Turning my phone off, I tuck it in my duffle. I head into the bathroom, and as I tiptoe out, I notice Maria’s door is cracked open. I peek my head inside to find her stretched out on the floor coloring.
“Hey,” I whisper.
She looks over her shoulder and waves me inside.
I step into her aquatic-themed room, click the door closed behind me, and stretch out beside her on the throw rug. Immediately I think of all the times Bluma and I lay like this and colored.
Maria’s already done the mermaid’s hair blue, and I smile at that. “Mind if I do her body purple?” I ask.
Maria shakes her head and goes back to highlighting a silver dolphin.
“You’re up early,” I say to her.
“I get bad dreams,” she tells me. “Sometimes I have to go sleep with Gramma.”
“I have them, too. It’s good you have your Gramma to go to.”
She looks at me with a searching expression that fits someone so much older. “Do you get them a lot?”
My instinct is to change the subject, but something makes me share, “I’ve had them my whole life.”
She furrows her brows. “That’s a long time.”
“Yes it is, but now I don’t get them as often.”
“You don’t think I’ll have mine my whole life, do you?”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not. They’ll go away eventually.”
Maria scoots over and hugs my neck. “If you have one while you’re here, you can come sleep with me.”
Emotion clogs up inside of me at the thought that this little girl wants to protect me. “Thank you, Maria.”
She nods and goes back to her dolphin.
I get a purple pencil and start in on the mermaid’s body.
Time ticks by, and we finish one picture and go onto the next. The more we do, the more settled I notice Maria becomes, like music does for me. I imagine that’s why she’s up so early and in here coloring.
Eventually the sun comes up and brightens the room, and her clock flicks to 8 a.m.
“Hey, girls,” West pushes through the door, and butterflies zip and zing through my belly. He crawls right between us, gives me a kiss on the cheek, and then one to Maria. “Can I play, too?”
Maria giggles and hands him a white crayon. “You can do the clouds.”
He looks over at me. “Sleep okay?”
I nod and get a little lost in his still drowsy eyes.
Thirty minutes later Vianca rolls into the room. “Everyone’s having fun without me,” she playfully pouts.
Maria pokes West in the ribs, and he jokingly flinches. Giggling, she climbs over West to poke me, and we all laugh.
“Well, isn’t this just fun?” Gramma says from the doorway. “Pecan pancakes. Everyone up and at ‘em.”
Maria jumps up. “Pecan pancakes are my favorite!” she shouts and darts from the room.
Vianca spins in her chair and follows Maria out, and West props his cheek in his hand as he turns and gazes across the crayons at me.
“I like your family,” I tell him. “Thanks for inviting me.”
He slides across the small space. “You’re very welcome,” he says and nuzzles a nibbly line from my ear down the side of my neck. It’s the first time he’s done that since our kiss behind the soundboard.
All kinds of wonderfulness tingles my skin, and I glance nervously toward the open door.
“Don’t worry, they won’t come back. And if they do?” He goes back to nuzzling. “Oh, well.”
“West…”
“Shh.” He brushes his lips across my ear, and I almost whimper.
A little girl’s giggle fills the air, and we glance up to see Maria standing in the doorway with both hands planted over her mouth. She giggles again and points. “You’re kissing.” West growls and lunges for her, and she leaps out of his reach and sprints toward the kitchen. “They’re kissing, they’re kissing, they’re kissing, they’re kissing.”
I bury my face in my hands and groan.
West laughs and pulls me to my feet. “Come on.”
“You’re kissing, you’re kissing, you’re kissing,” Vianca teases when we walk into the kitchen.
Everyone laughs and I proceed to turn extremely red.
“Oh, don’t mind them,” Gramma tells me.
“I’m hitting the shower. Do I have time?” West asks, and his dad waves him on. West gives me a poke in the side. “We’re kissing,” he teases and heads off.
I can’t help but smile as I turn to Gramma. “What can I do to help?”
She puts me to work cutting fruit and a few minutes later the bathroom door opens. West emerges holding a towel around his waist.
“Don’t mind me. Forgot my razor.” He walks over to his suitcase propped in the corner of the living room. In all the time we’ve known each other, I’ve never seen him without a shirt. I’ve seen him in running shorts, jeans, T-shirts, long shirts, and a variety of other clothes, but never almost naked.
I tell myself I shouldn’t stare, but I can’t tear my eyes away from him. Away from the muscles defining his abs, and the striated curves of his biceps and shoulders. From the winding tattoo that I now discover has a rose at the top. And from the light dusting of dark hair across his pecks to the line that starts at his navel and disappears down below.
He leans over then to grab his razor, his towel opens, and I nearly cut my thumb off.
Before I know it he’s back in the bathroom, and I stand in the kitchen trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing.
“Cutting fruit,” Gramma reminds me with a knowing look.
I dive into the oranges. Breakfast comes and goes and all I seem able to think about is West’s body. Now that I’ve had a glimpse of it, all I want is to see more.
Chapter Thirty
After dinner that night, West jumps up. “Mind if we take a rain check on coffee?”
His dad nods. “Sure.”
West disappears into a back room, comes back with a guitar and a blanket, and nods to the front door. “Grab your hoodie. We’re going to the beach.”
“Um…” I give his family a look. “Thank you for everything. Dinner was great.”
His Gramma’s eyes twinkle. “Sure thing, hon.”
It’s dark out, and West flicks on a small flashlight as we walk down his street, cross the coastal highway, and follow a path through the dunes down to the beach. The moon is high, glowing off the calm Atlantic, and I stand for a moment just taking it in and the soft lapping of the water to shore. There’s a boat way on the horizon with tiny lights, and a breeze stirring the dune’s stalks of grass.
Tugging the zipper up on my hoodie, I turn to West. “This is gorgeous. I can’t believe you grew up here.”
He spreads the blanket out, and smiling, opens the guitar case. “So, tell me about that music.”
“Music?”
“That piece you were strumming in Columbus.”
“The same day you gave me the stickers.” The same day we kissed.
He pulls the guitar out, “Yes,” and motions me to come sit.
“The music’s just something I made up,” I tell him and take a seat in front of him.
“Well, I think it’s incredible, and I’m about to surprise you with something.” He hands me the guitar and pulls his lyrics pad from the case. He shines the flashlight on it to show me the words. “I’ve been messing around with this song for the better part of a year and haven’t been able to put any notes to it. Then I heard you play that song, and it’s like it clicked. They go perfectly together.”
“Um, I’m not a songwriter, West.”
“Trust me, okay?”
I glance at his pad and then up into his dark eyes, seeing in them how much this means to him. I settle the guitar across my lap. “Do you want me to just start playing? Is that how this works?”
West nods. “I’ll come in with the words when I feel it’s right.” He flips off the flashlight, and we’re surrounded by the night,
the moonlight, stars, and the ocean breeze.
“Close your eyes,” he whispers, “and just absorb.”
I do and a couple seconds later begin strumming my song, and he begins singing…
“Open up your heart
and see what is inside.
Now that we’re apart
can’t you see love’s blind?
I need you by my side
to comfort me this night.
Cross the seas with me
and join me in my flight.”
I continue playing, soaking in the words as his smooth, baritone’s voice flows around us, filling the night with peace and love. When West finishes, I open my eyes and stare into his. “Those words,” I whisper. “That’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.”
He doesn’t respond and instead just stares at me. A couple of seconds pass and with each one, something shifts in the air. Taking the guitar, he lays it aside and comes toward me, gently pushing me onto my back and stretching out beside me. He leans in and my gaze fixes on his mouth. I watch his lips part, but when he doesn’t close the gap to kiss me, I trail my eyes up to his.
They gentle as he looks down at me. “Damn, you’re beautiful,” he says.
All kinds of flutters shoot through me.
He lowers his lips, but still he doesn’t kiss me, and instead hovers just a fraction above. “You’ve turned into my muse.”
I wet my lips. “I-I have?”
“Yes,” he whispers and closes that teeny tiny space to brush his mouth ever so slightly over mine. “Yes, you have.” He trails his lips over my chin and under to nuzzle there, and I shiver. Who knew a chin could be so sensitive?
“You smell like dryer sheets,” I tell him and immediately wish I could take it back. Why am I telling him he smells like dryer sheets? First Lever 2000 and now this.
He chuckles and shifts closer, not completely on top of me, but almost there. Even though I try to pretend it’s not, I’m fully aware my back is completely stiff. I can’t relax.
West trails his nose up my neck at the same time he snakes his arm under me and fits me even closer. I tense even more, waiting for him to encounter my scars.
“Have you thought about our kiss,” he asks, his breath brushing my ear.
I jerk a nod.
The arm that’s under me moves down away from my back and my scars, and I take in a soft relieved breath. His fingers massage into the area where my butt meets my leg, and then he trails his hand along the back of my thigh, stopping to flex his fingers, and on down further to grip the underside of my knee. Gently, he brings my leg up to wrap around him and slides completely on top of me.
I go from warm, to hot, to full on fire. But still I shiver.
West moves over to my other ear and takes a delicious nibble. “Cold?”
“No,” I croak.
His hand is on the move again—from the back of my knee to my hamstring and right back to my butt—where it stops. But this time he doesn’t massage, he trails his fingers all the way under and brushes them against the seam of my jeans.
I catch my breath.
“Do you like that?” he asks, and I open my eyes to look at him.
“Yes,” I whisper as I pry my left hand from the blanket and latch onto his jacket to pull him toward me.
His lips meet mine in a teasing yet firm, tongue-circling kiss. Sliding my hands up his back, I pull him tighter to me, consumed with the need to feel his weight. He grips the back of my bent knee, widening it a little, and presses right into me, and I take in a sharp intense breath.
West tears his lips away from mine to ask, “Are you okay?”
His weight is on top of me, his warmth surrounds me, and I feel nothing but safe, and so I nod, and West covers my mouth for another deep kiss.
Everything aches for the release I gave myself in the bathroom a few days ago. But this time it’s stronger, more penetrating, and I know when that release comes, it’ll be ten times more powerful than what I gave myself.
Voices way in the distance trickle in, and West must hear them, too, because he pulls back. We both stare at each other for a dazed second. Then slowly, he rolls to his knees and scrubs his hands down his face before looking at me and letting out a disbelieving laugh. “I get so lost in you.”
The voices get louder, and we both look down the beach to see a group of people walking with flashlights.
“Geocaching,” West tells me as he gets to his feet. “We better go back. But this so isn’t over.”
I flush, equal parts embarrassed and turned on. I get so lost in him, too.
When we get back, Vianca is waiting for him in their living room with the Twizzlers and round two of zombies.
“You can join us if you want,” West tells me, walking me to my bedroom.
I shake my head. “That’s okay. You go spend time with your sister. We’ll see each other tomorrow.”
He gives me a hard kiss. “Yes, we definitely will. Or maybe tonight. If I sneak into your bed.”
Chapter Thirty-One
There’s nothing calm about Gideon this time. His entire being buzzes with lethal, violent energy, and I know to my very soul, this will be one of the bad ones. This one will be all for me.
He surveys me from the top of my head down to my bare toes. “Why do you insist on defying the teachings?”
As always expected, I lower my gaze.
“Do you know how many people envy you? Do you know how many want to be you, and still you take it for granted.”
I know his questions to me are really questions to himself, but again, I nod. I haven’t defied any teachings, and if someone envies me, they are sadly, so sadly misguided.
He motions to my clothes. “Take your dress off.”
I reach down, and with shaky hands I grab the hem, lift it off, and stand in my cotton slip in front of him.
He slaps the wooden pole that he holds against his palm. “Now turn around.”
I do, every muscle frozen in place, and brace my hands on the wall in front of me. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait.
“Don’t fight it,” he cautions me, “or I will bind you.”
The whistle of the cane cuts through the air a second before it whacks my back, and I cry out and crumble to my knees.
“This is all your fault!” he screams.
“Eve,” someone shakes me, “you’ve got to wake up.”
My arms flail as I let out a guttural cry, floating somewhere between the nightmare and present time.
“Wake up.”
I kick my legs, trying to get away, trying to wake up. “Nooo,” I hear myself moan.
Someone catches my shoulders and pins them down, and I ram my knee into the person’s side, trying to get away. Numbly, I register a groan of pain.
“WAKE! UP!”
With a gasp, I zoom straight out of the nightmare and stare unblinking, panting for a breath I can’t quite catch.
“It’s okay,” I hear. “You’re all right. You’re safe now.”
I inhale another breath, blink a few times, and slowly West’s face comes into view. With another gasp, I throw my arms around his neck.
“Shh,” West whispers, holding me tight. “You’re okay now. It was a horrible nightmare. That’s all.”
I hold on tight, my eyes wide open, afraid to close them again. Afraid to drift back in to the nightmare.
Time ticks by as I cling to him, my heartbeat steadily regaining normality, my breathing slowing to normal, and I reconnect with my surroundings. I’m in Vianca’s room. We celebrated her birthday. We had nachos. West and I went to the beach.
“Everything okay now?” Gramma quietly asks from the doorway.
I pull out of West’s arms and glance over to see his entire family dressed in their pajamas and crowded into Vianca’s room. Maria’s eyes are what I focus on, though. They’re big and so full of understanding, yes, but also sadness. I told her that the bad dreams will go away. She thinks I lied to her. Maybe I did.
“All good.” West waves them off.
“I-I’m sorry,” I mumble, humiliated and embarrassed I woke the whole house.
Gramma smiles. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
West’s family all shuffles back to their rooms, leaving us in the bedroom illuminated only by Vianca’s nightlight. West smoothes my sweaty hair from my face as I take in his features, memorizing the details, reassuring myself I’m here in Florida with him and not back there.
Gently, he touches the pads of his fingers under my eyes. “It’s no wonder you have so many sleepless nights.”
Silent tears begin to roll from my eyes as my gaze traces his dark brows, the strong line of his cheek bones, and the curve of his lips.
“Hey,” he strokes the tears away. “What’s this?”
I wipe my hand across my cheek, “Sorry,” and inhale a trembling breath as more tears fall.
“I’d say you deserve to cry after a dream like that.” West kisses my wet lips and gathers me into his arms. “Cry as much as you need to.”
His soft words are all it takes to make the tears stream down my face so fast I don’t bother wiping them. The whole time West strokes my back, whispering soothing things, but now that the tears are here, I can’t make them stop—huge ones that choke me and make it hard to breathe.
I cry. And I cry. What feels like years of sobs come from me, and I give freely into them and the moment. I don’t hold anything back. It’s a long time coming.
Eventually the pain lessens, and sometime after that, I pull back. “Thank you,” I whisper, wiping my fingers across my nose.
West gets up, and a few seconds later comes back with a roll of toilet paper. I blow my nose while he studies me, but there’s something off in his gaze, and I can’t quite peg it. Something that’s not about the nightmare and the crying jag I just had. There’s something else.
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