Page 145 of Hold Me Until Morning

I peeked at my phone for what had to have been the fifteenth time since Cody had said he’d be back by nine.

This was exactly what I got, wasn’t it? Giving in the way I had?

A needy obsession that left me antsy and in a toil of nerves. Wondering where he was. If he was okay. If I’d been a fool and believed something in him that I shouldn’t have when there’d been so much proof that he wasn’t the type of guy who was going to stick around.

I deserved it, didn’t I? Deserved it for casting the type of betrayal I had last night. The same as I’d done last Saturday when I’d begged him to touch me. The one thing I’d sworn I’d never do.

But it felt like he would.

Stick.

Become a piece of the molding.

A brick that perfectly fit even when I wasn’t supposed to allow him to.

I tried to act as if I wasn’t a deranged mess where I lounged on the couch watching an old episode of The Voice with Lolly.

She had her own unhealthy obsession with Blake Shelton.

“Look at that man.” She tsked like it was a shame. “If I were only forty years younger…I looked just as good as that Gwen back in the day. And I sure can sing, too.”

I held back a chuckle. “I’m sure you would have gotten on that stage and completely stolen the show.”

I took another furtive peek at my phone, frowning when the last text I’d sent him remained unread.

Me

You okay?

“Don’t pretend like I don’t know you keep looking at that thing on your lap or that I don’t feel that you’re tied up in stitches.”

My head jerked upright to find Lolly peering at me from her side of the couch, her expression knowing.

I blew out a sigh. “He just…said he’d be back by nine. That was almost half an hour ago.”

Okay, fifteen minutes.

He wasn’t even that late, and I was already spinning circles.

“I’m sure he knows how to take care of himself.”

I flinched. Is that what I was worried about? That he was taking care of himself?

“There you go, twisting yourself up even farther. You don’t watch out, you’re going to wind yourself so tight you’re going to squeeze the life out of the roots that have just sprung.” She said it like she’d known exactly what I’d been thinking.

I rubbed my finger at the corner of my eye to try to ease some of the tension. “I know. It’s stupid. I either need to trust him or not, but this whole thing is brand new, and that’s what we need to be about—building trust between each other—and he’s already taking a chink out of mine.”

Guilt flailed in my conscience. The hypocrisy of what I was keeping from him. But it was too soon. Too early. Too dangerous. If he knew, it would shackle him. Make him an accomplice of what I was hiding. I couldn’t do that. Not when I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to handle this.

“You should probably give a person the benefit of the doubt before you go jumping to conclusions and thinking the worst of them.”

That would be all fine and dandy if people didn’t typically default to the worst.

Maybe Pruitt had ruined me in some way, made me cynical and suspicious, because I sure as hell hated what I was stewing in right then.

This unease that grew and toiled in the pit of my stomach with each second that passed. A sense that left me off-kilter.

Worried and dripping with dread.

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