gasp,hand clamped to my chest.
Not scorching hot this time—not with the fan in the overhead creating hurricane force winds.
But, rather, in a cold sweat, gaze whipping around, expecting the world to be rolling around me again.
Feeling the reverberations of it in my dreams.
“Hey.Hey!”
I gasp again, eyes shooting to Hudson’s.
He pushes up with a pained grunt beside me, cupping my face in his hands.“Breathe, DeeDee,” he says.“It was just an aftershock,” he says.“We’re fine, just breathe.”
“I thought—” I suck in a breath, the reality mixed with my nightmare far too intense.
“I know,” he says, drawing me against him.“But it’s over.We’re good.So for now, just breathe.”
I let him hold me, and I do what he orders.
Because I don’t have the wherewithal to do anything else at this moment.
“I fucking hate earthquakes,” I whisper into his chest long minutes later.Because it takes until then for me to finally speak.
He chuckles softly, smooths his hand over my hair.“For good reason.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pulls back.“For what?”
“Freaking out and making you hurt your leg again.”
“Hey,” he says, hand still gently tangling in my hair, “I think earthquakes, especially after yesterday, are a completely legitimate reason for you to freak out.”
God, he’s nice.And sweet.And holding me so gently.“Thanks for being so cool about everything,” I whisper.
He tugs a lock of my hair.“Thanks for rescuing me from the nightmare that’s my parents.”
“They’re not so bad.”
He gives me a look that calls me on the complete and total bullshit that statement is.“They’re bad,” he mutters, “but luckily they’ll hang around for a day or two, my dad will tell me all the things I’m doing that don’t meet his standards and my mom will flutter nervously about, supposedly outraged but not actually saying anything to call him out, and then they’ll go back to living their best retirement lives.”
I scrunch up my face.“I’m sorry.”
“Again.”Another tug of my hair.“Not something you need to apologize for.”
He’s so resigned and settled in the fact that his parents are douche canoes, has been so casual about the fact that he got hurt for me, so?—
When I dreamed of you naked.This isn’t how I expected it to go.
Well…that.
So while I know I shouldn’t have come here in the middle of the night with wine and snacks…
