She never says anything.
I feel like I did four years ago when I stopped her in the hallways and talked awkwardly, melting like a fool under her smiles. Until, one day, she showed up with Archer, his arm wrapped around her waist. And I almost punched him but didn’t say a word, the world suddenly crashing around me.
I am in over my head again. I promised myself I wouldn’t touch her. And here I am again, being a fucking fool and dreaming of something—someone—who is not supposed to be mine.
Callie stands in my gray t-shirt that comes down to her thighs and looks around awkwardly.
“I should go,” she says.
I can hear the rain hammering outside. She could walk to her bungalow, sure. She’d be soaked by the time she got there.
But that’s not the problem.
I want her here. I want her with me. This night. Right now. I don’t know how to fight the awkwardness between us, and don’t know how to tell her that I am going mad around her. I’m fucking weak, yeah. A deep cigarette drag burns it all inside me. I am so desperate and so afraid that she’ll see it that all I can do is pretend to be an indifferent dick.
“You are staying here tonight,” I say with intended harshness in my voice.
She looks at me in submission. “I don’t want you to—”
“Petal.” I lock eyes with her, burrowing into her as I take another deep scorching drag that for a moment burns away my hesitation. “You are staying here.”
She nods.
I walk toward my bed and throw the sheet open, nodding toward it, then dim the lamp, walk past her toward the wicker chair and sit down, stretching my legs and closing my eyes.
The cigarette is hanging off my lips. I feel the smoke curl into my nostrils. I hear every little movement, Callie’s soft steps as she pads toward the bed and gets in. The rain rattles against the leaves outside. Its whisper is soothing. But my heart is beating wildly.
I know what would happen if we talked. She would talk about that night again. And I don’t want to. I want silence. I want to think of her pretty naked body splayed open for me. Her hungry eyes as she studied my nakedness. I want this night to be about me and her and not the memories of the past. I want to stay in this moment of knowing she is in my bed, though I shouldn’t be getting in there with her.
I don’t know how much time has passed when a whimper comes from the bed.
Is she crying?
I look in that direction and see her on her side, hands tucked under the pillow, her shoulders twitching.
Another whimper.
What the hell?
“Callie,” I say softly, but she doesn’t respond and goes quiet.
A minute passes, and I hear it again—a whimper, louder this time, then a murmur.
I stand up and walk over to the bed.
“Callie,” I whisper.
But this time she doesn’t go quiet. Her eyes are closed, but her feet and shoulders jerk just slightly. And she whimpers again.
Nightmares. She is having nightmares.
The realization is a relief that she is not upset. But it’s followed by my heart clenching in the strangest way.
Nightmares come from pain.
I am an expert in it.
The worst pain is not second-degree burns.