Page 54 of The Wrong Track

“No. No, I’m fine,” I answered back. “I’m not going to have another dream.”

“After everything you talked about today? It must be fresh on your mind.”

It was always fresh on my mind. “I won’t wake her up,” I promised him. “I won’t scare her like that again.”

“Remy, you scared the hell out of the both of us. You were hardly breathing when I came in and you didn’t even hear Ella crying.”

Because I was a bad mother. I already knew that.

“Come in with me, like we did last night.” He paused. “You know I’m not going to try anything on you, right?”

“Of course. I know that.” Why would he?

“Then what’s the problem?”

There were many problems with this. “You don’t think it’s strange for us to sleep in the same bed together? In your bed together?”

He picked up my hand. “Come on. All three of us will sleep better this way.”

I wasn’t so sure about that but I did let him lead me into his bedroom, back to where I’d spent part of the night before. It felt strange being away from Ella after so many weeks of sleeping across the room from her; it felt even stranger to be with a man after so many months without one. But I wouldn’t wake up to him yanking off my thong and telling me to get ready. This house, this room, and this bed were all totally safe.

I still couldn’t sleep. I flipped over to face the pillow that Tobin had put between our bodies and looked at his profile in the moonlight. He turned his head and opened his eyes.

“Everything ok?”

I nodded. “Did you tell your mom about what I said earlier?”

“I won’t tell anyone about that,” he answered. His voice was soft and quiet in the night. “I don’t think you should be embarrassed of it, though.”

Yeah, right. “I bet you see stuff like that a lot. People who make bad decisions and can’t handle the consequences.”

“It sounded more like you were a young girl who got trapped in something that nobody could handle.” He moved the pillow so we could see each other better, but his face was mostly in shadow and I couldn’t read his expression.

“I wanted to leave but I didn’t have anywhere to go anymore. I knew I had to stay away from my sister and my mom. I never had much money. And Kilian would have found me, you know, because I was valuable to him.”

“You made money for the bastard.”

“And he really did care about me,” I said, and even though I couldn’t see too much of Tobin’s face, I could feel anger coming from him. “I know that’s hard to understand.”

“You’ve said it before and yeah, it’s very hard for me to understand. He forced you to be with other men for money. He trapped you in that life. You have scars from where he hit you with a belt—”

I turned over, not able to look at him anymore.

“Remy?” His hand went back to my shoulder. “I’m sorry I said that.”

I nodded.

“You don’t make any noise when you cry,” he said quietly. “The first time I met you was at the hospital after Kilian had assaulted you at your old place, and you were curled up on that stretcher with tears running down your cheeks, totally quiet. You were freezing cold, shaking because you were so afraid.”

I remembered it very well. I remembered Tobin sitting next to me, not touching me, but being there.

“When you talk about that man, that’s what I think of. Not how he might have been nice sometimes, not that he wasn’t always hurting you, not all the time. I think of the tears in your beautiful eyes and the bruise coming up on your jaw and the doctors monitoring the baby. That was a terrible night and you had four years of them.”

Not anymore.

“Not anymore,” he echoed, and I put my hand over his.

∞

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