Chapter 11
Parker
It had been over thirty minutes since Evelyn went into the bathroom.
The shower had stopped running five minutes ago.
Since there was only one bed, I decided to take an extra blanket from there and lay it on the floor with a pillow by the door.
I was exhausted from driving for over eight hours straight in an effort to lose Charles, just in case he was following us.
My body began to feel all the aches from the week and the week prior.
I felt sleep creeping up on me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay awake to wait for Evelyn to come out of the bathroom.
As much as I wanted to check in with her.
I quickly lost the battle to keep my eyes open.
The sound of wailing startled me awake. I shot upright from the floor and looked around the darkened room to see Evelyn thrashing around in the bed. This felt like deja vu, this was exactly how I found her at home during the fire. Standing up, I slowly walked to the bed, careful not to scare her.
I called out gently, Evelyn, but she was still trapped in this dream. Her screams got louder, and I reached out my hand to wake her. She thrashed more, fighting me off as if I were an attacker.
This time I called out a bit louder, “Evelyn, it’s Parker. You’re alright. It’s just Parker.”
Evelyn’s eyes opened and focused on me, her hands grabbing at my shirt like she was trying to make sure I was real. Tears flooded her eyes as she held onto me, her chest heaving with every sob that broke through.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She said, shaking her head, refusing to meet my eyes.
Hesitantly, I wrapped my arms around her, climbing into the space on the bed beside her and held her as her tears soaked through my shirt.
Did Evelyn go through this every night? The thought alone made me hug her closer to me, ignoring all the voices in my head telling me how much of a bad idea this was.
I’m not sure how long I held her for, but the heartbreaking noises she was making subsided eventually and were replaced by heavy breathing. I continued to stroke her head, and soon sleep took me too.
I woke up to a warm body nuzzling into my chest, a leg draped over my thigh, and a hand softly caressing the back of my neck. I felt my body start to wake up from the delight of being touched. However, my brain started to kick in not even a moment later, and my eyes flashed open.
Evelyn was wrapped around me like she was trying to meld our skin together, snoring lightly.
Her now auburn curls were spread out on the pillow with her braids loosely intact.
From this close I could see the freckles that peppered her face, sporadically placed around her eyes and nose.
Her lips were full and plush, a combination of brown and pink.
They were slightly puckered as if she was deep in thought.
Her left hand was tucked under her head while her right hand was drawing lines against my neck in her sleep.
She was only in a large t-shirt, and it had risen with her leg draped over mine.
Her warm brown skin was marred with scars and jagged, raised skin that I only assume came from the man that haunted her dreams at night and stole her peace during the daylight hours.
I stared at her a little too long, but I couldn’t help myself.
After another beat, I maneuvered my body out from under her, taking my time not to wake her.
I had a feeling that waking up in that position would embarrass her, and she already had a hard time opening up.
We had just begun to make some progress, and I didn’t want her retreating into herself.
Silently, I moved around the room, collecting a fresh pair of boxers, a new shirt, and basketball shorts and headed towards the small bathroom to take a shower. I was grateful that she didn’t wake up, or she would have seen the stiffy that was starting to grow next to her warm body.
After my shower, I returned to the bedroom, but Evelyn was still fast asleep.
I decided to let her rest since she had a rough night and headed out to grab breakfast for the two of us.
There was no way either of us was interested in consuming anything this place put out, given the state of it.
I quickly scrawled out a note on the back of a receipt and left it on the table before I ventured out into the Georgia summer heat.