He didn’t know my birthday. And I didn’t tell him I missed it when we got back here because of everything happening back-to-back.
“We’re about to travel again and are leaving in an hour and a half for the flight. But I promise we’ll celebrate her birthday together when we get back.” Rune held my gaze as he made his promise that I knew he wouldn’t break. Through some unlocked memory, I knew he never broke an oath.
Butterflies flapped around in my stomach at the idea of him celebrating me with my family. I never brought a guy home to my parents. The few I tried to date didn’t make me feel things like what Rune did. With them, there was no sexual tension. No clit throbbing or making me tremble with brimming desire. So I never took them home because I knew I was ending it with them soon.
I wanted someone to set me on fire, make me feel whole, and wake my soul. For the love of god, I wanted someone who made me wet, made me want to jump him.
And there was Rune in the Starbucks when I thought twenty minutes before I walked into the shop that I was going to take off work for a while to travel. Search for what was missing. I hadn’t known what it was then, but I was going to travel the world and find the missing piece.
And there he was... towering next to me, smirking with bright eyes as he told me to be careful as I glared at the man’s back.
“Oh,” Mom murmured, snapping me out of my thoughts again.
I blinked, fisting my hand by my side.
Why the hell was I getting lost in my head more than usual? I knew it was normal for me to space out and get lost in my thoughts, but it was happening more frequently at the drop of a hat.
Why? What the hell was happening to me?
Turning my head toward Rune, his blue eyes swept over my face as he searched for something. An answer. Permission. I wasn’t sure. He must’ve found what he needed because he squeezed my hand and asked a question that made my heart stutter over a few beats.
“Isa told me you gave her a name to show her strength. Because she’s a miracle baby. What happened?”
ChapterSix
Silence met Rune’s question. Enough that I picked up the rumble of the fan they had for over ten years. They refused to buy a new one, even though its god-awful metal screech when not positioned right could wake the dead.
My heart raced, my chest tightening and my ribs feeling like they were about to crack with how badly I wanted to know the reason. Tingles spread through me, focusing mainly on my palms and feet from Mom’s silence.
She didn’t want to answer.
What the hell happened when she had me?
“Lana?” Rune asked, letting go of my hand to rest his on my thigh. His long fingers curled on the inside, sending warmth and a thrill through me. And I thanked god that I felt it, instead of the alarming numbness. I knew how to block the numbing cold and allow myself to feel again, but that would require me to open the link and I didn’t want to alarm Rune with everything I was experiencing. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Mom answered with a tremble in her voice. “But let’s not discuss something sad. I don’t want to dampen your day and happy times. Isa’s here, and that’s all that matters.”
Isa’s here, repeated in my head. There was something to that.
I swallowed hard, turning my gaze to Rune’s face. His eyes moved to glance at me, but I looked away and down at the phone, willing my mom to tell us.
What was she hiding?
Nibbling on my lower lip, I glanced at Rune again, who caught me looking this time. It was written all over his face that he was about to say something to convince my mom to tell us. I took a deep breath and gathered as much courage as I could. I wasn’t the person to pry information from my parents, but I wanted to know why she always said I was a miracle baby.
“I am here, and I really want to know what happened. Please,” I asked her sincerely.
“Isa,” Dad warned, using his scary, serious voice with me.
He’d only used that voice with me once before. When I was seven and on a walk with him through the nature trail. There was a rattle, and I didn’t know what it was. It sounded like the bugs I heard during the summer months.
I remembered skipping ahead of Dad and into the brush where the rattle of the bugs was and stopped dead in my tracks when he snarled my name with his scary tone and told me to freeze.
The rattle was right in front of me. And when Dad told me to slowly back away, I looked down.
Five feet away, coiled and rattling, was a tan snake with brown and rust color patterns on its back.
I had been a foot away from the striking distance of a large rattlesnake, and my dad saved my life.
