Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
I glanced at the clock. It was four a.m.
Fresh air. I needed fresh air.
A beep alerted me that my door opened, and then it slammed shut, but the scant amount of moonlight coming in through the windows didn’t give me much visibility.
“Izzy?”
“In here.” My shoulders slumped in relief. There was only one person that voice could belong to.
“You screamed.” His shadow filled my doorway, and I could tell his weapon was drawn.
“It’s just me,” I assured him, wrapping my arms around my midsection.
He walked right by me, clearing my bathroom and then the area next to the window before flicking on the light on the nightstand behind me. “Fuck.”
That word was the only warning before there was a sound like him holstering his weapon. Then he lifted me into his arms, holding me close against his chest.
“I’m okay,” I promised, but that didn’t stop me from melting into his familiar embrace. He wasn’t decked out in that thick Kevlar vest anymore, not that I expected him to be at four in the morning. There was soft black cotton and a steady heartbeat against my cheek.
“Yeah, seems like it.” He walked us into the living room, then sat on the couch, holding me in his lap and clicking on the table lamp next to us. “Shit, you’re soaked.”
I should have moved, should have scooted to the other end of the couch, but instead, I tucked my legs up and curled into him for the simple reason that there was nowhere safer in this world.
“It’s just a nightmare.” I shivered as my skin chilled beneath the beads of sweat.
Nate reached over his shoulder and pulled the blanket from the back of the couch over me, then wrapped one arm around me. His other hand stroked up and down my arm in a soothing, repetitive motion. “Would a hot bath help?”
“No water.” I shook my head and barely kept myself from arching my face into his neck. It should have been illegal to smell that good, all fresh soap and spearmint.
“The plane,” he guessed, resting his chin on the top of my head.
“The plane.”
Minutes passed in silence as my heart rate slowed to match his. That was one of the things I loved about being around Nate. We didn’t have to fill every empty second with chatter.
“Do you ever get them?” I asked, knowing I should move off his lap, out of his arms, and yet unable to make myself.
“Not really anymore.” He continued the slow, steady strokes up and down my arm.
“What changed?”
“It became one of the lesser traumatizing things I’ve seen,” he said softly. “But if I do get them, they’re usually that I can’t get you out, or that you slip away in the current. Never gets past that, though. I’m perpetually battling to get you to shore.” His hand paused, and he squeezed my shoulder. “What about you? How often do they still happen to you?”
“Depends. Usually only when I’m in the middle of something really stressful, or something that’s out of my control.” Like right now. “Feels like I went through years of therapy for nothing,” I tried to joke.
“If they happen less than they used to, it’s worth it.”
I somehow doubted he’d acted on that sentiment in the last three years, given how opposed he’d been to it before.
Moments passed, and the impropriety of it all struck me straight in the chest. “Is this how you comfort every assignment you’re given?”
“Hardly,” he scoffed, shaking his head, and I knew that if I looked up, I’d see that slight smile curving his lips. The one that always made me ache to kiss him.
I couldn’t stay there, curled up against him like I wasn’t someone else’s fiancée.
Are you really, though?
I shifted my head slightly and felt the lump under my cheek, then drew back to stare at it.
“I was in the middle of getting dressed when I heard you,” he said, pulling the chain from beneath his shirt to reveal what looked like a dog tag, but it had been wrapped in black tape.
The tape was so he wouldn’t make a sound when moving around, if I remembered correctly.
“Explains the bare feet,” I said, shifting out of his lap and taking the blanket with me. It was odd that he was wearing dog tags if I wasn’t even allowed to call him by his name. All these years later, he’d dug deeper into the same life, while I’d completely changed mine.
He cleared his throat and moved to the other end of the couch, leaving only my feet on the no-man’s-land of the center cushion.
“What were you doing up at four in the morning?” I asked, tugging the blanket closer to cover the fact that I didn’t exactly wear a bra to bed. Not that he hadn’t already seen every inch of me naked.