CHAPTER 19
The sound cut through his sleep like a blade, a cry that was raw, desperate, and unmistakably hers. He was reaching for his t-shirt even before he was on his feet. His heart hammered when he heard another muffled sob drift through the walls.
She was having another nightmare.
It had been a few weeks since she’s had a nightmare and he hesitated to barge into her room like he had in the past. Something shifted between them and he didn’t even want to acknowledge it.
He stood frozen in the hallway lost in thought, his hand hovering over her door handle.
Every rational part of his brain screamed at him to walk away, to let her handle it herself.
Just like she had in the past. Getting involved would only complicate matters between them, not what he needed right now.
Another low whimper from behind the door shattered his resolve.
He pushed open the door quietly, not to alarm her, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.
She was tangled in her sheets, her face contorted in distress, her hair damp with sweat.
Her body looked like it had thrashed against invisible demons, and she kept murmuring something he couldn’t quite make out. Words that sounded like pleas.
Every protective instinct he’d been trying to suppress roared to life.
He approached the bed slowly, his chest tight with an emotion he refused to name and acknowledge.
She looked so vulnerable, so broken, nothing like the strong woman who challenged him at every turn during the day.
This was the version of her no one else got to see—the one that threatened to make his resolve crumble.
“Isha,” he said softly, reaching out to touch her forehead that was slick with sweat. “Everything is okay.”
The moment his fingers made contact with her skin, her eyes flew open and unfocused, still caught between sleep and some other emotion. For a heartbeat, she didn’t recognize him, and he saw confusion and something else flash across her features.
Then reality crashed back, and something shifted in her expression. There was relief, maybe, or something dangerously close to gratitude. Her expression shook him to the core and he could not figure out why.
In that moment he knew he would do anything for her to not look so shaken up. Every other time he had woken her up in the middle of the night to her cries, she had not looked at him like she did that night.
It shook him to the core and he knew he was fucked!