“I’m sorry,” Worthy said. “I didn’t know. When Byron talks about you coming to live with them, it’s like you were some miraculous angel dropped on their doorstep. It must have been hard for him to lose an aunt and uncle and to see you go through that.”
I wasn’t sure how Worthy imagined I would have gone to live with my uncle under happy circumstances, but I couldn’t deny it was weird, because I didn’t think Byron remembered my parents any more than I did. I shifted in my seat and reached for the dessert menu. “Think you can fit in dessert?”
Worthy reached across the table and took my hand in his. “I’m sorry, Remy. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just want to know everything about you.”
“It’s okay.” I turned my hand over so it was palm up and laced my fingers through his. “I don’t mean any disrespect to my parents, but I couldn’t have asked for a better family than the one I have with Uncle Leon and my cousins.”
“I’ve met Tennyson and Barrett,” Worthy said. “But I’ve never met your uncle. What’s he like?”
I spent the rest of dinner and most of dessert telling Worthy stories about Uncle Leon and his big, loving heart and warm generosity. Talking about him brought tears to my eyes. I missed him so much and I was so grateful for everything he’d done for me and given me, even if he did drive me crazy on an almost daily basis.
After we ate, I would have been happy to sit and let the burger and pie digest, enjoy the afterglow, but Worthy had other plans. He paid the bill, grabbed my hand and dragged me back out into the night. “In a hurry to get me home?” I asked.
He gave me a look that made me realize how easily my words could be twisted into innuendo, but he didn’t take the opportunity. “Dinner was just our first stop.”
I got in the car and waited for him. “I’m not sure it’s fair if I let you take me somewhere else. The other guys just got a meal or coffee.”
Worthy appeared unconcerned. “Ron got to take you out dancing.”
“Well, Ronald Graves the Third and I had a special connection.”
Worthy, in the process of starting the car, stopped. “And you and me?” He reached over and brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. His gaze had warmed and the way he was looking at me made me forget what we were talking about. I leaned toward him, drawn to him like he was a magnet and I was a metal filing. “Is there any kind of connection between us?”
I couldn’t resist messing with him. Call it a sick sense of humor, or the result of a youth spent with four older, male cousins who tormented, teased, and coddled me in turn. I leaned closer, letting my eyes go dreamy and soft, until my lips were a breath away from touching his. I’m pretty sure he’d stopped breathing. “Nope,” I said. “No connection.”
Worthy smirked, leaned back in his seat, and started the car. “Oh, well, then. I’ll just take you back to your dorm. I hope the evening wasn’t too intolerable for you.”
I saw the corner of his mouth twitch and I knew he was messing with me. The problem with me is, I’ve never been good at backing down from a challenge. “It was touch and go there for a while,” I said. “But somehow I survived.”
“Yeah,” Worthy said. “It’s a bit of a relief, actually.”
That stopped me. “A relief?”
“Well, yeah, not having to change policy and all that.”
I was pretty sure I was getting in over my head. “Right, since the whole dating thing didn’t work out.”
“Right,” he said. “Dodged a bullet there.”
“Absolutely,” I said, as he pulled up to the dorm.
Instead of hopping out, he turned in his seat and faced me. “So good night. Thanks for an unpleasant evening and all that.”
Well, damn it, this wasn’t going the way I thought it would. “Um, sure, okay.” I started to push my door open, but somehow he was there and he pulled it open for me, with a grin.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He just grabbed my hand, clasped it in his and led me into the dorm and up to my room. I expected a goodnight kiss or a goodbye, but he just stood there, waiting. I wondered if I’d misread him completely. I mean I understood that when he said he didn’t date, that didn’t mean he was celibate. It meant he had flings. Since we’d agreed not to date, even in jest, did that mean he thought we’d sleep together? I was not ready for that.
“Worthy, I think maybe you’ve got the wrong idea.”
He crinkled his brow and tilted his head, like he was confused, but I could see he was biting his lip not to laugh. “Wrong idea? I’m going to hang out with my girlfriend in her dorm room, maybe watch a movie? Is that not what you were thinking?”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. I hated to be bested, but I was too confused to continue. “Girlfriend?”
Worthy laughed. “Maybe we should discuss it inside?”
So, I opened my door and led him in. Frankie was there, studying on her bed, but she leapt to her feet, scattering papers everywhere, when we walked in. “Oh, you’re back,” she said, her words running together with her fast talking. “Sorry, Worthy, I didn’t expect you so soon. I’ll be out of your hair in just a minute.”
I turned to Worthy, my eyes wide. “What is going on?”
Worthy shrugged, his expression sobering. “Your friends talk, Remy. Harrison and Frankie seem to think you’re exhausted. So, I thought a movie night might be a better date than what I’d originally planned.”
“What had you originally planned?”
He shook his head. “You’ll just have to go out with me again to find out.”
“But we just agreed not to date.”
The door shut with a bang and I realized Frankie had left. Worthy sat down on my bed and picked up a pile of DVDs someone had put there. “Right. Which I understood to mean that you are now my girlfriend. We won’t date anymore, we’ll go out as a couple.”
“But…” I was really too tired for this conversation.
Worthy stood and stepped close to me. He put a hand on my cheek and smiled. “Remington McKinney, will you be my girlfriend?”
I really didn’t have to think too hard. There was no one I liked more than Worthy. “What about all of my other dates?”
“You’d better keep those,” he said, with a broad grin. “Wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re getting soft. So? Will you be my girlfriend?”
I nodded. He leaned in and put his lips on mine. I lost myself in the kiss, all thoughts of competition or playing it cool vanished when his warm lips met mine. Before the kiss could get really good, he kissed along my jaw and nipped my ear. I sighed into him and he pulled me down onto the bed next to him.
Sitting next to him wasn’t enough for me, though, I straddled his lap and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He was working his way along my jaw but I leaned away from him and bent until my lips met his again and we were kissing, every one of my senses focused on the feel of his lips against mine, the warmth of his body against mine. His hardness against my…Oh, oh, I’d never felt that before. Worthy’s hands slid under the hem of my shirt and moved higher, higher. It felt so good and I wanted so much more. I just wanted to lose myself in him.
“Remy,” he said, breaking the kiss and pushing me, gently, off his lap. “We should slow down.”
I just stared at him. I didn’t know a lot about dating, but I knew a lot about guys, and I knew it was never the guy who suggested slowing down. “I’m not a good kisser am I?”
His eyes went wide. “No, Remy, you are…I’ve never kissed anyone I’ve wanted more than I want you right now, but I don’t want to rush things. Rushing into a physical connection is what I did with other girls. It’s not what I want to do with you.”
And, now that he wasn’t touching me, what he said made a lot of sense. I wanted to experience everything with him, but there was no rush. He was my boyfriend and we could take things slow. “Okay,” I said. “Good plan. What movie are we watching?”
***
I woke up in a sweat, my heart poundi
ng, my breath coming in short gasps. I’d had another nightmare, but there was something wrong. I couldn’t move, strong arms held me tight, and I started to panic.
“It’s okay, Remy,” Worthy said. “I’ve got you. It was just a dream.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to calm down and act normal. “I’m okay, now.” Worthy loosened his grip, and I sat up and gave him a weak smile. “What happened?”
He smiled, but I could see the worry in his eyes. “We were watching a movie and you fell asleep on me. Then you had a bad dream.”
I dropped my eyes to his shirt, wanting to hide my embarrassment. “Did I drool on you? I’m a slobbery sleeper.”
His smile slipped just a bit. “Are you okay? Want to talk about the dream?”
“No. No, I’m fine. Going into class naked, you know, the usual.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. As necessary as the lie might have been, I still felt horrible for telling it.
He lifted my chin and looked at me. “You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. “Just say you don’t want to talk about it, but don’t lie to me.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I looked around. “Did you make Frankie leave for the whole night?”
“No, she’ll be back in half an hour. She just went to the library to study.” He reached for me and pulled me back onto him, hugging me tight. “Are you going to be okay, sleeping alone? Because I could stay, just to make sure you’re okay.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, and I couldn’t help laughing.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Frankie’s good about waking me up.” The words slipped out without thought and fear spiked through me. I couldn’t be with Worthy if he became overly protective, yet there I was making myself into some sort of victim.
Worthy, however, pretended like I hadn’t said it. “Okay, then. I should probably get going.”
“Already? You said she’d be gone for twenty more minutes.”
He grinned. “I plan to take my time saying goodbye.” He slid a hand onto my waist, under my shirt and pulled me close. He pressed his lips to mine and I opened immediately for him, eager to erase the violence of my nightmare with his warm touch.
I tangled my hands in his hair and pulled him harder against my mouth, finding my rhythm and becoming confident at this kissing thing. He moved his hands higher and thumbed my nipple through my bra. I gasped and he smiled against my lips.
A soft knock at the door made me freeze, but he didn’t slow down. He nipped my lip and nuzzled my neck before he let me go and stood.
“Come in, Frankie,” I called.
She walked in and Worthy left with a smile. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said. “Find out how your date went.”
I had a lunch date the next day with another of Byron’s friends. “You nervous I might like him better than you?”
Worthy smiled and shook his head. He left and closed the door behind him.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Frankie said. “Did you have a good time?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I slept through most of it, but the parts I was awake for were pretty great.”
CHAPTER SIX
Over the next week, I went out with three more of Byron’s friends, and only saw Worthy in class. Between school and work and my dates, I barely had time to think, but Worthy still managed to take up space in my brain. He also took up space on my phone, texting me several times a day and calling, even if just for a few minutes, to chat when neither of us was at work or in class. I couldn’t stop thinking about his smile or the way his body felt pressed against mine. Thinking of Worthy was better than obsessing about the nightmares I was having every night. I did my best to ignore them, to push them to the back of my brain, but they were starting to take a toll. I wasn’t getting much sleep and I could tell that Frankie was worried about me. I was in my room, trying to catch a nap between classes, when my phone rang.
“Hi Uncle Leon,” I said.
“Byron says you’ve been having nightmares again.” My uncle had never been one to waste words or time.
“Byron needs to mind his own business.”
My uncle snorted. “You’re his cousin and he loves you like a sister, someday you’ll be grateful for him.”
I sighed. I mean, I knew all that, but it didn’t make him any less annoying in the moment.
“You’ve always had an overactive imagination, Remington,” Uncle Leon said. “When you’re in a stressful or new situation your mind creates these nightmares. When you were a child, I used to read fairy tales to you, to push the nightmares from your mind. It seemed to help.”
It had always struck me as funny that the only place I had an overactive imagination was in my nightmares. I’d never been one to imagine monsters in dark corners or fear the shadows in the forest. “What was my father like?” I asked, because the nightmares felt so very real, and because my uncle rarely spoke of my father.
“The nightmares aren’t real, Remington. They’re horrible figments of your stressed-out mind. Your father was an accountant, a good man with a steady job and a good, safe life.”
He spoke with little intonation or emotion, reciting something he’d said all my life without variation or embellishment. It struck me as odd that he couldn’t tell me more about his own brother. “How did you know my nightmares were about my father?”
“They’ve always been about your father.”
Uncle Leon changed the subject to my life at university, and I told him how much I was enjoying my classes and about my suitemates. I didn’t tell him about dating my way through Byron’s friends or about Worthy. Uncle Leon didn’t need a reason to worry any more than he already did.
I hung up and tried to get back to studying, but my vision blurred with exhaustion and I lay down to take a quick nap instead. It was easier for me to sleep in the daytime, the nightmares were less likely to happen when the sun shone for some reason.
I woke to Frankie and Bell’s worried faces. They were covered with blood, as had been the face of the man in my dream. A man I’d watched my father beat until I was sure he must be dead. As I pushed my way farther into the land of the waking, the blood slid from their faces, but the worry didn’t.
Bell sat on the bed and put an arm around my shoulders, pulling me to a sitting position next to her. My mouth tasted like old cotton and my head felt like it wasn’t quite attached to my shoulders. I rubbed my eyes and tried to smile. “I think you should talk to someone about these nightmares,” Bell said.
The idea of telling anyone, of speaking about the horrors I witnessed in my nightmares, made me itchy. What kind of person had nightmares like that from their own imagination? Whatever was wrong with me had to be of the pscyho-creep variety. “No, I had them when I was little. My uncle said it helped when he read me fairy tales. Do you know any books that might give me better things to dream about?” If anyone could recommend a book to get my head out of my nightmares, it was Bell.
“Sure,” Bell said. “What sort of books do you like to read?”
I shrugged. “Mostly nonfiction. I love books about ecology, botany, and war. I also like biographies, especially if they’re about people involved in ecology, botany, or war.”
“Huh,” Bell said. “Those are good, but maybe not the best form of escape from nightmares. Especially not books about war. Do you like any fiction books?”
“I liked some of the books I had to read for school, Lord of the Flies, The Red Badge of Courage, The Hunger Games, that sort of thing.”
Bell’s small, heart-shaped mouth pursed and her big eyes widened in thought. “Right. Again, maybe not the best distraction from nightmares. Let me look through my collection and see what I can come up with.” She left, tripping over my backpack on her way out the door, already lost in contemplating the best book for me.
Frankie took Bell’s place next to me. “This probably isn’t my business,” she said. “But…you know what, never mind.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I said, curious about
what insight she might have. “You can tell me. I won’t be offended.”
She nodded. “It’s just…I can’t get over how weird these nightmares are. Where did they come from?”
“My overactive imagination?” I said, with a shrug.
She twisted her hands in her lap, not meeting my eyes. “So, tell me a story.”
“What?”
“Apparently, you’ve got this great imagination. So, tell me a story.”
“Is this something from your text book?” Frankie was taking intro to psych with Bell.
“It’s just. Okay, I do have an overactive imagination. When we went to that paintball tournament, I was scared to take one step, because I was imagining snakes and spiders and squirrels waiting to attack.”
“Squirrels?” I asked.
“They’re creepy, and they have really big teeth. They just give me…” She sighed. “But that’s my point. You strike me as a wholly rational, logical person, yet you have these bizarre nightmares that you first had when you were a little girl living in a sheltered world.”
“Maybe I saw a movie?”
Frankie sighed and her shoulders slumped. She really didn’t like having to disagree with anyone, but I knew she wasn’t buying my theory about my nightmares. She took a deep breath and, when she looked up, I could see the steel in her eyes. “Just one movie?” she asked. “I hear you talking in your sleep when you have the nightmares. They aren’t the same every time, are they?”
“What are you getting at?”
“When I was kid,” she said. “I saw an elderly man with only one eye. Where his other eye should have been there was nothing but flat, pore-less skin. That night, I dreamed I was at a party and someone threw a sucker at someone else and the stick hit the other person in the eye. The stick on the lollipop stabbed them in the eye and stuck there.” She shuddered. “It was awful. I had the same nightmare every night for two weeks, and then about once a week for two months. I had seen a man with only one eye and my nightmare gave me an explanation for what had happened to him.”
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