Page 75 of Into the Woods

He let out a humorless chuckle. “Mission accomplished, baby. I can’t remember the last time I was that furious.”

“Why didn’t you come back?” I asked.

“I did, but after you were asleep.” He shut his eyes and shook his head. “I had Rook text me when you went to bed. I couldn’t stand seeing you. Or not seeing you, if you and my brother put that hotel room to use.”

I sighed. We really were a fucked-up pair.

“I came in about an hour ago and was lying on the couch when I heard you screaming.” His gaze pinned me to the spot. “Wanna tell me what that was about?”

I shrugged, trying to play it off. “It was a nightmare, Court. I had a bad dream. I—”

“Tell me about it,” he cut me off, but his tone was so gentle. So kind.

I studied him for a moment. The way his dark hair was mussed like he’d been stabbing his fingers into it over and over. The five o’clock shadow of stubble that made him look older, sexier. His eyes were fathomless, endless pools of darkness, ready to devour me. Those plush lips that I knew for a fact could be soft and teasing or hard and dominating.

Suddenly I was acutely aware of the fact that my core was centimeters from his cock. He was wearing only a tight pair of black boxer briefs, and my yellow ducky jammies consisted of a thin pair of shorts and a camisole. Awareness cracked through me like a lightning bolt, my nipples pebbling.

To his credit, Court didn’t say anything. Didn’t move—hell, he barely breathed as he waited for my reply.

Sighing, I dropped my chin to my chest. “It’s always the same. I’m in a tiny little cabin in the middle of a storm. I can hear the wind outside, and it’s so loud. Like the freight-train roar they talk about before a tornado. I’m alone and scared. A tree breaks through the window and glass sprays everywhere.”

I shivered, the details slamming back into my skull. “I’m cold, and I’m hungry and thirsty and…”

“And?” He prompted when I didn’t keep going.

I lifted my gaze. “And I think I’m going to die. But I keep yelling for help, because I know that someone is coming. Someone will save me if they can just hear me. Find me.”

He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his hands tightened on my waist. “Becca, you were screaming—”

“I know,” I muttered, shaking my head.

“You were screaming my name,” he finished. His brows pulled together. He looked conflicted, in pain. Uncertain in a way I’d never seen before. “Becca, fuck. I swear, I got to you as fast as I could.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Court, you were asleep in the other room.”

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head. “I mean when you were a kid, and my dad kidnapped you. When you almost died so he could prove a fucking point.”

My muscles locked up and, as if he knew I was getting ready to bolt, Court’s arms wrapped around me again. “Don’t.”

I drew in a shallow breath, feeling like a deer that had been spotted by a hunting party. “Court—”

“Becca,” he countered, “please, let me tell you what really happened that night. That week. Hell, what happened to us.”

I studied him for a long moment, not sure I was ready to hear the whole truth. I knew fragments. But I had been sick back then. Really sick. And I’d nearly died.

Memories were a funny thing. Some were crystal clear, like watching a movie in 4K high definition. And others were like trying to grab sand in a windstorm. No matter how hard I tried, the grains kept slipping through my fingers.

My memories of Court were the clearest, though. Always had been. It was like my brain had decided he was worth the effort of capturing as much detail as possible. Like the way he’d smiled after he’d lost his two front teeth. He must have been seven, which would have made me three. But I remembered the color of his shirt—green-and-white striped with a smear of chocolate from the ice cream cone he was trying to eat before it could melt under the broiling August sun. The dirt caked under his fingernails from a day spent playing in the backyard with me. The fact that his left shoe was untied, like it often was.

And that was just one of a thousand memories of him.

But things got confusing right after my ninth birthday. That was when I was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in my life. More specifically, acute lymphocytic leukemia.

I’d first been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when I was an infant. I’d been told how I’d easily beaten it after six months of treatment. How my scans for the next five years always came back perfect. Enough so that doctors told my parents I no longer needed them. That if it hadn’t come back in five years, then odds were it wouldn’t.

Only cancer hadn’t been done with me, and this time when it came back, it hit me worse than before and had spread by the time it had been caught. I’d needed a bone marrow or a stem cell transplant, but neither of my parents were a perfect match. Everyone we knew was tested, but I had a weird blood type, which made finding a donor hard.

I went through chemo and miraculously didn’t lose my hair. I lost a lot of weight. I couldn’t keep anything down. More than once I’d had a feeding tube inserted to get calories into me.

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