I put a heaping spoonful of eggs into my mouth. The boy could cook. “Thank you for coming to get me today. I can’t believe I left my phone here.”
“Well, after our make-out session, you clearly lost your mind. I guess I am that good.”
“Yes, you are.” Oops, didn’t mean to spit that out.
“You’re pretty good too. This is all really too good, whatever this is. Don’t you think?” Gabe tickled my arm as I scooted over and rested my head on his shoulder. He felt it too. “But we can’t go there.”
This was it. My cue to assure him it’s nothing because all I want to do is be close to him now. He doesn’t do relationships anyway. “You’re nothing really.”
“Ouch.” He nudged my shoulder.
“No, I mean, we’re two people who have some type of connection, and we both don’t want anything permanent. Right?” I said the words as my brain elbowed me because I had a gut feel if I were close to him, no other man in the vast universe would be able to fill what he could. “Can’t we just enjoy each other’s company until the others get here? No strings? Like a weekend thing? A seventy-two-hour deal?”
“But—”
“Shhh.” Desperation gripped me.
His deep voice buzzed around like a swarm of bees that could kill me if I get too close. “I think Fern Ethel digs me a little.”
“You’re okay, I guess. But we both agree we want nothing, and we don’t need my six-foot-five burly brother hunting you down. That’s why I never had a high school boyfriend until after Dave graduated. He and his I-will-kill-you resting face scared everyone away. It serves him well in hockey but never when it came to me.”
“Yeah, he can’t speak about you without the word angel as a prefix or suffix.”
“Oooh, Gabe knows grammar…sexy.” I set my empty plate on the nightstand before I scooted down on my pillow. He did too, and we turned so we were face-to-face. “Maybe we have something nobody will ever know about. Clearly, I need to be out of the United States in order to ever find a man.” I’d never been in a room that felt as cozy and unbelievably perfect in my life.
“Close your eyes. I can tell you’re tired.”
“There you go again, being bossy.”
He pulled the comforter up to my chin, and at some point, I drifted off to sleep as his hand stroked my hair, leaving me with a feeling of being taken care of that I hadn’t felt since I was a little girl.
My mind was swimming when the dark monster of fear crawled in and locked me down.
I was in the car, and the tree gave way. I heard my screams ricochet off the windows as the car picked up speed and crashed into the lake. In seconds, icy water poured in, stabbing my body as the car filled. My hands pushed, trying to get my legs free, but I couldn’t. Hot tears streamed down my face, and I hit the window while the car went lower as the lake began to devour me. I heard my screams, but nobody was coming for me. There was no one. The water was up to my chin as the daylight was disappearing. I was almost gone.
The next thing I knew I was sitting up gasping for breath. It was a dream. It was a dream.
I was hot and cold at the same time, and it took a second to remember where I was. I jumped when arms suddenly wrap around me. I turned and buried my face in his chest.
“It’s just a dream,” he whispered.
“It was so real. I was trapped.” My heart was racing so fast I was afraid I might die. “I can’t breathe.”
He held me as he stroked the back of my neck with his fingers. “Let’s breathe together, okay?”
I nodded and he pulled back as my eyes locked with his in the dimly lit room. He inhaled deeply, placed his open hand over my pounding heart, and placed my hand over his. “Feel the heartbeat. Breathe from here.”
I was in a trance as we stared at one another, and I felt his beating heart under my hand. I don’t know how long we were there, but eventually my body relaxed, and my mind sort of followed.
He gently pushed until my head was back on the pillow,
“I know all about those dreams. So real, making you relive it.” His voice was low and quiet. “The details vivid. How something in your mind can cause your body to have the same feeling again and again.”
“You know the dream?”
“I do,” he whispered.
“How?”
