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“Steady,” Slate’s slow, melodic voice murmured.
I instantly calmed.
It wasn’t due to his words or anything, it was due to it just being him.
Oh, boy. I was such a goner.
“Sorry,” I muttered darkly. “I tried to sleep in my room, but I couldn’t do it. It was too dark, and I kept replaying that woman’s head blowing apart and the splatter and gore hitting the wall behind her.”
Not to mention the other stuff I saw in the dark when I couldn’t force my brain to turn off.
To stop thinking about that night.
“It’s fine,” he said, letting me go almost hesitantly. “I just wanted to wake you up before you got struck by lightning or something.”
Slate’s lips were tipped up at the edges when I finally turned to study him.
Standing up, I stretched my arms up high over my head and said, “Being struck by lightning is like one in a million.”
“Yet you had one in the same room as you today,” he pointed out. “And he’s married to a woman that has also been struck by lightning. I love Zee and Jubilee, by the way.”
“That was what those scars were?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded.
“Wow,” I said. “That’s…”
A boom of thunder had me nearly jumping out of my skin, and all of a sudden, the man at my side found his arm full of a hundred and ten pounds of scared Tremaine.
That was me, Harleigh Tremaine, scared of all things scary.
He chuckled and led me away.
“You really shouldn’t be sleeping out here in the dark, either,” he said as he began to lead me around the hammock.
I shrugged. “I can’t fall asleep inside. It’s nearly impossible.”
“Is it the light or is it the openness?” he asked curiously.
“Both,” I admitted, not questioning why he sort of knew that there was a reason that I slept outside.
My dad had a big mouth.
Another boom of thunder had me jumping hard.
“Dre’s not there,” I murmured. “He’s at work. Usually I find an easier time falling asleep when he’s there. But that’s for about an hour, max. I don’t know. I really don’t. I just…don’t sleep. Anywhere but right there.”
I pointed behind me where the hammock lay, and he made a sound in his throat that sounded suspiciously like ‘fuck.’
Only, I didn’t ask him anymore on it.
I also didn’t consider the fact that this was a bad idea.
“Do you want to sit with me?” I blurted.
He frowned, and I somehow wished that the streetlamp over our heads and the quickly darkening night had blocked his face more. I didn’t want to see the denial there.
“Umm,” he hesitated.
Another boom of thunder had me jumping, and my heart started to pound. Now due to the fact that the thunder was getting louder, and the lightning that streaked across the sky felt like it was close.
I don’t know if he saw the worry there, or if he was that in tune with me, but he squeezed my arm.
“Come with me back to my place to get my phone,” he suggested. “I’m waiting for a call from Izzy about what time I’m supposed to be watching her kids in the morning. She said she’d talk with Rome about it and call me back.”
I easily turned directions and went back to his house with him, not holding his hand but feeling our fingers brush every now and then.
When he walked beside me, I felt safe and protected.
Normally, someone with Slate’s height and build that close to me, it’d bring back a sort of awareness of my nightmares. Of the man that had nearly taken from me what I wasn’t willing to give.
Ever.
Obviously, I still hadn’t recovered from that night. However, I could pretend that I had it together.
But with Slate? I didn’t have to pretend. I felt normal. Felt like I was supposed to feel. Felt like I was a girl that was slowly falling for a boy.
Something I hadn’t felt since that night.
We took the steps up to his porch, and he held the door open for me to head in front of him.
My eyelids blinked when the lights seared my retinas, and slowly I took in the room in front of me.
“Wow,” I said softly, taking it all in. “This place is gorgeous.”
He grunted out a ‘thanks’ and kept walking.
I walked to the kitchen and stood there, looking at the countertops, the backsplash, and the black appliances.
“I like that you didn’t go with stainless steel,” I said.
Slate, who’d disappeared somewhere into the back of his house, came back with his phone in his hand.
It was on and he was flicking through what looked to be messages.
“Vanessa wanted all stainless-steel appliances,” he murmured. “She didn’t give one single shit about the rest of the house, but then on the day that I’d already ordered the black appliances, she just popped up and said that ‘stainless steel was the best and we should have the best.’” He rolled his eyes. “Each time I look at the black appliances I’m reminded of the fight we had about them.”
