by Olivia Lynde
But was it really coincidence? My arrival in Rockford, at least. Thinking back to my last conversation with Ms. Walker, I have serious doubts.
Besides—"Look, Seth, I agree that everything that happened to bring us back together seems unlikely. But I've decided that it wasn't, in fact, coincidence, but providence instead." I smile at him playfully. "We were fated to meet again."
But he's in no mood to play because—"We still damn well almost wasted the opportunity!" he bursts out. "What fools we've been, spending two whole weeks skipping around our issues instead of just talking openly to each other!"
He's right; we should have been honest with each other from the start.
But then again, how do you find the strength to be honest, to completely open up your heart to someone who's hurt you before, when you know that they hold the power to hurt you more still? Maybe this time even, to break you beyond redemption?
And there was also a much easier way how we could have spared ourselves these two weeks of being at cross-purposes with each other. I tell Seth about Greg, how he made me believe that Grandma's house had been sold only four years ago. "—which meant that you would have still been there when all my letters were delivered."
Seth looks incredulous. "Greg Anderson told you that?"
"I don't think he mislead me intentionally; in fact, he warned me that he was bad at remembering dates." I sigh. "Either way, I'll gladly forgive him this one mistake in thanks for the good turn he did me by bringing me back to Rockford." Now I can finally understand Jessica's horrified reaction when Greg introduced me as their family's new foster kid; truly, one could almost be tempted to believe that there was such a thing as divine justice. You reap what you soweth, and all that.
"Anyway," I tell Seth, "once I learned the truth about the letters, I had to come see you immediately."
He starts to scowl at me. "You shouldn't have put yourself at risk the way you did, coming here at night." Then, in a really intimidating tone: "Don't ever do anything so dangerous again!"
"Okay, captain!" I salute with a grin. Clearly, I don't feel intimidated at all. In fact, I feel very warm at the thought that he's angry because I put myself in danger. He wouldn't react this way if he didn't care about me.
Still smiling, I move my head forward, burying my face in his chest, and inhale again his clean fragrance that I've missed so much. I feel so loose and relaxed leaning against Seth, his steely thighs beneath me, his powerful arms around me. My eyes are heavy with tiredness. It's been such a long day, and one that's put me through the emotional wringer over and over again.
"Sunny?" He sounds hesitant.
"Hmm?"
"Your letters... I noticed the envelopes were marked with different sending addresses."
A soul-deep sigh escapes me. "Five. Five different addresses that first year."
"How many in all five years?" His voice pulses with dark ripples of feeling.
"Besides the Andersons'?" I hesitate. Then: "Seventeen. Plus a few group homes in between."
He gently raises my head from his chest, and I open my eyes to him.
"Why so many?" he asks hoarsely.
I glance away, biting my lip. "Because of my nightmares. They..." My voice falters to a halt; it's so difficult for me to admit this. It only shows how thin the fabric of my sanity really is.
But he deserves nothing less than complete honesty from me.
Gathering the cowering threads of my courage, I meet his turbulent eyes again. "The old nightmares... they've never gone away. In truth, they've been getting worse over—" His body convulses around me on a powerful shudder. His eyelids squeeze shut and his face, empty of color, is frozen in an expression of horror. And guilt?
"Seth...? What's wrong?" I haven't even started telling him the worst. Was I too blunt, though? "I'm sorry I—"
"Don't say you're sorry!" he interrupts harshly, and his eyelids lift to reveal an awful kind of bleakness in his eyes. "Only I should tell you that. You sent me those letters, Sunny! You kept your part of the deal. I didn't!"
"Seth, you can't blame yourself for Je—"
"Damn well I can blame myself—because I failed you, Sunny! I failed you, but you were the one made to pay the price!"
"I think we both paid the price," I contradict gently.
"But you were the one left to deal with your night terrors! Alone, all these years!"
"And I dealt with them. I survived." Maybe not with all of my sanity intact, but I survived.
"You shouldn't have to face those nightmares alone. I should've been there for you," he grits out in stark self-reproach. "And you shouldn't have to just survive, Sunny! You deserve so much more out of life." Then, very grimly: "Five years ago, I convinced myself that you gave me up because you'd probably found a better life away from me. A life where there was no room left for me—no room for any nightmares."
Oh. Dear. God! A better life without him? How could he believe that? How much did he hurt himself, believing it? And such a foolish thought too; there can never exist a "better" life for me if it's a life from which he is missing.
But did he also say... No room for any nightmares? I have a flash-back to a weird comment he made yesterday, and I understand at last. "Then yesterday..." I lick my suddenly dry lips. "That's what you meant, yesterday, when you seemed so certain that I'd stopped having nightmares. You thought..."
His mouth is bracketed with white lines of tension. "I thought after you left Rockford you discovered the nightmares were gone for good. After all, the last time you'd had one, you were only seven."
"When you were living with your Mom," I remind him. "The nightmares returned that time because you weren't sleeping by my side anymore. You know that!"
The two of us learned very early on that I never got the night terrors when I slept with Seth, but that I always, without exception, had them when I wasn't with him. We never talked about this, just accepted the situation for what it was and worked around it.
After the summer camp episode—except for that time when Seth's Mom took him away—he and I made sure, by mutual tacit agreement, to never spend another night apart. This was truly no hardship, for the place where each of us desired most to rest was in each other's arms. We had become so intertwined, so much a part of each other, that we both needed that closeness in order to feel at peace. He once confessed that, without me by his side, his sleep had been restless and erratic as well.
But we never once discussed my nightmares openly.
Still, he knew that it was only him that could help me keep my night terrors at bay. Not distance from the place where it all started, not the passage of time, not the psychologists who tried to fix me—not anything or anyone else. Only him.
And if he believed that before our separation, then—"Seth, why did you really think that I was cured of my nightmares after I felt Rockford?"
"It had been nearly four years since your last nightmare," he repeats huskily. But his eyes slide away, and so I know he's hiding something.
I point out, "They were four years during which we never once slept apart. Because we both thought that we knew what would happen if we did sleep apart, and you in particular didn't want to take the risk. So why then did you suddenly believe, after we were no longer together, that my nightmares were gone for good?"
"Sunny, don't!" he grits out.
"Why, Seth?"
"Because I wanted to believe it!" he erupts in a fierce explosion of misery and remorse. "Because after you left I spent weeks and months waking up every night in a cold sweat, with your screams ringing in my ears like the first time I heard you having a nightmare. I'd wake up reaching for you—to hold you and tell you that you were safe, you were with me—but I'd only find emptiness." His eyes regard me wildly, and his arms are like steel bands around my middle. "I was going insane thinking that you had to live through that torment alone, when I was too far away and too damn powerless to help you. Powerless to hold you."
But he's holding me now. And al
most as if trying to make sure that I am, in fact, real and here with him, his big hands rise from my waist, touching me possessively, traveling up my back, reaching my shoulder blades—and there they stop, palms spread, holding me caged to him. The path his hands have forged on my body, even through my T-shirt, is like a burning trail of sensation, and I barely choke back a moan.
But I can't help the croaky sound of my voice when I tell him, "I'm sorry, Seth," and I can't stop the slight tremble of my hand as I raise it to curl around his neck in a soothing caress. "I'm so sorry you worried so much."
His beautiful blue eyes burn brighter still with anguish. "Don't comfort me, Sunny. I don't deserve it."
"Seth—"
"Do you know why I could convince myself that you weren't having nightmares anymore?" His voice is gruff with... shame? "Not only because I wanted it to be true or else go insane with worry. But because, far as I knew, you never tried to contact me. And I thought that, if you'd still been having nightmares, you would've looked for me no matter what."
"Wh—?"
"Because you would've needed me to sleep, if for no other reason." His voice vibrates with sorrow and self-loathing.
I'm frozen with dismay.
But he looks so forlorn, so ashamed of himself, that I can't be angry with him. Our forced separation messed with both of our minds, made both of us doubt each other's true feelings.
My body, so rigid a moment earlier, relaxes again in his arms. "Seth, I always needed you for many, many reasons. And my being able to sleep because of you was never one of them." His brow furrows in uncertainty, but the new, hopeful light in his eyes betrays how very much he wants to believe me. I let him see my utter sincerity. "Peaceful sleep couldn't be a reason for my needing you, Seth—it was always an effect of my feelings for you.
"The first time you ever spoke to me, you told me, 'You're safe here'—I'll never forget that—and what I heard was, 'You're safe here, with me.' And I felt those words to my very soul, and I trusted them. I trusted you, and ever since, I've felt this bond between us that's always given me a sense of complete security. So I've always known that it's our bond protecting me from nightmares when I'm with you.
"But Seth, this bond could only exist because I chose you first." I look up at him, blushing and self-conscious at my revealing confession. "Believe me?"
His lips twist into a rueful smile, and he nods. "Yes, please."
I exhale in relief. "I'm just grateful that you chose me as well. And so with you, there's no room left for nightmares. Last night..." A note of reverence suffuses my tone. "There really are no words to explain what it meant to me, being able to go to sleep in your arms again, feeling safe and protected and... at home. I haven't had a home in five years." And darn it all to heck and back, now I'm crying again!
His eyes mirror my pain, and abruptly, he lowers his face to mine and kisses my cheeks below my eyes, kisses my tears away. I'm so startled, I immediately stop crying. I feel his sweet breath on me, and his soft lips quivering against my skin.
"I was so damn worried after you left," he murmurs, "then it was even worse when I didn't get any word from you. I kept thinking about you, my head torn with a million questions. Were you sleeping well? Were you fine, away from me? Did you really not need me anymore?"
He raises his head again, and his deep blue eyes consume me. They're completely focused on me, as if it was me alone who mattered in his world. I fight to push back my lusting thoughts, but this is definitely getting harder to do each time.
So I reopen the worst possible subject—one that's guaranteed to break the spell. "You asked me why I moved around so much in foster care. Well, the nightmares... sometimes they made me scream in my sleep. You know, as I used to..." And by his grimly darkening face, it's clear that he really does remember far too well. And yet he actually only heard my nightmare-induced cries twice: when I first moved into his house, before I started to sleep in his bed.
The anxious face of the seven-year-old Seth from my memories merges with the just as anxious face of the mature Seth that's before me now, and I look at him, overwhelmed with tenderness.
Then I clear my throat and admit, "My screaming incidents are behind most of the lost placements. After a couple of times of me terrifying my fosters awake in the dead of the night, they can't wait to get me out of their houses. They think I'm crazy," I confess, full of shame.
"Then they're small-minded and stupid!" he defends, furious on my behalf. "You're perfectly sane!"
"But there is something wrong with me, Seth! Normal people don't have the kind of issues with which I have to deal! And I want to be normal too, but I don't know how to fix myself. Even the psychiatrists I saw figured that I was a lost cause. Nothing can help me."
"I can!" he contradicts fiercely. "I'll always be with you now, and you can be perfect just as you are."
I can be perfect just as I am? Really, only Seth could tell me something this soul-shattering and sweet!
"You'll be my cure-for-all?" I tease with a forced smile.
"Yes." The way he tells it, strong and confident, it sounds like a vow.
"And you'll always be with me?" I whisper, even though I know that's impossible.
"Yes, Sunny, I will." This, too, sounds like a vow.
Chapter 16
For the second morning in a row, I wake up nestled against Seth's warm body. My head is pillowed on his hard, naked chest, and his arms are wrapped around me. His right hand has slipped below my T-shirt at the small of my back and is playing softly on my skin.
His touch burns me like sweet fire, and I become aware of his morning arousal pressing against my thigh. Flames burst to life low in my belly, and all of a sudden I want more: more of his touch, more of this sensual burn, more of Seth! God, this boy is driving me crazy, making me wild in ways I never imagined!
I cuddle closer into him, stretching like a cat, and he knows I'm awake now and chuckles. Smoothly, he rolls us in bed and rises above me, and my legs part instinctively to make room for him. I feel his arousal coming to rest between my thighs and can't stop an involuntary quiver. My eyes fly open and connect with his heated gaze.
He gives me a sizzling smile. "You're happy this morning?"
An answering grin lights up my face. "I truly am." It's heaven waking up next to him, cosseted in his embrace. And the side-effect of waking up rested, after a full night's sleep, is a more precious gift than I could ever describe.
Last night, when he told me that he would always be with me, vibrant joy surged through me and the last shadows of the past fell away. Just yesterday morning, I had been thinking dejectedly that, no matter what Seth did, he could never unbreak his promises, or undo the past, or erase my grief.
But then last night he gave me a miracle.
He fulfilled his promise to me that we would find our way back to each other. He undid my wrong perception of the past, freeing me from the burden I had carried all this time thinking that he'd betrayed me. Finally, he healed my grief by gifting me with pure joy instead.
Soon after, my exhaustion got the better of me, so he carried me to bed and then lay down beside me. I fell asleep entangled with him, my last thought being that, after five years of living all alone in the world, I was finally back where I belonged. I was back home.
And here we are now, molded to each other, staring into each other's eyes, lost in each other. In my chest, my heart beats whole and strong once again.
He brings his right hand slowly to my face. His gentle fingers caress my forehead, trace my left eyebrow, then glide softly down my cheek toward my lips. My skin flares in the wake of his sensual touch. His eyes, so blue and fathomless, radiate heat. An inferno of passion glows in them, and suddenly... I know.
He wants me too.
The realization hits me with the strength of a lightning bolt. Maybe his erection I'm cradling below my belly is for me, after all—not just an inherent morning reaction. I feel giddy.
No! Not giddy, that's bad. Bad! I g
ive myself a mental shake, then add a hefty slap for good measure.
We absolutely cannot go there! He's a player and I'm not. From all the school gossip I've heard these past two weeks it's obvious that sex doesn't hold the meaning for him that it would for me, and so it would ruin our relationship. No way in hell will I allow that to happen! I need him in my life, and I will not risk losing him on account of a carnal affair... Even if having all his lethal hotness focused on me right now has pushed my body into whimpering meltdown.
Feigning nonchalance (very badly, I fear), I demand with a grin, "Get off of me, captain. I need to go to the bathroom."
He raises an eyebrow, looking at me oddly; he must have heard something in my voice. Gosh darn it, I really can't lie to him worth a damn!
Still, after a moment he lifts himself from me—but only slightly, only just enough that I can barely squirm from under him. In which process I unavoidably end up rubbing myself against him all over. Oh, sweet mercy, this boy is wicked! By the time I've managed to wriggle from under him, I'm so hot I think water would evaporate instantly on contact with my skin.
As swiftly as I can (and without glancing back), I escape from the room.
* * *
After I use the bathroom facilities and brush my teeth, I head for the kitchen area where he's already making breakfast.
His back is turned to me, and on hearing me he tells me over his shoulder, "I hope toast and bacon are all right. I haven't gone shopping recently, so there's really not much else in the apartment." He doesn't wait for my reply before turning back to the frying bacon, and that's really fortunate given that my vocal cords seem to be incapable of producing any intelligible sounds just now.
He's put on a pair of blue sweatpants, and they're hanging low from his hips and molding his perfect butt in a way that makes me weak in the legs. But that's all he's put on—his torso is naked, and I have a full, first-row view of his fantastic bare back.
His broad, powerful shoulders taper to a leanly sculpted waist and narrow hips. His skin is bronze and sleek, stretching tautly over delicious, well-defined muscles. Dear heavens, he looks gorgeous, and so eminently lickable that it's a good thing I'm too woozy to move, or I'd probably jump him and devour him like chocolate!