Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sebastian
“ H ey,” I heard Darcy whisper, forcing my eyes to open. “Are you okay?”
I instantly sat up from where I’d been sleeping on the sofa. The moon peered into the room, but it was muted when Darcy switched on the end table lamp to investigate something I’d seemingly done to awaken her.
As I tried to gather my senses, I realized I was drenched in sweat. “Did I wake you?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but I’m fine. Apparently, I’m just pre-menopausal, and the hot flashes are starting in.”
I tried to laugh off the awkward position I found myself in on our first night sharing this room. How fucking embarrassing.
“Last I checked, menopause doesn’t make you holler for people in your sleep,” she said with a smile.
Something was off. I could see Darcy’s sympathetic expression, filled with concern.
“Was I calling for you?” I asked, wondering what’d happened because I couldn’t remember my dream if I’d even had one at all. However, if history were any indicator, I was most likely having that wretched recurring nightmare about the day Melissa died.
“No,” she smiled sweetly at me, “you were repeatedly calling out for your wife. I didn’t want to disturb you, but after a while, I thought I should because it sounded more and more like you were having a nightmare.”
“Jesus,” I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face, mortified and pissed that I didn’t consider the possibility of this happening in my sleep, “I’m truly sorry about that. I used to have these bad dreams every night, and then they stopped happening as much. It seems they were waiting until I shared a room with you to reemerge.”
“It’s nothing to apologize for,” she answered, kneeling alongside the sofa where she’d woken me up.
“I disagree,” I smiled at her, groggy and needing to jump in the shower to rinse all the sweat off my body. “I swear that, until she died, I never talked in my sleep. In fact, Melissa always teased me for my ability to lay my head on my pillow, fall asleep, and not move a muscle all night. Half the time, she didn’t know if I was still alive or not,” I turned and placed my feet on the ground, keeping the sheet and blanket over my lap since I was wearing only my boxers and didn’t want to give Darcy any more entertainment than she’d already had tonight. “I think I’ve just turned into some weird person who talks in their sleep now?”
“It’s normal, and you’re not weird,” she said. “It’s a trauma response, and it’s your subconscious way of getting through it. As you heal and more time passes, you’ll return to your usual sleep patterns.”
I smiled at her, “Did you learn this in one of your mom’s yoga sessions?”
“Yoga psychology,” she chuckled and stood up. “Okay, I just wanted to make sure you were good. I’m going to head back to bed.”
“Sorry I woke you,” I answered, and as I watched her walking away, I suddenly felt uneasy about being alone. “I’m going to get in the shower,” I informed her. “I can use the outdoor one if you think the other will keep you up.”
“No, you’re fine,” she said, “so long as you don’t sing in the shower.”
“It’s what gets me through the trauma,” I chuckled and gathered my things to shower, hoping it would wash away my uneasy feelings.
After my shower, I decided a hot cup of tea sounded like a brilliant idea, so I headed to the kitchenette, filled the kettle with water, and placed it on the stove to boil. As I was preparing my cup and tea bag, the kettle began to whistle loudly , and even though I turned off the burner, it wouldn’t stop.
As I began to panic, afraid of waking up Darcy for the second time with my bullshit, I heard her voice from behind me.
“Really, dude?”
“Shit, Fuck! I’m sorry. I turned off the burner, but it won’t stop whistling?—”
I stopped talking when Darcy walked over, grabbed the kettle, and set it on the opposite burner.
“Well, shit. Would you look at that,” I said, laughing even though I knew I shouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re saying that a lot tonight,” she eyed me with tired eyes. “I think your best side comes during vampire hours when the humans are trying to sleep.”
“How did you get the damn thing to shut up?” I asked. She had no make-up on, her hair was a mess, and those breasts were peering at me through her white see-through camisole top. I needed to quickly pull my attention away from her because I found her irresistibly gorgeous. “I turned off the burner.”
“It’s an electric cooktop, and the burners take a while to cool down on these ceramic glass stoves,” she said. “Have you ever cooked anything? I mean, you could’ve called for the room’s butler.”
“I wasn’t going to bother Ricardo to make me a cup of tea,” I said, placing a sugar cube in my cup and pouring water over my tea bag. “I didn’t want to wake him.”
“Well, at least Ricardo gets to sleep through the night,” she laughed. “And since I won’t be able to go back to sleep this second go-round, you might as well pour me a cup of tea, too,” she said, walking around the counter and sitting on a barstool.
“Take mine,” I said, searching for another mug and tea bag. “It’s green tea,” I said as if I knew this would help her sleep, “I was making it in the hope that it would settle my nerves and I’d fall back asleep.”
“Oh, well, green tea usually has caffeine, so that won’t make you sleepy. You need chamomile or some other herbal tea,” she offered, handing me the mug back.
“Oh,” I said, looking at the box of various teabags where I’d found the green tea.
“Let me see,” she walked over to the box and started flipping through its offerings. “Right here,” she pulled out a bag that said chamomile. “How much water do you have left in the pot?”
“I filled it up,” I answered. “There should be enough.”
“I bet you’ve never done anything in the kitchen except make espressos, have you?”
“I honestly haven’t, and that’s a bit painful for a man like me to admit,” I answered. “I feel like an idiot right now.”
“Well, the thing about normal people is that no matter how smart or on top of the world we are, there’s always something to learn. It’s good to see that you’re normal,” she said, handing me a mug of freshly poured tea. “It needs to steep for a minute before you drink it.”
“I know how to drink tea,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Care to join me on the patio? I would love the company.” I offered a friendly smile after I noticed she was walking back to her room.
“I was just going to turn on an old Spanish flick on the television. I figured that would put me to sleep.”
“Are you sure?”
I had no idea why I was nearly begging for her company like a child, but I just felt a bit unnerved and wanted to be around her.
“If we go out on the terrace, we’ll most likely wake up the guests next door, arguing over something stupid, like we always do.”
“I promise I won’t argue with you.”
I could tell she was concerned about going outside with me, but I wasn’t sure why. She and I had been getting along fine—no fighting or bickering—and I thought it was quite nice to be in her company since we’d arrived here. Hell, I’d been enjoying being in her company since we had dinner with Jim and Avery.
A lot of it was me, though. I felt much less dark in thought since we started this whole role-playing of the fake relationship, and that had to be because I was doing something entirely out of the norm. It served me well to behave in such a silly way because it was something I had never done. My whole life, I’d had too much pressure on me to perform at the highest level, never taking a moment to slow down or behave frivolously like my brothers, and getting a taste of that now was refreshing. I liked how it made me feel, and I liked how it affected Darcy. It showed me a different side of her, one that was adorable instead of combative.
It was just something different, and I knew that was fueling this turn for the better in my mood, which had been horrible and dark for the last year.
It might’ve been two in the morning, but I felt awake and filled with life, even though I was tired from not sleeping well.
“Fine, I’ll join you,” she said, “but once I get tired, I will rudely leave you and insist that if you can’t sleep for the rest of the night, you stay outside and let me sleep in peace.”
“Deal,” I said, and then led the way to the glass doors that opened to the beautifully lit patio and pool area. “This is perfect.”
“It is beautiful,” she answered, taking a lounge chair to my right. “Look at that moon,” she said, looking out where the orange moon sat just beyond the ocean’s horizon.
I smiled. “My wife was obsessed with the moon no matter what phase it was in,” I said. “She would find this particular moon fascinating, I’m sure.”
It really was beautiful, and as the memory of my wife flooded back to me, I felt like I wanted to share a little about Melissa with Darcy. My emotions felt raw and wide open right now, and because I was appreciative of Darcy joining me, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be a little vulnerable.