Page 326 of Nobody's Girl

He pulls my hand up to his chest, placing it on his heart. “Then why do I feel like this? Why does it hurt that I can’t hold that little girl right now? I miss her and want to see her again. I want to go back to sleep and back to that world.”

I reposition myself on the sofa, my ass is aching and my stomach sore. “Eden woke me up when we kissed. Is that where the dream ended for you?”

He lets my hand go and looks away. “Yes, I woke up too.” He runs a hand through his blonde curls. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about our dreams at all.”

“I don’t know,” Eden says. “Maybe they should be discussed. Things should never go ignored. We wouldn’t resolve anything if we ignored things and hoped they’d go away.”

Kyle is so close to me. His leg touches mine and I have to fight the urge to reach for him. I want to be wrapped up in his arms and feel the comfort I know is there. “I don’t think there’s much for us to discuss. Kyle was there, I was there, and even you were there for all but one of the dreams. No need to talk about it too.”

His hand touches my arm and my eyes shoot to his. Kyle sees what his presence is doing to me and gets up, moving away from me. “We don’t have to talk about them if it bothers you, Al.”

I watch him move clear across the room. “I hope it doesn’t hurt you, Kyle, but it makes me feel bad that I’m cheating on my husband in my dreams. I don’t ever want to hurt Eden. He’s everything to me.”

Eden comes to my side and sits in the spot Kyle vacated. His hand runs up and down my arm, making me grow warm inside. “Alyssa, you have no control over this. I don’t want for you to feel bad about it. Just like anything else in life, I would hope you’d embrace it and learn everything you can from it.”

I look up at him. “You’re crazy mature, Eden. I wouldn’t be so open to this if it was you dreaming about being married to someone else.”

The no-nonsense expression he wears makes me feel worse somehow as he says, “How would you change it?”

How would I?

Placing my hand on top of his, I stop him from moving it over my arm. I take his hand and place it on my stomach. “I couldn’t, could I?”

His eyes move to look at his hand lying on my flat stomach. “Acceptance is the key to moving forward with life and learning all you can as you go along the way. You’ve been given a gift. You get to see what could have been. Explore that. Not many people get to.”

Kyle sits in the chair across from us. “Dude, that sounds wise.”

I laugh at his words. “Yeah, he’s wise and exceptionally good natured. We should all strive to be a little more like him.”

Then Eden goes and acts so unlike himself, I feel as if I’m in another world. His hand goes up, he leans towards Kyle, and the two bump fists. “It’s crazy, guy! Like, as long as I touch my mate, I can see the dream and it’s real. But I’m like a spectator. That baby was so cute!”

My eyes go wide and I look at my husband. “Eden?”

He looks back at me and grins. “She was.” Then his eyes move to Kyle. “Alyssa was pretty cranky through the whole thing. I’ll make sure she has plenty of pain killers when she and I have our children.”

Kyle laughs and rubs his hand. “Hell, yeah, guy. As much as they’ll allow.”

I groan as I pull myself up to a sitting position, which hurts, but I can’t take these jokers anymore. “Let either one of you feel that horrible pain and I bet you’d be cussing like a sailor and throwing things at the person who got you in that spot. I think I handled it all pretty well, considering how many times I thought about doing some pretty bad things to you, Kyle.”

He smiles at me with that million-dollar grin. “I am aware of all you thought, even in the dream world, Al. Choke me?”

I nod and get up slowly and painfully.

I will not be wanting to experience real childbirth anytime soon!

“Okay, let’s lighten this up, then, shall we?” I say. “I need to call Laura’s mother to see if she went home.”

The phone rings several times before Laura’s mother answers it. “Hello.”

“Hi, Mrs. Tanner. This is Ally.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Why do you ask that?” I ask her.

“It’s awfully early and Laura hasn’t called me in two days.”

“Oh, I see. I was hoping you’d heard from her. She and Kyle got into a little argument and she left. I thought she might be on her way back home.”