Until I closed my eyes and saw him again.
Chapter Eighteen
It’s funny how real your imagination can be, I’d never suffered from any kind of nightmares. Not when my mother died or when Max had hit me for the first time or any time after that. I’d had dreams and then woke up and promptly forgot them.
This time it was different, each time I would close my eyes he’d be standing there. An evil grin on his face and a knife in his hand, but we’d never be in the apartment.
We’d always be wherever I fell asleep.
This made the nightmares so much worse, if it was me reliving the memories then I could separate that. But when he was here, in Ty’s house, on the compound. It made them that much worse.
Each nightmare lasted longer than the one before and each time he would get a little bit closer to me. This time he actually touched me.
I shot up in bed and whipped my head back and forth,
expecting him to be standing next to the bed.
Groaning from the pain of sitting up so fast I narrowed my eyes at the dark corner of the room. My chest heaved up and down, all that I could hear in the room were my heavy pants my breaths becoming louder the more I stared at the space.
I covered my mouth to hold the scream in when someone knocked on the door.
“Sweetheart?” Ty’s gruff voice whispered. “You good?”
He was the last person that I wanted to know about the nightmares. He’d want to know what was in them and then that would lead to what had happened that day.
I still wasn’t ready to tell him.
“Uh huh,” I said when I pulled my hand from my mouth, all the while not taking my eyes from the dark corner.
A crack of light came into the room when he opened the door, I could see now that there was nothing there breathing a sigh of relief I looked over at him.
“Kay?” he stepped into the room, leaving the door open halfway.
His hair was sticking up in different directions, my eyes traveling down his chest widened at the sight. The tattoos on his arms as they continued way up and over his broad shoulders, I couldn’t see his back but I imagined they continued there.
“What?” I shook my head, his mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear him over being distracted by his bare chest. It was chiseled to perfection, I shouldn’t be thinking about his perfect chest like that but when it was screaming at me from across the room it was a welcome distraction.
“I said. Is everything okay?”
His muscles moved with each step he took closer, the tattoos dancing on his arms. I smiled and nodded my head. He was so close now that if I reached out I could touch him.
“I’m okay”
“I heard screaming,” he frowned down at me.
“I’m fine.” I shook my head and lay back down.
“Don’t lie to me Kay,” his gruff voice warned.
“I…I…”
Ty tilted his head, those eyes assessing me in that frustrating way. He huffed sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Nightmare?”
The words were stuck in my throat so I nodded instead. I held my breath as he moved closer, his hand stretching out. I closed my eyes not knowing what he was about to do, when his hand touched my arm lightly I shivered. My eyes sprang open watching as his thumb rubbed back and forth.
“Listen,” he whispered “You’re safe here.”