14. Josh
JOSH
F or the first time since I arrived back home, I woke up feeling well rested and comfortable. That should have been the first give away that I wasn’t in my childhood bedroom.
No sun was streaming in through the windows as I blinked sleep from my eyes, but that wasn’t unusual, considering the farm called for a wake-up time well before sunrise.
Somehow, I’d fallen right back into the routine I’d left behind all those years ago. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I shifted, ready to slip out of the bed and take care of morning business, and my hand caressed soft, sleep-warm skin.
Every muscle in my body froze, instantly awake, the last dregs of sleep gone.
Despite the lack of light, I knew immediately I wasn’t in my room by instinct alone.
Never had my room felt so warm, so welcoming, and I’d never, ever , woken up with a soft body beside mine in my childhood bed.
Not when my father would have killed me for inviting a girl to sleep over.
The memory of last night drifted back as sleep abandoned me.
I remembered Dove’s terrified whimpers turning into cries.
I remembered debating for far too long whether it was my place to help her, if I would even be welcomed to wake her out of a nightmare like I once had been.
But when I’d heard her cries escalate, I was out of bed and pushing her door open before I could even finish making up my mind.
I hadn’t planned on spending the whole night with her. I figured I’d let her slip back into sleep, stick around long enough to make sure she didn’t have another nightmare, then quietly extract myself and walk my ass back to my bedroom.
I’d clearly underestimated the lure of Dove’s relaxed, pliant body against mine, and how impossible it would be to let her go. Or how easy it would be to succumb to sleep with her sweet scent enveloping me.
Which was how I found myself in this current predicament.
Shifting, I slipped my arms from around her glacier slow in an attempt not to wake her. My plan nearly worked until the whisper of fabric brushed the knuckles of my right hand. I barely breathed as I heard Dove make the tiniest of sounds.
Fuck .
Fuck my wandering hand, which had found itself creeping into the waistband of her sleep shorts while we slept.
This was my punishment for opening her door last night. For being weak and cradling her, allowing myself just a taste of what it would be like if she were mine. This was the torture I was so clearly deserving of.
Because I knew I’d been pushing it, sliding my hand over her stomach last night. But the supple curve of her skin in that spot always called to me, even though I knew Dove was self-conscious about it.
Too many times to count, her shirt had ridden up when we’d been younger, exposing the curve of her belly, just where it rounded over the waistband of her pants. She’d blush, tugging her T-shirt down as she turned a lovely shade of pink.
Dove had no idea how much I wanted to bite that patch of supple skin.
My hand twitched lower at the thought.
She let out a breathy sound in her sleep, and I groaned silently, biting down on my lip to stop myself from doing something stupid, like inch my hand down farther to see if I would encounter a wealth of wiry curls, or the softness of bare skin.
But she was sleeping, and this was Dove .
The tension brimming between us… I didn’t want to find out if it was real like this—when she was asleep and had no idea I was close to groping her.
I could never do that to her. Wouldn’t do that to her.
Slowly, breath held prisoner in my lungs, I slipped my hand free little by little from the shorts she slept in.
When Dove gave a tiny smack of her lips and sighed, turning onto her back, I finally, finally , freed my hand with one last hard-earned tug.
It was a little easier extracting my other arm, which had slipped from around her shoulders to under her pillow sometime in the night.
Once I was no longer spooning Dove, I let myself rest for a moment, needing a break as if I’d run a marathon with how hard my heart was pounding inside my chest. Dove dreamt on peacefully beside me, and it felt like a prize I’d won for my troubles.
Seeing her sleep so soundly was worth it, and I didn’t regret for one moment then that I’d slept beside her, although not for entirely unselfish reasons, I had to admit.
I’d never gotten to hold Dove like that before, to be there for her in the way I’ve always wanted to be.
It killed me that I’d been the cause of the nightmares she’d almost been rid of coming back so intensely.
I leaned in to brush the barest kiss to the top of her head before I slowly slid from her bed. There were a lot of things I was sorry for, a lot I had to make up for. I just hoped Dove would allow me to try, even if I didn’t deserve it.
Tiptoeing to the door, I inched it open as silently as I could and headed downstairs.
Waking her up with a nice breakfast surely wouldn’t hurt.
There wasn’t much to work with, and I added go grocery shopping to my mental list of things to do, but it was enough.
When Dove came down, sleepy-eyed and still clad in her pajamas, I knew she’d been lured by the smell and decided to investigate before getting ready for the day, just as I’d planned.
“What’s this?” She yawned around the question, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
I set down the stack of pancakes I’d just finished making. “Breakfast.”
The spread was nothing crazy, just eggs we always had on hand—thanks to the chickens—some buttered toast, and a batch of pancakes from a box I was pretty sure had been there since before I left.
I frowned at them, wondering if they looked weird because I was a shitty cook or because they were old.
I was almost positive pancake mix didn’t expire.
They were one of those apocalypse staples, weren’t they?
Maybe I’d try them before Dove, just in case.
I pulled out a chair for her and gestured to it. She eyed me suspiciously before padding over, her bare feet slapping adorably against the kitchen floor. God, I needed to get it together if the sight of her feet had me in knots.
“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice still husky with sleep and edged with hesitation.
I hated that me doing something for her, for being there for her, made her cautious.
I’d done my best to step back from her life to make it better , not worse.
I’d been so focused on avoiding the damage I’d create by staying that I hadn’t even taken the time to think about the damage I’d be doing by leaving .
I knew leaving would hurt Dove, but I never imagined that hurt would become an open wound that festered and deepened as the years dragged on.
I pictured her moving on in a thousand different ways, never once considering that the space she’d carved out for me in her heart wouldn’t heal.
That it would stay raw and empty—a hollow ache that never faded.
The spot behind my best bone twisted painfully as I fully realized I was behind Dove’s suffering. The one to blame for the ghost of her past traumas being dredged up. All because of my selfish actions, she had suffered.
Before she could ask, I set a coffee down in front of her—perfectly made, just the way she liked. A small token of apology. It wasn’t even the beginning of enough. Would never be enough. But it was a start.
“Thanks,” she repeated, soft and contemplative.
I tried not to think about what must have been going through her head and sat down across from her at the small table.
She took a sip of her coffee and closed her eyes in pure bliss.
I held in the moan that wanted to crawl its way out of my throat at the look and started to load up her plate with a little bit of everything.
When she finished inhaling the aroma and coffee and opened her eyes, she blinked at the full plate in front of her.
“You didn’t have to”—her face scrunched—“serve me.”
I shrugged a shoulder like it was no big deal, because it wasn’t, and continued to focus on piling my own plate.
She set her coffee down with a tiny disbelieving shake of her head, but I ignored it and tried to work on keeping my eyes anywhere but on her.
Picking up her fork, she dug in.
For a few minutes there was only the softness of our breathing, the clink of our silverware against our plates, and the distant crow of the rooster as it welcomed the morning.
“Why...” My eyes flickered up when she spoke and met her own.
Her brows were furrowed slightly, but her eyes shone openly with contentment.
Pride swelled in my chest, hoping I’d helped to clear away some of the haunts that plagued her last night.
She gestured with her fork to the food in front of us. “I mean, what’s all this for?
“For you,” I answered honestly, and watched the cutest shade of pink bloom across the bridge of her nose.
I tried to keep my satisfied smile to myself.
She looked absolutely adorable across from me with her sleep-ruffled hair and a pillow crease still indented along one cheek.
“Just wanted to give you a nice breakfast to start the day with.”
Her lips twisted in a familiar way that meant she was holding back her own pleased smile.
“Your breakfasts are severely lacking,” I teased. “Pop-Tarts are not a proper breakfast food.”
“Says you,” she muttered before taking another bite of eggs.
But I had a suspicion Dove had gone too long without a decent breakfast, especially since her mom had fallen sick.
My dad certainly wasn’t going to step in.
We’d survived on frozen foods and take out before Josie came into the picture.
My cooking was nothing compared to her mother’s, but at least it was better than what she’d been living on.