Still the One Read online

  “What is it with you and all the talking?” She yawned. “You must’ve dated some real high estrogen levels.” She shook her head. “No, we don’t have to talk about it. I’m not big on the talking.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, you’re more the screaming sort.”

  “Hey! I most definitely didn’t scream.”

  “Close enough,” he said.

  She smacked him and he laughed. “I wonder if anyone’s in the rooms on either side of us.”

  “I was not that loud.” She paused and slid him a look. “And at least I wasn’t needy.”

  “Needy?”

  “‘Come here. Wrap your legs around me. Kiss me. Open your eyes. Do this. Do that,’” she said in a low voice, clearly imitating him. “Needy and bossy.”

  He grinned. “Admit it. You like it when I’m bossy.”

  “Hmm. Maybe just a little bit.” Her eyes had been drifting shut but they flared open again. “And if you tell anyone that, I’ll … something,” she vowed. “I don’t know what yet but it’ll hurt, I can guarantee that.”

  He laughed. “Who am I going to tell, your brother? He’d kill me dead and then bring me back to life just to kill me again.”

  “No,” she said. “I’d make sure he knew I instigated and jumped your bones.”

  “You’d protect me, huh?”

  “Well, it seems only fair,” she said, snuggling into him. “Since I pretty much did jump your bones.”

  He shook his head. “We jumped together.” He ran a finger along her jaw. “And while we’re on this topic, I don’t want you trying to protect me, ever. I’m not ashamed or sorry about what happened here.”

  “I’m not, either. And I can protect myself as well.” She turned her head and caught his finger in her teeth, making him laugh.

  “So …” she said. “We’re back to what happens in Boise stays in Boise.”

  “Maybe we should define exactly what it is that happened in Boise.”

  “Wild monkey sex?”

  “I do like the sound of that,” he said. “And my reputation could probably use the boost.”

  She grinned and then yawned again, and he flipped off the light and hauled her into him. He kissed her once, softly, ordered himself to not go for more, and then he flipped her so that she faced away from him, her back to his chest. Spooning her, he entwined his fingers with hers at her chest. “Okay?”

  She nodded and yawned some more, relaxing into him. He could feel every single inch of her sweet, curvy body, and because that was going to have a quick effect on him, he did his best to keep his hips back.

  But she foiled him by snuggling in with a quick little butt wriggle that just about slayed him. Even more so when she wrapped her free hand around his arm, holding him to her.

  Intimate comfort.

  He just wasn’t sure who was comforting who. “I’m sorry about the dreams,” he said quietly.

  “I just feel so stupid that after all this time I still get them.”

  “I get them sometimes, too. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all have things that haunt us.”

  “What haunts you, AJ?”

  When something happened to someone he loved … “Things out of my control,” he said. “Like my mom and her RA. Kayla and her accident.” He cut himself off before saying, You.

  “You do like your control,” she said mildly. “And micromanaging.”

  “I don’t micromanage,” he said, and she laughed.

  He stared at her.

  “Oh,” she said, appearing to bite back her amusement with great effort. “You’re serious.”

  “I don’t micromanage,” he said, as though saying it out loud again would make it true. “Not all the time.”

  She looked as if maybe she was trying to not laugh again. “Okay,” she said agreeably. “But you totally do. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve got a lot to take care of. Problem is that you can do all the right things but bad things might still happen.”

  No shit.

  “That night of my accident, I wasn’t being reckless or crazy. The storm came up quick and the car in front of me got all squirrely and I had to swerve to avoid hitting it. Then my car got away from me. That’s what I dream about. Being stuck in my car. The flames—” She shuddered. “It’s always the same as what really happened except I don’t get out. And I can feel myself suffocating, running out of air …”

  “I never heard about the other car,” he said.

  She shrugged. “It vanished into the night. I’m sure they had no idea I crashed, it was so dark.”

  He loved that she didn’t whine about how the accident wasn’t her fault. And he knew if she had been in the wrong, she would have taken responsibility for her actions. She owned up to her own mistakes, her own behavior. He loved that about Darcy. Then there was the way she’d told him about her nightmares to make him feel better. It touched him, deeply.

  He might have told her so but he was having a flashback of her mangled car after her wreck, and then Darcy in the hospital, in so much pain. He’d spent months and months helping her out with that, until the pain had mostly retreated and she’d looked at him with temper instead.

  Infinitely better.

  “I’ll never forget the sight of your wreck,” he said. “We went out there the next day, Wyatt and I.”

  She turned her head and sought out his gaze. “You did?”

  His arms tightened and he buried his face in the back of her neck and wild hair, unwilling to let her see his expression of remembered horror. “We saw the scrap of metal, all that was left of your car, and I couldn’t believe you’d survived.” He shook his head. “It was a miracle.”

  “I know,” she whispered, and slid out of the bed, heading in the dark to the mini fridge. “When I dream, it’s the regrets that get me more than anything else,” she said, pulling out two bottles of water.

  He rose and accepted the bottle she held out to him. “What is it you regret?” he asked.

  “Wasting so much time and energy being mad at my parents and how we were raised,” she said. She hopped up onto the low-lying dresser next to the fridge and drank deeply. “The truth is, I always had a roof over my head and food and clothing, more than plenty of people.”

  AJ leaned a hip against the dresser and wished there was more light so he could better see her face. “It’s okay to be mad at them.”

  “I’m the one who got into trouble in the first place,” she said. “And when they sent me away, I’d get into even more. My own doing, all of it. It was only when they refused to help me when I needed it, or even to call Wyatt and Zoe to do so instead, that it got pretty rough, but at least I’m here to tell the tale, right? And at least I learned to fend for myself.”

  “It’s okay to be mad at them,” he repeated, hating them all over again. “What happened at school?”

  She shrugged. “The usual. I screwed up. Though the time I landed in Switzerland’s equivalent of juvie for stealing some girl’s wallet, that I didn’t do.” Her laugh was short and she took another long drink of water. “I’d never steal from someone, but hey, who was going to believe me if my own parents didn’t.”

  “They let you stay in jail?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah.” She shuddered and hugged her water bottle to her chest. “And trust me—every single story you’ve ever heard about evil headmistresses and their enjoyment of torturing the bad girls? All true.”

  “How long?” he asked, trying not to let his anger for her show.

  She slanted him a quick glance, so clearly he hadn’t been all that successful at hiding it. “Three months,” she said.

  Jesus. “They hurt you?”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said, clearly regretting her decision to tell him the story that he knew for damn sure neither Wyatt nor Zoe knew.

  God, she’d been so alone. No wonder she’d grown up and gone on to wander the world for a living. It was all she knew. “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was,” he sai