Chapter 20 Jasmine
JASMINE
After hearing my father was all right, it was like my body finally checked off all the boxes that meant I could crash.
I didn’t remember much after that yawn, only that Ghost led me back inside.
I didn’t know much else after my cheek touched down on a cool surface, and I could have sworn I felt someone fluttering a blanket over me.
I was out within moments.
By the time my eyes fluttered back open, the sun was setting. Fucking hell, I slept the entire day away. Again. I drew in a deep breath as I shuffled around in the bed a bit, trying to untangle myself from the sheets that had bunched up around my legs.
“Here, let me,” Ghost said.
I heard his voice before I saw him, but his touch against my ankle sent a shiver of fire through my muscles. He moved my legs gently, untangling the blanket from my trapped legs.
“Thanks,” I croaked out.
“You thrash a lot while you sleep, did you know that?” he asked.
“Ugh,” I groaned as he finally got me free of the blanket before fluttering it back over me.
“I should get up,” I muttered.
“You need as much sleep as you can get,” he said.
I rolled over onto my back and slung my arm over my eyes. “How’d you sleep?”
“I don’t sleep.”
That got my attention. “What?”
“I don’t sleep,” he repeated.
I turned onto my side and found him with my sleep-hazed eyes. “Insomnia?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “Oh.”
“Do you have nightmares?” he asked. “Is that why you thrash?”
I just yawned. “If I do, I don’t remember them.”
“That’s good, at least,” he muttered.
I got comfortable on my side and pulled the blanket up over my shoulder. “Do you have nightmares?”
“Can’t have them when you don’t sleep.”
I got the feeling that I wouldn’t get more out of him than that, so I switched topics. “Soooo… I take it I’m not going back to work for a while.”
Ghost shook his head. “For one, there’s a good fucking chance that someone in the company is who ordered your kidnapping in the first place.”
That woke me up a bit. “So that’s not just a theory any longer?”
He peeked over at me, like he was trying to figure out how I knew that.
“The sisters,” is all I said.
“Ah,” he said with a nod of his head. “Yeah, that is one of our running theories. And the more we dig, the more it looks like someone threw you under the bus because you simply know too much.”
I shoved myself upright before Ghost stood, rushing to my side. He fluffed and propped up pillows behind me so that I wasn’t laying directly against the hard wall behind me.
“Thanks,” I said before I yawned again.
He perched on the side of the bed. “Ranger has your laptop locked down as much as he can get it.”
“Then he can blow that fucking thing up as far as I’m concerned.”
He chuckled, and it brought my attention back to him. “I’ll make sure he knows that after we’re done extracting what we need.”
I yawned again before rubbing at my eyes. “I need a shower.”
“You’re more than welcome to use mine,” he said as he pointed, “The door in the corner leads into my bathroom.”
I looked over at the door and the question was out of my mouth before I could catch it. “Do you wear your mask all the time? Even while you shower?”
I turned my attention back to him and found him staring me down with those green eyes of his.
“Well?” I asked with a tired shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe you do?”
His eyes crinkled, and it made me smile. “I wore it in the military as well. It’s a force of habit more than anything at this point.”
“Oh? Did everyone in your group or whatever wear one as well?”
He shook his head. “Just me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Helped me to compartmentalize all of the things we did in the field. Taking it off meant I was home, and could be someone else. Putting the mask on means I’ve got work to do, and it just… helps.”
I nodded softly. “I get that. Like your own version of makeup.”
His eyes searched me. “What do you cover up with your makeup?”
His question stunned me before there was a knock on the door. It whipped my head in the opposite direction of Ghost, bursting whatever bubble we had created for ourselves.
“What?” Ghost called out.
“Oh, don’t be a meanie,” Amanda said as she cracked the door open and dipped in with Wrecker’s head towering over hers. “Wreck and I wanna go on a ride, but no one else wants to go with us. You guys down?”
I looked back over at Ghost, who was already looking at me.
His gaze held mine, like our souls were having some sort of talk that our brains weren’t aware of.
I swear, he could arrest me with those eyes.
He could make me stop right in my fucking tracks with them.
I watched him stand from his chair. I watched him peel the blanket off my body.
And for a small moment, a vision flashed in my mind.
A vision of him hovering over me in bed.
I swallowed hard as he held out his hand. “We could get milkshakes.”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Amanda said.
And even though my hand trembled in fear of being on the back of that bike again, milkshakes did sound amazing.
Especially if they were with him.