AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You should like yourself,” she told him softly. “I didn’t like when you said you didn’t.”
“Why?” There was genuine curiosity in his voice.
She shrugged. “Because I know that feeling, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. You’re…” She kicked at the dirt with her bare toe. “You’re not bad.”
“Careful now. You’re getting dangerously close to a compliment.”
She rolled her eyes and fought the urge to throw out an insult to even it up. “You’re going to go back to your life, and I had always liked ending something like this.”
“Like what?”
“Where I got the last say.”
Landon nodded once and shut his door, then walked right past her and pulled the tailgate down. She watched him hop easily up into the back and pull open the truck box that rested against his back window. He pulled out a folded-up blanket…no…he spread it out and hit a button, and it automatically inflated to the exact shape of the truck bed. He pulled out a couple of blankets and two pillows and threw them down. Without a word, he held out his hand, offering her help up.
She hesitated. “Is this for women you sleep with?” She didn’t want to lie down on anything smelling of other women. A feeling of possessiveness had taken her at the thought, and it was hard to breathe.
“No other living being has been on this but me.” Truth.
She swallowed hard. “Why do you have a bed for the back of your truck?”
“You let me see you, so I’ll tell you something about me that no one else knows.”
“Okay,” she said softly, looking up at his glowing silver eyes.
“Sometimes I have bad dreams. They’ve happened since I was a little kid. It’ll be the same recurring dream for three months, and I used to be terrified to go to sleep when I was in it. I would sneak my blanket to my parent’s bedroom door and sleep right outside so I could feel safe. When I was at Matt’s house, I would do the same outside of his door. I didn’t like bedrooms, and eventually I started wandering outside. It was sleepwalking, I guess? I would wake up in the yard.”
“What were the dreams about?” she asked.
“IESS.”
Chills blasted up her arms. She knew what that was. It was a shifter testing facility that had been shut down years ago, but there had been so much suffering involved with IESS.
“Were you tested on?” she asked quietly, silently praying his answer would be no.
“No. My dreams are leftover from my parents.”
With a frown, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“My mom was in there for two years, and then my dad went and traded himself for her, and he was in there for two years.”
She inhaled sharply and dropped her gaze as her eyes instantly burned with emotion. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s not my story, but it lives in me for some fuckin’ reason I can’t figure out. When I’m outside though? That place doesn’t touch my dreams.”
“You sleep outside?”
“Most nights, I do.”
“But you have a home?”
“I have a den. I have a nice bed and a clean bedroom and everything I could want out of a house, but my animal has some issue with confined spaces when I’m unconscious. So…most nights I sleep under the stars.”
“No one else knows this?” she whispered, her chest filling with a hope she didn’t understand.
He shook his head and offered his hand again. “Now, just you. I won’t talk about your paintings, and you won’t talk about me managing memories that don’t even belong to me, and to the rest of the world, we’ll pretend to be normal. Deal?”
Lucia slid her hand against his and allowed him to hoist her upward. “Deal.”
