Page 97 of Indigo

That breaks my fucking heart. I don’t want her to keep her pain from me. If she’s having a bad day, I want to be the first person she calls, the person she leans on. I don’t want her to hide away in her house and cry alone.

“Baby,” I say softly, clearly startling her.

She spins around and plasters on the fakest smile I’ve ever seen. I shake my head and approach her slowly. She just watches, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth the second it begins to tremble.

As I reach her, I pull her to my chest, holding the back of her head against my heart with one hand and rubbing her lower back softly with the other. “My girl’s having a bad day, huh?”

She sniffles against my shirt and nods.

“Mmmm,” I hum against her hair, kissing her golden locks and inhaling the smell of her shampoo. It never grows old, the way it calms me from the inside out. “You want to watch a movie? Get into your favourite PJs and curl up in bed?”

She nods again, but this time with more gusto, letting me know my suggestion was exactly what she needed.

We’ve been on a B-Grade horror movie kick at the moment. We laugh, make fun of the plot, cringe at the gore. It’s the perfect genre for us right now. Nothing soppy, or sad, or overly romantic. I tried rom-coms at first, thinking all women love them, but when all Indie did was cry from start to finish, I realised it was time to try something else.

“Can we watch the one where they’re camping and the bear attacks them in the middle of the woods?” she asks, slowly pulling back from my chest to look up at me with those indigo eyes that slay me every single time they meet mine.

Kissing her forehead, I smile against her smooth skin. “Absolutely. Why don’t you get changed, and I’ll meet you in there, yeah?”

Her smile widens, and this time, I know it’s real.

As soon as she leaves the room, I hastily pull out my phone, and shoot Jagger a message.

ME:Change of plans. I’m going to call Mrs Neil and place an order for lunch. Can you grab it and bring it to Indie’s place for me, mate?

He replies within seconds, the damn kid is always on his phone.

JAGGER:Yeah, no worries. Everything alright? No more jetty?

ME:Yeah, Indie’s just having a day, it seems. She’ll be right once she’s curled up in bed.

JAGGER:I’m sure she will ;)

I don’t respond. He’s a dickhead, and he knows it.

After calling Mrs Neil and cleaning up the kitchen, which Indie seemed to be in the middle of, I jog over to the front door as Jagger knocks.

“What the fuck are you grinning for?” I laugh, taking the four brown paper bags from his hands as he stands on the front porch like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Nothing, it’s just sweet to see you taking care of someone the way you do her, you know?”

I roll my eyes and close the door in his face. He laughs the entire way back to his car, loud enough that I can hear it, until he closes the driver’s side door and reverses back down the driveway.

“Got your favourite,” I announce, walking into the bedroom to find Indie already in bed, in her pyjamas, pillows propped up behind her with the remote pointing at the TV.

I can tell from the excitement on her face that I made the right decision.

Tossing the bags onto the end of the bed, I quickly strip off my clothes so that I’m just in my briefs and slide in beside her, resting against the pillows she’s already sorted for me so that I can sit and eat too.

Once we’re finished, she wiggles herself down the bed so that her head is resting on my chest, and her hand is planted on my bare thigh, as we continue to watch this crazy ass bear hunt the four campers who stupidly decided to set up their tent in the middle of the fucking woods.

Normally, this position is my favourite. I love the feel of her pressed against me but given the fact that I’m in only my underwear, and Indie’s wearing a tiny little light pink satin nightie, there’s a lot of skin-to-skin action going on right now, and my dick is suddenly paying attention to how close her hand is to it.

I shift a little, trying to slide down further so she won’t catch on to the fact that the way she’s tracing her fingers along my skin is causing a reaction.

We haven’t had sex since Lana died. Not once. We kiss, we cuddle. She lets me hold her at night and comfort her when she needs it, but I haven’t wanted to push, and she hasn’t given me any reason to believe she wanted me to.

Not that it matters. I’ll wait as long as she needs. That’s not an issue. My dick just doesn’t seem to agree right now.

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