Fury on Fire (Devil's Rock #3)(54)

She woke to darkness.

She inhaled and then winced. Her throat hurt. She lifted her fingers to her neck. Frowning, she swam through the fog of her thoughts, trying to make sense, trying to remember and piece everything together.

She shifted slightly, and then noticed that the bed felt different. The mattress felt different. More solid somehow. And then it . . . moved. The mattress lifted underneath her cheek. She brought fingers to rest near her cheek. And then she realized her head did not rest on the mattress. She rested her head on a person. A chest. Her neighbor’s chest. North Callaghan’s chest. They shared a bed.

Because she had asked North to spend the night with her. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. At the time it seemed like the only option considering how unbearably agitated she felt. Aloneness had never bothered her before. That was before someone tried to kill you.

Tonight she had allowed herself the weakness. She allowed herself to make the request. Just once she would let herself be vulnerable.

But now she was faced with the consequence of that weakness. She was in bed with North Callaghan. Plastered over his chest.

Isn’t this what you wanted? All along? Tonight’s events, as terrible as they were, had given her a reason to make it happen.

She lifted her head up slightly from his chest.

“Can’t sleep?” His voice grumbled deliciously across her skin in the darkness.

She glanced over his body to the clock. It read 3:51 a.m. “I was sleeping soundly. I don’t know why I woke.”

Only she did know why. It was the strangeness of sleeping with someone, of being wrapped up in someone so closely and so tightly that it was impossible to know where she began and he ended. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she extricated herself from his arms and settled back on her side of the bed. “Thank you for being here for me.”

“No problem.” He waited a beat before asking, “You didn’t want your brother to stay?”

She thought about that for a minute. “I love him. He’s great . . . but a little overbearing. It’s hard for him to just be around me without telling me what to do . . . how to live. Tonight, I didn’t want that.”

She thought she sensed him nod. “Older brothers can be like that.”

“They excel at it,” she agreed. “What about your brother? He’s around still, I presume. Doing . . . okay?”

“Yeah. He’s doing great. Married and happy. His life is . . . His life is great.”

She imagined that she heard something in his voice besides happiness or even neutrality. There was something there. Something he felt toward his brother and his brother’s state of “greatness” that he wasn’t okay with.

“When it comes to overbearing brothers, I totally get it.” He shifted on the bed. She turned and studied his profile, noting the arm he tucked behind his head. She caught a whiff of him. Warm male. “The guy gives me a hard time. Calls and texts. Pops in. He always wants me over for dinner.”

“I don’t know. Sounds kind of . . . nice.”

“They’re going to have a baby.”

She watched his chest rise and fall on a great, silent breath.

“You’re going to be an uncle.”

“Yeah. They want me to be the godfather.”

“Wow. That’s great.” She’d hoped she would be an aunt by now. She was the youngest.

“Not really. What can I do? What can I show this kid?”

She moistened her lips. “You can love him. Be there. That’s all anyone can really do.”

“You make it sound easy.”

She nodded in the dark and then realized he probably couldn’t see the motion. “You can do it. You were here for me when I asked . . . and this after you told me to forget you existed. You don’t even like me.” She laughed lightly and the sound fell flat.

“Is that what you think, Walters?” he asked, his disembodied voice floating between them. “That I don’t like you?”

She released a gust of breath, regretting her words. She had meant to make a joke but now things were awkward. “I just think you’re a better person than you think.”

Her whispered reply didn’t improve the awkwardness. Silence swelled between them. Moments passed and slid into minutes. Her thoughts drifted. She swallowed and felt the rawness of her throat muscles. Grimes’s face flashed across her mind, his feral expression as he tried to choke the life out of her.

“I took his son away.” Her quiet voice sounded distant and far away in the darkness.

He didn’t say anything for a long while. She started to wonder if he would speak at all. Maybe he had fallen asleep.

“He didn’t deserve to be a father,” he finally replied, obviously understanding her reference.

“How do you know that’s true? Maybe I—”

“Because you took his kid away. You wouldn’t have done that if he deserved to keep him.”

“How do you know that?” Her voice sounded strained even to her ears. And not because of her bruised throat. “You don’t know me.”

“I know you enough to know that. Some people are messed up. Sick. They don’t deserve to be a parent . . . they don’t even deserve their freedom.”

“I guess you would know about that.”

“Yeah. I do.”