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We weren't that close after all.
"Lock up behind you when you leave," I said, walking into the kitchen and grabbing a bottle of Coke from the fridge.
Something kept me from going next door to the bedroom and lying down in bed next to Gia. It was one thing to sleep in the same apartment, but quite another to have her warm body next to me and know that she trusted me to protect her from the dangers of this world.
Me. Me, of all people. Who was so deep in these dangers that they were part of my everyday life. Even worse, they were a part of me.
This evil she feared was also in me. Even if she would never get to feel it from me, there was still the fear that she would wake up one morning and realize whose bed she had lain in.
I gritted my teeth and got annoyed with myself. Gia had had a hundred opportunities to push me away and draw clear boundaries. Not once had she even tried– no. Instead, she laid down in my bed as naturally as if she belonged there. To me. To my side.
Her words still floated through my mind when I had expressed to her she was mine. She still wanted to talk about that, although everything seemed to have been clear for a long time.
This woman influenced my strict way of thinking. Not once had it happened to me in recent years that I wanted one of my one-night stands in my bed more than once. Gia, on the other hand
I drank the last sip from the bottle and pulled my shirt over my head on the way to the bedroom. Before I opened the door, I stripped off my shoes and my pants. By the time I got to the bed, I was wearing nothing but my boxers, and I kept them on only so as not to give Gia the wrong impression.
In the dim light of my bedside lamp, I recognized her body between the blankets. She was lying in the middle of the bed, clutching a pillow. Her water bottle was within reach, as were the pills and something I identified as one of my knives.
She must have found it under my pillow.
For a few seconds, I stopped in front of the bed and looked into her sleeping face. There was no sign of the day's exertions. She seemed peaceful, as if she had put the memories aside and not taken them with her into her dreams.
I almost expected her to wake up at any moment. She would snap out of her sleep and panic because she was in a strange environment and I was just standing there watching her, but nothing like that happened. She continued to sleep in peace.
Did her subconscious realize that she could trust me and that I posed no danger to her?
Before I could lose myself in that question, I lay down in bed as well. Which turned out to be harder for me than it should have been. I did not know how to lie down next to her. How I was supposed to sleep next to her.
I rarely shared my bed. I would rather give up sleep than make myself vulnerable to another person.
But now she was in my bed and there was no way in hell I would throw her out because I had a messed up view of the world and didn't function like a normal human being.
At some point, I lifted the blanket and lay down under it. Without even waking her up. At least that's what I thought, until Gia turned around, threw her arm over my bare chest, and rested her head on my shoulder.
I froze and heard a sleepy giggle.
"So you find this amusing," I rumbled.
"I think it's especially fortunate that you made it to the bed. What time is it?"
"There's enough time to sleep for a few hours," I replied. I wouldn't tell her it was already after eight in the morning. If only because I was selfish enough to want her to continue to be in bed next to me as I caught up on the sleep I had earned.
"I wouldn't have woken up if you had just laid down behind me and held me," she murmured.
Was that it? Did she show her softer side when she was drained and physically at her wits' end?
"I'll remember that for next time, okay?"
Gia nodded, but said nothing more. I could tell from her breathing that she had only woken up for a moment– apparently to complain that I hadn't immediately snuggled up to her like a toddler to his beloved cat.
I couldn't help but grin at this, but at the same time was catapulted back to my previous musings, which kept me from falling asleep as well.
Besides, it was unusual to feel someone so close to me. A warm, soft body that also belonged to a woman who was somehow important enough to me to turn all my principles upside down for once and dig up special rules where there had been none.
What would happen in the next few days once she had recovered? She had already hurled her list of demands on me, but which of them would become a reality in the end and which would be forgotten because everything turned out differently than we had expected?
The outcome of this night already showed that. In the end, nothing came of my anticipation of interrogating the Frenchman and then torturing him. Perhaps a cooperation would grow out of my decision that would last for the next few years. Even that, however, was only conjecture. Vincenzo may have trusted Jerome, but overall, it could only be called a leap of faith.
