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Josie sat up quickly on her elbows and glared at me. “What made you ask that?”
I shrugged and fell flat onto my back. “Nothing—I just—you were dating King and then—I don’t know, forget it.”
Josie furrowed her brow. “As badly as I hated you all those years, Maverick, I always held this secret attraction toward you and I didn’t know why.This is why.Because this would happen one day. That doesn’t mean you go back to bullying me, but it was inevitable. It just happened when I was hanging out with King.”
I cradled her to my chest and ran my fingers through her dark, silky locks. Her smell sent my blood wild. I felt myself falling to sleep from the warmth of her presence.
Unlike the memories, nightmares always haunted me. Where the memories were vivid and real, I’d never been able to decipher my nightmares, only that I was scared and in trouble.
This one … I could.
I looked up through swollen eyes to see the moonlight on me, the shadow of something came toward my face and I felt tingles against my skin. It took several times to realize the shadow was someone hitting me repeatedly. My body felt weightless, and blood seeped from my nose and mouth.
A man’s face emerged from the darkness but the hat he wore covered too much of his features to recognize. But the ring on his finger glistened like lightning in the dark storm.
The dark storm that threatened to drown me.
I gasped awake to see Josie standing several feet away, tears pouring down her face while Frankie tried to wake me.
The sobbing noise I deciphered was once again—me.
Chapter Seventeen
Josie
I left Maverick sleeping when I woke up the next morning. After his nightmare I’d been shaken, by him screaming for help, screaming in a way that made me think he was a child. Not the man sleeping beside me.
Frankie looked startled at the sight of him sobbing, which made me think something ran deep for Maverick, something Frankie didn’t even know about.
When I tiptoed into the kitchen the next morning, I found Frankie sitting at the dining table with an untouched bowl of cereal in front of him. He looked haunted.
“Hey,” I said, starting the coffee.
Frankie ran his fingers through his disheveled hair and sat back to look at me through heavy eyes. “What is wrong with Maverick, Josie?” he asked.
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know, Frankie. You’ve never seen him do this before?”
“No.”
I made my coffee and slid onto the chair opposite him. Jordan’s snores were the only noise between us. “He agreed to go to counseling, but wouldn’t tell me how it went. You don’t know anything?” I asked.
Frankie shrugged. “I mean, we didn’t have a good childhood with my mother and her boyfriends, but I don’t remember anything specific.”
I bit my lower lip, trying to figure out what happened to him sincemums the wordapparently. Did this have anything to do with why he hated me? I couldn’t imagine why. I didn’t meet Maverick until he moved during our ninth-grade year.
“Hey, Frankie,” I said, resting my elbows on the table. “Where did Maverick go to school before Zachary?”
“We went to Slaughter, why?”
“I don’t know, I just never knew that about him. There isn’t much in Slaughter. I’ve been there, but just passing through.”
Sighing, I sat back in my chair and took a sip of my coffee. I needed to get my information emailed over to Professor Howard today at the library, but my feet wouldn’t budge. I wanted to check on Maverick before I left.
When his door opened, I sat forward with my cup, watching as he walked out and stared at us. It looked like someone had run their fingers through his hair all night, which I had a tiny bit, to calm him to sleep.
The sleep in his eyes looked heavy and he groaned slightly when he stretched. “Good morning,” I said.
He eyed us, walking over to my side, he picked up my coffee and took a giant gulp. “Good morning,” he said, smiling.
