Page 93 of Indigo Sky

Kate laid her arm across my chest and nuzzled into my neck. Minutes went by, and her intake of breath deepened. I thought she might've fallen asleep, and despite the overhead light shining down on us, exhaustion barreled over me like a freight train. I'd been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and suddenly, I couldn't remember a time when I had been this tired.

From pure muscle memory, I pulled the eyepatch off and tossed it onto my nightstand. I never did like sleeping with it on. Then, I rested my cheek against the top of her head, so fucking happy and hardly able to believe she was there, and embarked on a journey toward slumber.

But Kate shifted beneath me and sat up.

"I should use the bathroom," she announced quietly. "Where is—"

She cut herself off when she glanced over her shoulder at me. Her mouth was left open as her eyes danced over my face. At first, I wasn't sure what she was looking at, but just before I could ask, I remembered she'd never seen me without the eyepatch. Shame and embarrassment rushed to my cheeks, my face growing hot, and I knew if I could feel it, she couldseeit.

I reached over to grab the discarded eyepatch from the nightstand. "Sorry," I muttered, lifting up to pull it back on. "I-I didn't—"

"No, don't," she said, laying her hand on my arm. "I'msorry. I shouldn't have … I just never …" She sucked in a deepbreath and pressed her eyes shut, shaking her head a little. "I didn't know what to expect—that's all."

"It's okay," I said.

I couldn't blame her for being shocked at the sight of the scar tissue that ran over the patchworked eyebrow and barely there, pieced-together eyelid or the dark, vacant eyesocket where my right eye had once been. Most people were made uncomfortable by it, even those I'd known the longest, and I couldn't have expected her to be any different.

But she hadn't flinched, I noted. It didn'tscareher, and that … well, that was something, wasn't it?

She cleared her throat and looked at me like I was a man with two normal, functioning eyes and asked, "Where's the bathroom?"

My throat felt constricted, my chest felt heavy. Emotion had swept over me quicker than I could react, and I blinked, startled and fucking grateful.

I gestured toward the door. "Across the hall," I said. "The door's always open if nobody's in there."

***

She asked to borrow a shirt. I got her one from my dresser drawer, and she slipped it on before tiptoeing from my room. She left me standing there in front of my dresser mirror, staring at myself comfortably for maybe the first time in … shit, Icouldn't even tell you how long. And I stood there, wondering how the hell a guy like me had lucked out with such a phenomenal woman like her … and if there was any chance for me to keep her. Not just for tonight or tomorrow, but for the weeks, months, years after. Hell, maybe even forever, if I had my way.

But guys like me, man …

Our luck doesn't come easily, does it? And whatever little comes our way doesn't get to stick around for long.

At least not in my case anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY

With Kate in my arms, sleep should've been good. It should've been restful. I should've woken up feeling like a million bucks. But it wasn't, and I didn't.

Instead, every restless dream was flooded by a whistled tune I couldn't pinpoint, but somehow recognized, and after every single one, I awoke with a shuddered gasp and a frantic search to make sure she was still here. She always was, sleeping peacefully, and I always fell back to sleep, just to wake up what felt like moments later.

It was bullshit.

But then Kate woke up moments after I did. She rolled over within my encircled arms and pressed a kiss to my mouth, so full of electricity that any part of me that might've been dead was zapped to life at the moment of impact. She hummed with satisfaction, scraping her nails through my chest hair and smiling against my lips.

"Best sleep ever," she muttered before kissing me again.

I didn't have the heart to tell her the feeling wasn't mutual. It had nothing to do with her, but the fear that this was fleeting. Like, at any moment, she'd be ripped from my grasp by an unknown, unseen threat and disappear.

"I'm glad," I said instead.

Her fingernails dragged lower, past my navel and through the hair leading to the waistband of my boxer briefs. "You know what I think?"

"Hmm?"

Her hand disappeared beneath the elastic to glide over my erection, as hard as steel. "You should skip work today."

I inhaled sharply through my nose as she squeezed me in an iron grip. "Fuck," I groaned. "And what would I do instead?"

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