8. Reyna
CHAPTER 8
Day three is far worse than days one or two.
Everything hurts. My head, my neck, my arms…there’s not an inch of my body that doesn’t ache as though I was thrown from a moving vehicle. I lie back on my bed, a heating pad on my back, a warm washcloth over my eyes.
Elijah and Lance are out in the living room installing a state-of-the-art security system that, personally, I think might be just a bit excessive. Carter and my mother are out grocery shopping for me before he heads back to Boston.
He’d wanted to stay, insisting on sleeping on my couch, but with Knight Security and my parents watching my every move, I don’t see much of a point. He has his own life, two small children, a wife, and a business to run. The last thing he needs to do is stick around and babysit me.
Babysit. Is that what I agreed to by allowing Knight Security to assign me a bodyguard? Michael’s handsome face fills my mind, and my belly churns as I relive what I’d said. “Not Michael.” Does he even realize the only reason I can’t be around him is because I don’t trust myself not to fall in love with him all over again?
My phone buzzes, the vibration like nails on a chalkboard to my sensitive ears. I reach over and retrieve it, but it falls from my nightstand, and I hit the ground with a heavy thud after it.
I groan, shooting pain firing straight up my back.
My door is thrown open, and the light from outside is nearly blinding. I have to narrow my eyes to see the bulky man framed in my door.
Michael.
Of course it would be Michael.
Why is he even here?
“Did you forget how to knock?” I groan as I start to get to my feet.
He rushes in and lifts me as though I weigh nothing, depositing me back on my bed. I look up into his dark almond gaze and hate the way my stomach twists at the sight of him. So handsome. So masculine.
So strong.
Why did he have to break my heart?
“I heard you fall.”
“And your first thought was ‘Hey, I’m going to bust into her room without asking?’ I could have been changing, you know.”
“Do you often fall when you change?” he asks, the corners of his lips lifting in a quirky smile.
I glare at him. Michael has always had this innate ability to diffuse my anger. No matter what was wrong, Michael could always make me feel better. Maybe that’s why it hurt so bad when he went away? Because there was no one to help me pick up the pieces he’d left behind. After all, how do you keep your head above water when the only person capable of settling your storm is the one who caused it in the first place? “Why are you even here? I told your company I didn’t want you here.”
“Elijah needed a few extra cameras,” he says. “I brought them from the office and was going to help finish the install since he’s running behind on an update that’s due.”
“Good. Then go do that.” Lying back on the bed, I place the washcloth over my eyes, then reach for the covers. But I don’t have to reach far because Michael is tugging them up for me, basically tucking me into bed.
I swallow hard, tears stinging the corners of my eyes.
He’d done this once before. When I’d had the flu and my parents were both working. Carter had a job interview, so Michael and his mother came over to sit with me. He’d tucked me in while she made soup.
The memory assaults me like a battering ram.
“I’m sorry, Reyna. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
I hate that I want him to touch my face. Just a trace of his finger over my jaw like he used to do. So even though I don’t actually want him to leave, I say nothing as silent tears begin to fall. I’ve cried so much over Michael Anderson. The day he left. The weeks that followed. Whenever I think about him, there’s this gut-wrenching pain that follows.
Why can’t I get over him?
It’s dark.
Rain hammers down on me. The parking lot is empty, except for a single truck. It’s a deep olive-green, large, and I’m drawn toward it because I know that he’s waiting for me inside.
Lightning flashes and I jump back as a masked man lunges toward me. I scream, falling back on the pavement, but he jumps on top of me, pinning me to the ground.
I scream again but no sound comes out.
I fight, but my fists do nothing.
He laughs at me.
“Keep fighting,” he tells me. “I enjoy the struggle. I’m coming for you, Reyna Acker.”
“Reyna!”
I’m ripped from sleep, but I keep fighting as hands grip my shoulders. “No! Let me go.”
“Okay!” He releases me and steps back. As I fully come out of sleep, I stare up at Michael and Elijah. Both men look utterly terrified, their faces pale, eyes wide.
I crumble, sobbing. Michael crosses over and reaches for me, but I slap his hands away. “No! Leave me alone! You’re making everything worse!” I rush into the bathroom, doing my best to breathe through the panic. It claws at me though, suffocating me.
The door opens, and my brother rushes in.
“I can’t breathe,” I tell him. “I can’t breathe.” I cry, suffocating beneath the weight of my panic.
“Easy, little sister, you can breathe,” he tells me calmly as he sits beside me and pulls me toward him. “Five things,” he says. “Five things you can see.”
I don’t speak.
“Five things, Reyna.”
“You.”
“Good. What else?”
I scan the room, focusing on the things around me that are tangible. The things that are real. “The blue and white towels.”
“Good. Give me another.”
“The black tile outline,” I say, focusing on the one tile that ended up twisted before it dried. We go through the motions, and I give him four things I can feel and three things I can hear.
By the time we’ve finished going through the list, I’m grounded in reality once more. I know that there is no man in my room. I’m not in the parking lot of the school. And I’ve got full control over my surroundings.
Still, Carter and I sit on the floor of the bathroom while he wraps an arm around my shoulders. “God, please be with Reyna. Please strengthen and protect her. Amen.”
“Amen,” I whisper and lean against him.
When I was young, I started having night terrors. Horrifying nightmares that would have me screaming for help in the middle of the night. They started from nothing and came out of nowhere. But it’s been a long, long time since I had one.
I think the last one I had was when I was eleven, maybe?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Why?”
“I probably scared Michael and Elijah half to death.”
“The whole neighborhood,” he replies with a nudge of my shoulder. “Besides, Michael deserves a few scares.”
“Fair enough. But Elijah?”
“Collateral damage,” he replies with a grin. “Are you okay?”
“I am. Better now.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Just a nightmare,” I tell him. “About the parking lot.” I leave out the olive-green truck I’d been walking toward, as I try to understand just what Michael’s truck being there means. Probably nothing, possibly everything.
I take a deep breath, and Carter gets to his feet before pulling me to mine.
“Hey, I have an idea.” He brushes some hair behind my ear.
“What?”
“Come back to Boston with me. Kleo and I have a spare room, and the kids would love to hang out with Auntie Reyna for a little while.”
“School is starting soon,” I say. “I can’t leave. But I really appreciate the offer.”
“Reyna, a change of scenery might be good.”
“I’m okay, Carter. It was a nightmare, that’s all. I just—I need some time to get back to where I was, okay? Normalcy will do me good. I’m afraid if I start running, I’ll never stop.”
He clenches his jaw. “I just want you safe.”
“I know you do. Thank you.” I squeeze his arm gently, then step out of the bathroom and into the hall. Elijah is standing at a panel near the front door, but Michael is nowhere to be seen. And for the first time, I’m looking for him.
“He’s outside,” Elijah tells me without turning around. “Felt it was better to be out of the way.”
I look back at Carter.
“Go, I’ll make us some food,” he says.
“Just not soup.”
“Not soup,” he replies with a chuckle, and crosses into the kitchen.
After slipping my sandals on and grabbing a long cardigan from my closet, I head outside onto the front porch.
My house is situated on a cul-de-sac, three doors down from my parents’ house. With large trees lining everyone’s yards, it’s a beautiful place to be whenever the seasons change because it feels like you’re in a snow globe for spring, summer, fall, or winter.
This place has been my haven for as long as I can remember, and the fact that Michael’s parents still live directly across the street from my parents’ house only adds to my feeling of comfort. They were there for me when Michael left.
His mother was apologetic, offering to help however she could, but my relationship with his father changed forever. He’d once been like a second dad to me, but after Michael left, he grew distant. I always wondered if it wasn’t because he thought I drove his son away.
Michael sits on the porch steps, his back to me. My stomach in knots, I make my way over and take a seat beside him. “We used to sit out on your parents’ porch a lot,” he says.
“Drinking lemonade,” I add. “I remember.”
“I can’t forget,” he says. “I’ve tried so hard to forget everything. To move on, but I?—”
“You need to, though. I have.” The moment the words are out of my mouth, I want to kick myself for the blatant lie. Michael may not see it as one, but God certainly knows my heart. And He knows I’m still madly in love with the man beside me. Even if I struggle to admit it to myself most days.
“With Liam?”
“We had one date,” I tell him.
“He has a clean background,” he tells me. “If you were curious.”
“You ran him?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. Michael’s dad is retired police. Michael works with a former detective, and he, Elijah, and Lance all served as Rangers in the Army. Of course he looked into Liam.
“We’ve run everyone in your life. Past. Present. Future.”
“You include yourself on that list?”
He snorts. “I know my transgressions,” he replies. “And I’m still paying for them.” His gaze finds mine, and the air between us charges with tension.
I could have spent my forever with him.
But now I can’t trust him.
“The nightmares something new?”
“I had them?—”
“As a kid. I remember,” he interrupts. “But now. After?—”
“Yeah. That was the first one I’ve had in a long time.” My throat burns as I try to swallow back the emotion. “I know I survived. That could have been so much worse. But I just can’t get the feeling of helplessness out of my head.”
Michael stares straight ahead. “Helplessness is something I understand quite well,” he says. “I wish I had gotten there sooner.”
“I’m just glad you got there at all.”
We fall into silence, something rather unusual for the man sitting next to me. A man who always seems to know the right thing to say. “I want you to know that even though you don’t want me as your bodyguard, I will never let anything happen to you.”
“I know.”
He turns to me. “Do you?”
Something in the question catches me off guard. A deeper meaning behind those two words that feeds the pieces of me unwilling to let him go. “Yes. And thanks again.” I reach out and offer my hand.
Michael studies it, and for a minute, I wonder if he’s going to refuse the handshake. But then his large hand closes around mine and I see the simple gesture for what it is: a mistake.
Because the feel of his hand against mine soothes a need I’ve carried since the moment he walked out of the door.