Page 42 of Remember Me

The house was huge, although old and in genteel disrepair, and I had no clue what had possessed me to fall in love with something so big. On the bottom floor there was the kitchen, the rounded library that opened into a family room, master bed and bath, and my studio. A back porch looked to have been recently framed out and dry-walled. This must be the workspace Hayes had told me about. Via a covered walkway off of this room, a long, low building housed a garage and shed. I decided to explore it later and climbed a second staircase to the second floor.

There were four spacious rooms on the second floor, bedrooms connected by jack and jill bathrooms on the left and right. They were empty and echoing, with spackled areas on walls that begged for paint and hardwood floors that looked newly refinished. The rooms surrounded a central landing large enough for a sitting area, and another flight of steps led up to a third floor.

The third floor, I discovered, was more of an unfinished attic space, closed off from the rest of the house by a sturdy wooden door. I closed it and turned to walk back down, starting when I saw Hayes at the bottom. I placed my hand over my heart. “You scared me,” I told him.

“Sorry. Cat feet. What do you think?” He placed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, unmoving as I drew closer. I stopped on the bottom step, not wanting to push past him.

“What do I think? I think it’s ginormous. Why did we want something so big?”

He smirked at me. “Lots and lots of babies, I believe you said.”

I stared. “That’s not funny.”

“It kind of is.”

As I stared into his face, on level with my own from my elevated position, I felt my stomach flip. I placed a hand there to soothe the unsettling sensation and Hayes’ gaze sharpened. “Is it the baby?”

“No! The baby’s fine.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“You’re too close to me, that’s what’s wrong.” I started to brush by him, stepping down with my leading foot to the floor. Before it connected, he caught me around the waist, though, pulling me snug against him, half on the step and half suspended.

“I can’t get too close to you, Birdie. You’re under my skin and still never close enough.” He cupped the subtle rise of my stomach with one hand, and the beating of butterfly wings intensified a thousand-fold. I drew in a shaky breath, and slowly, giving me ample time to protest, he trailed it upward, over my ribcage and to the underside of my breast. He teased it with a single languid thumb, brushing it softly once, then again. Then he lifted it to settle against my neck in a loose grip. “What do you want, Birdie?” he asked, his voice low and husky and intimate and making me want very bad things.

My eyes were closed, I realized, and I was holding my breath. I lifted my gaze to discover his pinning me in place, demanding my truth with his patient seduction.Breathe, I told myself.In. Out.It was just a kiss, the one he’d warned me I would ask for. I wanted it, I did. I wanted him, or at the very least my body did. Why was I resisting it?

Because he made me nervous? Because I didn’t trust him? Because my body trusted him when my head didn’t, andthatmade me nervous? It was too confusing.

“I-I n-need to —” I pushed against him and he released me immediately, save for a steadying hand until both feet found the floor. I walked a few feet across the landing to the staircase that led to the ground floor, then turned. I looked at his chin, unable to raise my eyes to his. “I’m sorry.”

I saw him nod once, decisively, and then he walked away.

I couldn’t sleep.

Being in this house, in this bed… it felt just unfamiliar enough to keep me tossing and turning. And yet, part of me unquestionably recognized it as home. As my mattress, my pillow.

It was the oddest feeling.

Deciding to get myself some water, I slid out of bed and walked down the hall to the kitchen. The wooden floors were freezing on my bare feet and I made a mental note to hunt up a pair of slippers.

As I went, I peeked into the guest room to check on Hayes. I don’t know what possessed me. Curiosity, perhaps. Guilt, maybe, for the way I had run earlier. I felt a compulsion there, in the stillness of the night, to look at him without his own attention being trained on me. To see him relaxed and off guard and as vulnerable as I felt all the time.

He was sprawled out on his stomach on an air mattress that was losing its air, arms and legs flung every direction. The blanket was sliding off, revealing the lines of his back, and one pillow was on the floor. He was curled around the other, hugging it to him.

I felt a pang of conscience. There was no way he was warm, not with the blanket falling away like that. By his position, he either moved around constantly in his sleep or was trying to find a comfortable spot. Gauging from the amount of air remaining in the air mattress, my vote was on the latter. I hated that I was sleeping – or rather, not sleeping – in the comfortable bed he had given up for me.

Before I thought too much about it, I walked to the bed to see if he was fully asleep. If he slept sound, I told myself, I would leave well enough alone. Go get my water and return to bed. But if he was awake…

He certainly looked like he was asleep. A bit of curl hung over his forehead, recalcitrant in slumber. I leaned closer to brush it out of his face. As soon as I touched him, though, his hand shot out to grip my wrist and the eye turned toward me slitted open.

“What are you doing?”

His sleep roughened voice slid over me, grit over velvet. I stammered out a response. “N-nothing. You l-looked uncomfortable.”

“I’m fine. Go back to bed, Birdie.”

The shortness of his reply took me off guard. “Did I do something wrong?”

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