Overnight Sensation(85)

But Heidi doesn’t fall. She recovers herself and then picks up speed again. She’s going to do another jump.

“Hey!” I shout. I suddenly don’t want her to jump. “Heidi! Babe!” Now there’s no one here but the two of us. And I’m shouting, but the sound of my voice doesn’t carry. I can feel the sound waves die, so I yell even louder. “HEIDI STOP.”

Head down, she’s skating toward me now. Finally. She executes a perfect set of back crossovers and then spins around to face me.

When she looks up, her eyes are gone. There are only bloody sockets looking back at me.

I sit up in bed with a wet gasp, the horrifying image still burned in my vision. I’m covered in sweat, and I have to clap a hand over my mouth to prevent myself from making any more noise.

Jesus Christ. Another bad dream. They won’t stop. And what the fuck was the point of that one? It was so nasty that I feel sick and disoriented.

It doesn’t seem to matter that I’m home in Brooklyn, and Heidi is lying peacefully in the bed beside me. I’m full of adrenaline. My heart pounds while I try to control my breathing.

Taking stock, I notice that it’s daylight already. The clock says 8:05. That’s a relief. I don’t even want to go back to sleep—not if I’m going to dream morbid horror-movie dreams.

Heidi rolls over. Her eyes flutter open, and to my relief they’re just as blue and perfect as they should be. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say immediately.

“Bad dream?” she squints at me.

“The worst.”

“What was it?”

Later I’ll look back on this moment and see it for what it is—another chance to prevent myself from ruining everything. But I don’t do the smart thing. “Lost the puck to Dallas a minute before the buzzer.”

Heidi’s gaze holds mine. She pushes herself up on one hand, and the covers fall away, revealing a tiny little satin nightie. She’s staring at me with a rare intensity.

Now I’m self-conscious, so I gather her hair up in one hand, feeling its silkiness against my palm. “What?” I demand.

Those blue eyes narrow. “You freak out like that, and you want me to think you’re dreaming about the Dallas defense?”

College degree or not, Heidi is as smart as they come. And yet I do the asshole thing anyway. “Yes,” I insist.

Our gazes lock. Heidi is trying to decide whether or not to call me on my bullshit. Four nights in a row I’ve had these dreams. In one version, I’m in the car that hit Lissa’s. When I get out of the vehicle to see what happened, her body is lying on the side of the road.

I’m a fucking wreck, and I don’t know how to stop being one.

Heidi makes up her mind. Instead of chewing me out, she gets up on her knees and positions herself behind me. She puts her smooth hands on the back of my neck and begins to rub her thumb against the stiffness she finds there.

Grateful, I drop my foolish head. She can’t see my look of relief. I don’t want to talk about it, and I doubt she really wants me to. Heidi is attracted to the Jason Castro who has his shit together. She doesn’t need to know that I feel like a big bag of crazy. That my mind is full of violent images and terrible possibilities.

Heidi’s hands dig into the knots at my shoulders. Nonetheless, I feel a huge gulf opening up between us. I’ve gone back to being a frozen man, and I don’t know what to do. “That feels amazing,” I say, so as not to be an ungrateful bastard.

In answer, she lowers her mouth to my neck and gives me a lingering kiss.

Goosebumps break out on my body as she kisses me again. Her soft lips trace a line along the back of my neck. Her hands wander to my bare chest, where her fingertips trace my nipples, and then coast down the center of my abs.

My libido responds to her, as it always does. I feel my cock begin to grow heavy as she drops open-mouthed kisses onto my shoulder. Her tongue tastes my skin, and her hands coast down my body. I’m a lucky man. The luckiest.

Except for one thing. There’s still acid in the pit of my stomach. The fight-or-flight response I had to that dream is still lingering just beneath the surface of my skin. When I blink, my eyes are hot.

My body is all heat and confusion, lust and remorse. Tension tightens my chest, as if chains of steel were there instead of her arms.

I’m so caught, and I don’t know what to do. If I turn around and push Heidi down on the bed, I could lose myself in sex. I could unleash myself on her. I could take her like a beast.

Part of me craves that release. I want to fuck her long and hard, and I also want to burst into tears. It’s even odds which of those things might happen. Or maybe both.

I feel insane right now. And that’s no way to make love to your girl.

Catching Heidi’s hand, I stop its journey into my boxer shorts. Because I’ll protect Heidi against anything. Even myself. “Come here,” I mumble. I give her a little tug, and she takes the hint, moving around to my side.

From there I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her. I tuck my chin onto her shoulder and bury my nose in her hair. My hug is as tight as a Titanic survivor’s grip on the life raft.

And Heidi rolls with it. She ruffles my hair with one hand. She tucks her cheek against my chest and sighs. Best of all, she doesn’t ask for an explanation. She just holds me.