With Everything I Am(157)
Like he’d actually been disloyal to Sonia.
The thought was so vile he felt his gut roil and he started to run.
But he ran toward home.
Toward Sonia.
He leapt to man outside the backdoor which was always open in case he or his family needed to roam which was often.
He opened the door and mindlessly pulled on the clothes he left there when he transformed earlier.
He slid on his wedding band and was shrugging on a shirt while moving into the house when he noticed his mother there.
She was wearing a robe, her hair disheveled, her face as troubled as his thoughts.
Atypically, Callum had no time for his mother’s troubled thoughts.
“Not now, Regan.”
“Cal –”
Impatient to get to Sonia, he stopped and leaned into her. “Not… now.”
Without another word or processing the look of distress on his mother’s face, Callum took the stairs three at a time to get to his wife.
She was lying on her side, the fire ebbing but still dancing in the room. So like his dream it sliced trough him.
But, unlike the dream, she was facing away from the door.
And she wasn’t asleep.
He went immediately to the bed.
He sat next to her and put a hand to her hip over the hides.
“Baby doll,” he whispered, cursing himself mentally for giving in selfishly to his instinct to roam. “Your injection –”
“I took it,” she replied in a voice strangely flat. “Don’t worry, Callum. I made sure Regan was in the room when I did.”
He’d just run for hours, for miles, slept rough and run for miles again and still his gut was tight. His thoughts a torment. Feelings of guilt and fear and grief all snaking insidiously through his brain.
He needed her.
“Sonia –”
She cut him off and her voice was still flat, so flat it sounded almost dead.
“Listen, Callum, I’m really tired, okay?”
“Baby doll –”
He stopped speaking when her body visibly tensed at his words and then he watched in grim fascination as she forced it to relax.
She rolled to look at him and Callum caught himself before he flinched.
Her eyes were as flat and dead as her voice.
What the fuck?
“I’ve been trying to get to sleep for a while and I can’t do it. I nearly drifted off before you came in so, would you mind…?”
Worry was added to those snaking thoughts tormenting him.
He cupped her jaw with his hand. Her jaw tensed under his touch but her eyes never left his.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she answered immediately. “Like I said, I’m just really tired.”
She was lying.
He pulled her from under the hides into his arms and sat in the bed, back to the headboard, Sonia in his lap.
This felt better, tremendously better. Sonia in his lap, her body against his, her scent all around.
“Right,” he said when his mind had finally settled. “Now, the truth this time. Tell me what’s the matter.”
She was looking at him but her eyes stayed flat, emotionless. Not blank, like they were when he told her she had to take her injection but lifeless.
“Sonia –” he started, that fear edging back in but she interrupted him.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked as if she doubted that he really would.
“Of course I fucking want to know,” he replied, beginning to lose patience.
“All right, Callum, I’ll tell you,” she stated. “I miss them all the time but sometimes, I miss them more and tonight, I miss them loads. That’s what’s the matter. That’s why I can’t sleep.”
She was talking about her parents and he wasn’t surprised her manner was listless. It was a defense mechanism, like her eyes going blank before getting the injection.
Missing her parents had to be worse, even than that fucking injection.
He slid a hand in her hair and pressed her cheek to his chest saying, “Honey.”
“You should know, this happens a lot,” she told his chest matter-of-factly.
“That’s okay.”
“If I have trouble sleeping, I’ll find another room so I won’t disturb you.”
His fingers gripped her head and he said, “That’s not okay.”
“I like this room but really I don’t mind.”
He pulled her head away from his chest and maneuvered it so they were face-to-face before he growled, “I do mind.”
He didn’t know what he minded more, the thought that she would move somewhere else to sleep or the thought that she didn’t mind not sleeping with him.
Something was fucking wrong and it was more than just thoughts of her dead parents. She liked to talk and she couldn’t sleep and he’d never fucking get to sleep after what Lucien told him and that goddamned dream.