He shakes his head a couple of times and blinks rapidly, as if he’s trying to get rid of whatever threads of the dream are still clinging to him. “This time it was the closet. It’s like all my childhood memories are merging and fusing with the present. I keep making mistakes on the ice, missing stupid shots, or I’m frozen, or when I get a penalty, it’s not the box anymore. It’s the fucking shed, or a closet, and when I open the door, it’s you in there, and there’s all this blood.” He rubs his eyes. “But when I try to get you out, you disappear. And they lock me inside, and there’s all this screaming, but I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. So I keep calling for help and pounding on the door until my hands fucking shatter.”
“Oh, Mav, that’s awful.” I drag my fingernails down the back of his neck. The closet is new, and not something I know anything about. “Can you tell me about the closet? Where is that coming from?”
He taps restlessly on his thigh. “A couple of years after Lavender went missing, she got locked in one of our closets during a game of hide-and-seek. She was probably in there for, like, I don’t know, twenty minutes? Kody was the one who found her, and when we found them . . .” He shakes his head, gaze lifting to mine. “There was all this blood.”
“From what? What happened?”
His gaze shifts to the side, suddenly distant, as if he’s back in the past with the memory. “At first, I thought maybe they were dead. There was blood all over Lavender’s face and her hands and Kody’s neck. She’d been so terrified, she bit right through her bottom lip, bad enough that she needed stitches,and she’d done that thing with her nails. She got a lot worse after that for a couple of years. It probably triggered the memory of the carnival for her. I know it did for me. And the rest of my family. My dad lost it. He totally freaked out.” He rubs at his bottom lip. “And the worst part is that she ended up locked in there because of me.”
I want to ask more questions about his dad, but I need to keep the focus on him for now. “What do you mean, because of you?”
“I was the seeker. I was supposed to find her. She always hid in the same three places, though. So I assumed she was in one of those spots, and I didn’t go looking for her the way I should have.” He scrubs at his eyes with his palms. “Every time I think I’ve let one shitty memory go, another one pops up.”
There’s so much old trauma he’s holding on to, and it seems that now that the door to his past is open, more of those tough memories keep surfacing. I wish I could convince him to talk to someone, but I worry he’ll shut down on me like the last time I mentioned it.
“What can I do to help?”
“I need finals to be over. Once finals are over, it’ll be better. Then it’s just contract talks. It’ll be better then.”
He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me into his lap. I rearrange myself so I’m straddling his thighs.
He glances at the clock on the nightstand. “I’m so sorry this keeps happening. I should probably sleep at my place until it stops. Or maybe the spare room. I don’t want you to be alone at night.”
I take his face in my hands. “Hey, look at me.”
His gaze moves away from the clock, his exhaustion and guilt obvious. “It’s no good if neither of us are sleeping through the night.”
I caress the edge of his jaw. “I can handle a few broken nights of sleep.”
“This has been nearly constant for the past week. I have an exam in six hours, and you have to proctor one.” His fingers drift up my arms, then down my back.
“We’ll both survive the day with coffee, and then one more exam for you and it’s done.”
All I can do is reassure him for now, but the truth is, this lack of sleep stems from a lot more than his nightmares. It’s everything. Since the incident with Gabriel, Maverick has been hyperattentive, worried about my safety to the point that he’s double- and triple-checking the locks and the alarm before bed.
Even on the nights when he has a late shift at the gym, or practice, he still comes to stay the night. Before this, he stayed often, but there were always a couple of nights of the week when he sleep in his own bed. Now it doesn’t matter what time it is; he comes here.
He wraps his arms around me, dropping his head and pressing his face against my neck. He breathes me in. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, whether to me or an invisible force that’s shredding his mind with painful memories he can’t exorcise, I can’t be sure.
“It’s okay. Tell me what you need. How can I help?”
“It’s late. I should let you sleep.” His hand settles on my hip, thumb slipping under my thin shirt, skimming bare skin.
“I can sleep later. Do you need a distraction from whatever is in your head?”
His brows pull together, his expression uncertain even as his eyes darken with lust. “Are you sure you’re down for that? It’s stupid o’clock in the morning, and I know it’s not exactly a sedative for you like it is for me.”
“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t sure.” I lean in and pressmy lips to his, sucking the bottom one, letting it slide between my teeth.
“I love you so much,” Maverick says on a low groan.
“I love you too.” I pull back, grab the hem of my sleep shirt and lift it over my head, dropping it on the bed beside us, leaving me naked.
He cups my breasts in his palms, thumbs brushing over my nipples before he takes one into his mouth, gentle at first, then applying more suction.
I push the covers down and free his erection from the sheets. His teeth sink into my breast when I wrap my fingers around his cock.
He exhales heavily, thickening and lengthening with each stroke. Over the months we’ve been together, I’ve grown accustomed to his size. I don’t think there will ever be a point that I don’t need at least a little preparation before we have sex, but we can manage a semi-quickie on occasion.
