Chapter 15
Ama had sleepwalked again.
Only this time, she hadn’t returned to her apartment. She’d awoken, splayed out on dew-dampened metal outside somewhere, the concerned faces of two officers staring down at her barking questions she couldn’t comprehend.
“Are you hurt, miss? Do you need medical attention?” “What’s your name?” “Were you sexually assaulted?” “Why are you naked on a children’s playground?” “Were you drinking last night?” “Where are your clothes?”
She hadn’t been able to answer. Merely shook her head and tried to hide her body from their barbed stares. They’d tossed a blanket that smelled of metal and exhaust over her shoulders and led her to their squad car, still assailing her with questions to which she couldn’t find words to respond.
By the time they’d arrived at the station, she’d been able to stutter out simple answers to a few basic inquiries. Enough to appease the officers. They’d put her in a solitary cell after switching out the car blanket for one scrounged up from some backroom office. It smelled of old tacos and Axe body spray and was soft as sand paper.
They’d allowed her one phone call. But she had no one to call. Her mother, who lived states away? That was a horrible idea. Her sister would be no better help. She didn’t have phone numbers for any coworkers. And friends? Well, she didn’t have many of those, either. Only the Drekisons had been friendly to her. And Arkyn had been… more. But she didn’t know his number. Fortunately, one of the station’s older officers had taken pity on her and had dialed the phone for her.
Her heart and the bile of her empty stomach had hovered in her throat during the brief conversation with Arkyn. She’d wanted to curl up in his voice. She’d also wanted to wish this all away so she didn’t have to see the look of utter disappointment on his face when he picked her up.
If last night had been the best night of her life, the morning after was the punishment.
She cowered in the corner of her cell, dreading each upcoming moment. The blanket chaffed. Scratched. Clawed at her skin like knives. Her nerves did much the same on her insides. By the time Arkyn arrived—assuming he actually would, unless he’d lied just to get her off the phone—she would be little more than a shredded husk of a person. Each movement no matter how slight was agony. So, she’d curled into a ball where the cot met the wall and didn’t move. Maybe she could disappear. Or wake up from this nightmare.
If she did, would she find herself wrapped in Arkyn’s strong embrace?
Her lips quivered at the thought. No, he would never hold her again. She’d thrown herself at him and declared her love for him, then fallen asleep on him. Then asked him to bail her out of jail. What grown woman did that? What grown man would put up with that?
Her mother had been right. And, while Ama had learned the hard way how painful it was to be anything but her own authentic self, being herself always came with consequences.
Arkyn would turn his back on her.
She’d be fired and forced to move again.
And she’d never get another job working with children.
Tears chilled her cheeks.
At some point, voices reached her ears. She was afraid to listen, but couldn’t block them out as they got closer. Two male voices. One was an officer.
“…Good thing we found her early morning on a Sunday. Nobody was at the playground yet or else we’d have to charge her with a Class-A misdemeanor.”
“It’s my fault, Ted. We’d had a bowling date, and I wasn’t paying attention to how much she’d been drinking. Then I had to leave to deal with a family issue.” The other man’s voice was?—
Her heart simultaneously cringed and danced.
The other was man Arkyn.
His words made no sense. She hadn’t had any alcohol last night. And, family emergency? Was everyone okay? Had someone been hurt? She’d missed supporting Arkyn’s family in their time of need because she’d been too busy sleepwalking across town to a park? And why hadn’t anyone else seen her walking naked or had they seen her and taken pictures to prove it and now there werenudepicturesofherstrewnacross?—
“Shhhh, elskr.” Arkyn’s voice was mere feet away, its velvet timbre rolling through her veins. “You need to calm your breathing. I can hear your panic from here.”
She dared a quick peek over the top of her blanket-covered forearm and her heart stuttered. Arkyn was here. He’d come for her. And he didn’t look angry about it. Fresh tears blurred her vision and she ducked her head again to rub her eyes on the brillo pad of a blanket. Her voice warbled as she spoke into her shoulder, the sound coming out barely above a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”
Those words on repeat through the loud clank of the cell door being unlocked and the warmth of strong arms wrapping around her. Arkyn lifted her onto his lap and buried his nose in her hair. She waited through numerous racing heartbeats, but he made no move to release her or stand up, as if he was content to stay right there, holding her, indefinitely.
He inhaled. He exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. A patient, steady rythm that invited her body to join in this slow dance.
Then he purred.
A low rumble in his chest that vibrated through her, soothing and consoling like some mall relaxation station chair. Her lungs unclenched to mirror his breathing, her heartbeat relaxing and her limbs loosening. Arkyn’s Zen wove a tantric web of tranquility around them. He smelled of summer meadow flowers and fireflies, and her body ached to stretch out along his length. Ama sighed and unfurled in his arms, wrapping hers around his neck and letting her legs dangle to the floor, forgetting for a quick moment that she was still naked with only a rough blanket for cover.
But she needn’t worry; Arkyn threw a shirt over her bare shoulders as the blanket slid down, ensuring his were the only eyes in the surprisingly busy police station that might see anything. The intimacy of it all made her quiver.
Gently, as if she might break—an understandable reaction from him… she’d been shattered remains of herself when he’d first arrived—he helped her don the oversized shirt and button it before whisking the Scrub-Daddy blanket to the side and discarding it. He helped her stand and escorted her through the open cell door as if he were a prince leading a princess through a royal ballroom. He stood by her side as she spoke with an officer and signed whatever paperwork they shoved at her. The officers milling around no longer looked at her strangely, but the officer with the paperwork spoke of court dates and lawyers and registering in some national database.
Before Ama could decipher the ugly tenor of his words, a cool undercurrent of energized moisture swiped past her bare legs as if she’d waded into an effervescent lazy river, its serene flow cleansing her of the last remnants of her anguish and focusing her attention. Ama glanced around to see if the station was somehow flooding, but there was only the bottle water dispenser on the other side of the desks. A sluggish bubble gurgled to the top of the bottle, but otherwise it did nothing.
The officer cleared his throat and shook his head as if waking from a trance. He looked between Ama and Arkyn. “Um, I think we can let this little situation slide. No one was harmed and there were no witnesses. Just, be careful in the future Miss Payne.”
“Thank you. I will, officer.” Well, she could try to not sleepwalk again.
Arkyn turned her with an arm along her shoulder and escorted her to the lobby of the station where his parents stood, waiting.
Ama covered her cry of dismay with her hand. Arkyn’s parents knew she’d been arrested? Then they likely knew she’d been wandering around in public naked. What must they think of her! Surely they were here to talk some sense into their son and discourage him from ever dating her?—
“We’re so glad you’re okay, dear.” Fro?ja rushed forward and palmed Ama’s cheeks, looking her over as if for injuries, her obvious relief a palpable entity. “We were with Arkyn when he got your call. We had to come with and offer our support.”
Tears prickled Ama’s eyes. “Arkyn is perfectly capable, but he’s so lucky to have the support of parents like you.”
All three stared at her for a confused moment before Jo?lnir chuckled. “I agree with you on both points, Ama. But Fro?ja meant we had to come and offer our support to you.”
Ama blinked, his words not making sense. They wanted to support her? But she wasn’t even their child. She wasn’t even Arkyn’s girlfriend. Heck, she was barely his date, even if she currently wore his shirt. She was just?—
A drift of air through the lobby door brought Jo?lnir’s scent to her nose. Water. Clear, pristine, bubbly spring water. Exactly like that which had brushed her leg mere minutes ago. She jolted at the realization and bit back a giggle. “You’re the reason the officer let me go. You somehow persuaded him to wipe away all the charges, like… well, like water under the bridge.”
Jo?lnir tilted his head and considered her for a moment, as if seeing her for the first time. A smile spread across his lips and he nodded. “She’s special, son. Don’t let her go.”
Jo?lnir’s lips didn’t move and his voice sounded as if from behind that strange wall again, but this time, the wall was closer. She looked around to see if maybe something was affecting the acoustics of the lobby.
“I won’t.” Arkyn stood at her back, so she didn’t know if his lips moved or not, but his voice came from behind that same nearby wall.
She shrugged unable to explain the bizarre vocal phenomenon that happened with the Drekison family sometimes. “At lease you didn’t call me weird.”
Jo?lnir and Fro?ja both frowned for the briefest moment, as if her words confused them. Before they could respond or she could say anything else, Arkyn wrapped an arm around her waist. “Let’s get out of here before the officers change their minds.”
Arkyn’s parents hugged her good-bye and Astra greeted her with excited mews when she climbed into his truck. Arkyn made quick work of getting on the road while Ama played with the kitten in the passenger seat.
“Here’s the hardest decision of the day.” Arkyn slanted her a teasing grin. “You have to say where you want me to take you.”
She settled Astra on her thighs. “I wasn’t drunk, you know.” When he shot her a confused look, she clarified. “You told the officer I’d been drinking. Why would you lie?”
His confusion morphed into a heated smile and he raised his hand from the steering wheel to brush her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. “I didn’t lie, elskr. I said I hadn’t paid attention to how much you drank, which is true. If the officer assumed I meant alcohol, that’s on him.”
Ooooohhhhh. She chuckled. “Tricky, Arkyn. Very tricky.” The she curled her legs under her and scritched Astra along the jowls. “Sooo, what choices do I have? For where you’ll take me?” Was he hoping she’d say home? Was he offering to drive her to another city so she could start a new life?
But his smile remained lighthearted and warm. “Well, just to name a few, we could go to your apartment. We could go to my place. Or we could just drive around the countryside for a while. Food, a change of clothes, and entertainment options should also be considered. As should whether you want to be alone or whether you want to be with me.”
In what alternate universe would she not want to be with him? She tucked a purring Astra beneath her chin, worrying her bottom lip. Arkyn was being such a gentleman to give her so many choices. For a rare moment in her life, Ama knew exactly what she wanted.
But would he really oblige her? Or was he just being nice?
“Well…” She twined Astra’s tail around her finger. “I don’t want to go home. Or be alone. Not yet, anyway, unless you need your shirt back. I’m not hungry, but there’s always room for fresh crullers. Otherwise, I really just want… I mean, I don’t really have much of a preference either way, I would just like… well, I don’t want to be a bother?—”
“Ama, I’m letting you drive this date, figuratively speaking.” He chuckled as he turned down the road toward a donut shop. Then he looked at her. “But I need to know what you want.”
Hesitation evaporated. “I don’t care what we do, although I’d prefer it not involve a lot of people I don’t know. I just… I just want to be with you.”
“A girl after my own heart.” The smile he flashed her made her toes giddy. “How ‘bout we get fresh donuts and go to my place so we can eat them in a hammock in the back yard and laze away the day?”
Excitement tumbled through her limbs and Ama had to bite her lips to keep from cheering and scaring Astra.
Today was the best day of her life.