He grinned and tossed his boots to the floor, then stood up and shucked his pants, followed shortly by his uniform shirt.
"I'm not so much excited about the book itself, but more what the book did to you," he growled as he crawled across the bed to me.
I smiled into the darkness and held my hands out wide.
He accepted the invitation and dropped down fully on top of me.
I buried my face into his neck and moaned when I felt his heavy erection pressing into me.
"I'll be very happy to show you."
***
I looked at the empty space where Tunnel used to lay his head, and barely resisted the urge to cry.
My cat wasn't here to keep me company, so there would be no crying jag today.
Tomorrow, maybe. But tonight, I needed to go to bed.
So, that was why I reached out and downed the two sleeping pills.
They didn't do too much for me-not anymore. But I needed them to get a few hours of sleep.
If I didn't have them, then sleep would elude me tonight, just like it did almost every night since the night Tunnel left me.
After swallowing the pills dry, I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes.
The bed didn't even smell like him anymore. Nothing did. For the first month after Tunnel's death, I didn't change them. But I'd been forced to wash our sheets one night after Sienna had slept in our bed and promptly had a diaper leak all over them.
///
That'd been the most emotional load of laundry that I'd ever done. I'd bawled like a baby, and even Sienna, who didn't even understand why I was crying, had joined me.
My eyes flicked over to my closet where all of his clothes were still hanging.
The clothes didn't smell like him anymore, either, not even his dress uniform, which was also still hanging up in the closet.
Then there was his cut. That still smelled like smoke. It was unfair, it was sad, and I still had it hanging up where he placed it every night, ready and waiting for him to come back and use it … although he never would.
I hadn't smelled him since his scent had dissipated from the clothing I kept … until tonight.
The man who had saved me from a ball-smack to the face had smelled like my Tun. He smelled exactly like him, right down to the deodorant and the faint hint of motor oil and gas that came with a man who rode a motorcycle and worked on them.
The moment I caught a whiff of that smell, memory upon memory came rushing back. It had been like a tidal wave of emotion washing over me, and I'd had to excuse myself from Josh's side-a man who wouldn't be happy that I was thinking about my dead husband who has been gone for six years-before I cried. And I did cry. In the line for the bathroom that was about sixty women deep.
I cried until a lovely woman-the woman who had been with the man who smelled like mine-came up and spoke with me. She'd been sweet and had me laughing about her kiddos, one who was seventeen and another who was just shy of six months, in a matter of moments.
The man had been standing there, waiting for his woman to come out, once we were done. He'd then handed me my phone that I hadn't even realized I'd dropped.
The same scent wafted off of him just as it had earlier, and I was still sad.
Very, very sad. So sad, in fact, that if I could sleep forever, I would.
However, I had my baby girl to worry about, Tunnel's baby girl.
I would never leave her, but sometimes … well, sometimes I just felt like it would be easier.
I could just go to sleep and never wake up again. Only then would I see my Tunnel again.
Chapter 11
If you can't handle me at my worst, I don't blame you. I'm a fucking hot mess.
-Ghost's secret thoughts
Ghost
I thought I could do it, allow her to be the bait, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.
And I was about to do something bad. Very, very, very bad.
This was either going to blow up in my face or it was going to work out.
It didn't matter what happened beyond this point. I would protect them-with my life if needed. I'd sacrifice anything and everything that I had to in order to do it, too. There would be no uncertainties on my end.
None.
I made a phone call and told Silas what I wanted, and he promised he would make it happen.
Then I went across the street and spoke with Lynn.
"I can't do this back and forth business anymore," I told him. "I can't sit here and watch her be unhappy. We're going to have to find another way."
He grinned. "I got a week out of you, though. That was four more days than Silas thought I'd get."
I grunted in reply, then walked out without another word.
Chapter 12
Damn right I'm good in bed. I can stay there all day.