Page 18 of Nightmare

“And I would have done it for real if you hadn’t stopped him from kissing you.”

“You know about that?”

“Baby, I know everything when it comes to you,” he teases, pressing his face to mine to kiss my cheek, watching me read a minute before he speaks again. “Are we really not gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” I feign indifference, my heart racing with nerves.

“Someone paid for my lawyers, Vi,” he says slowly, turning my chin when I refuse to look at him. “They paid off the judge too. I know it was you.”

“I—”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Fuck.

“I didn’t get you out,” I whisper. “I just got you a little less time.”

“Five to ten years less is a lot more than a little.”

“Yeah, well…” I clear my throat, pulling my face out of his grip. “You might be fucking crazy, but I wasn’t gonna leave you in there for years.”

He chuckles and drops his chin back on my shoulder. “Thank you,” he says, and I say nothing. “Did you use all the money your grandmother left you?”

“Only most of it. I’ve got enough left to finish college and pay the bills.”

“What about the creepy house you wanted at the top of the hill?”

“I’ll get there,” I say quietly. “Eventually.”

He goes quiet then, and I swallow the anxiety creeping up my throat as our thoughts align as one. I said I’ll get there, not we, like it used to be.

“What about you?” I ask in a lame-ass attempt to change the subject. “Are you coming back to college now you’re out?”

“I burned down one of their dorm rooms,” he reminds me. “I think I’m expelled.”

A laugh bubbles out of me, and I nod. “Yeah. Probably.”

“God, I missed your laugh.” He sighs, tightening his arm around my waist so hard he’s damn near crushing my rib cage. “Baby, look at me.”

“I don’t want to.”

I hear the clicking sound of his lighter closing right before we’re suddenly clouded in darkness. “Is that better?”

I nod, and he rakes his fingers through my hair, tipping my head back to get me to face him. I can’t see his eyes now—mine haven’t had time to adjust back to the dark—but I know they’re locked in on me, like he’s trying to slink his way into my skull and organize the mess in there. To get me to feel the things I’m desperately trying not to feel.

Instead of speaking, he kisses my bottom lip, then the top one, coaxing my mouth open with his tongue. His hand comes around to the side of my neck, and he uses his thumb to tilt my face, controlling the kiss. It’s not messy or rough this time. He’s kissing me like we’ve got all the time in the world. Like we’ll get a million more of these before we die.

“Baby,” he breathes into my mouth. “I wanna come home.”

“Atty.”

“Please,” he begs, stunning me, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say that word before.

Shaking myself out of his trance, I try to stand my ground. “Not yet. I can’t be with you again until you prove to me it’ll be different this time. I’m not gonna repeat the last six years for the rest of my life, Atty. It’s not happening.”

I still can’t see him properly, but I can feel the moment this rare sweet side of him crumples to dust. In the next second, I’m landing flat on my back and he’s hovering over me, his breath against my cheek as his hand comes back to my throat.

There he is.

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