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I should pull the covers up right now—I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow fixing Dane’s fence after all my own work. But I hesitate, more cowardly than I’d like to admit at the possibility of slipping back into the same dream.
The mood in the room is cold and sickening. My worst fears cluster around me. They whisper down the chimney with the wind.
And distantly, on the bottom floor of the house, I hear the sound of the piano…
Bing…bing…bong…
* * *
11
DANE
Remi stumps out of her truck looking sleepy and sulky. I’d been expecting that and maybe something worse, so I’m waiting on the shaded porch sipping gin.
“I’m gonna need some of that,” she says by way of a greeting.
I already brought out a glass for her, not that she’d notice. Poor Remi had a restless night.
I pour her a double, rubbing lime around the rim.
“Thanks.” Remi tosses back the drink and wipes her mouth on her arm. She has a comically practical way of doing things, like she forgets other people can see her.
Today she’s wearing jeans that are more holes than jeans. Patches of her bare brown legs gleam through shredded denim.
Remi wears expressions her own way. Dark circles and a sullen look are kinda sexy on her—her black eyebrows hang low and her lower lip pouts.
“You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
“Rough night?”
She gives me a leery look over the rim of her glass. She already drank the gin, but she lets a little ice slip into her mouth and moves it around on her tongue. It’s sexy and she knows it’s sexy.
I fold my arms across my chest, leaning against the doorframe, staring right back at her. If she thinks she’s going to beat my poker face, she’s dreaming worse than last night.
I watched her thrash and groan on that bed for over an hour…
What was torturing her in her sleep?
What was she seeing when she stared up at me and screamed?
She swallows the ice, practically glaring at me. “No worse than usual. Can I pee?”
“Pardon?”
“Can I use your house to pee?”
I really can’t figure out whether she recognized me or not.
Her eyes were blank, but she was staring right at me…
I knew it was a risk, climbing up to look in her window. But when I saw her sprawled out there on the bed, tangled in the sheets, wearing just that thin, white undershirt…
She writhed like she was caught in a web, sheets wrapped round her legs, back arched. It was raining just a little, droplets pattering on the glass casting freckled shadows across her skin. Each quick flash of lightning bleached her white and turned her underwear to tissue...
I crouched in the tree, inching out on the branch, knowing how insane this was but unable to resist her body thrashing on the bed, her tits pointed up...
