It hadn’t changed. Not that she expected it to. But with Stone’s family staying in the space, she expected there would be some feeling of not being welcome there. Especially after how she’d left. There was none of that. Just a deep, weary sense of homesickness.
The body wash. His clothes. Go and get out.
In a daze, she stumbled through the rooms. When she got back to the living room, her arms were full of his clothes and the bottle of soap. She stumbled into the kitchen, her breath catching in her throat.
Oh, god.
It was so hard to breathe. Why? Why had she let herself go back? Her body collapsed to the cold tile floor as more fucking useless tears welled in her eyes. She wasn’t a weepy person. So why had she become an endless spigot? The room spun around her and she did the only thing she could think of. Mae pushed the clothes she was trying to take with her into a pile and laid her head down, letting her tears and the whirling room rock her to sleep.
“Mae? Hey. Mae? Are you okay? Can you open your eyes for me? Fuck. Fuck!”
Rhett’s voice startled her. Mae’s eyes flew open, her body jerking off the floor. “Whoa. It’s okay.” His hand rested on her arm and he squeezed gently.
“Sorry. Oh, god. I’m sorry.” She was still on the kitchen tile. Had she cried herself to sleep? “I fell asleep. I didn’t think you were coming back here tonight, and I fell asleep.”
“I forgot some stuff here that Sara needs. Come on. Mom’s been sleeping in Stone’s bed, but I think that’s got your name written on it tonight.”
“I wasn’t planning on staying,” she admitted.
Rhett laughed. “You don’t say? I figured you were reenacting a ‘B and E’ with all that stuff lying around you on the floor. Either that or you have recently started living like a little gerbil and you needed Stone’s clothes to make your nest.”
“Something like that.”
“Hey,” Rhett helped her up, wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug. “He’s going to be fine, Mae. We’re going to get to the other side of this, and then it’ll be back to him hogging the covers and sleeping like a starfish.”
“How do you know he does that?” she asked, smiling as she remembered the feeling of Stone’s warm body lying in bed next to her.
“We shared a bed at our grandparents’ summer camp. Worst two weeks of my life every year. I don’t know how you do it.”
“He’s never been like that with me.”
Rhett nodded. “Do you need any help bringing this stuff back into the room?”
“No. Leave it. I’ll grab it all in the morning. His pillow will still smell like him,” she whispered. “That will be enough.”
“Alright. Well, I’m going to grab what I need from thespare bedroom and I’ll get out of your hair. See you tomorrow?”
“See you tomorrow.”
Mae snatched one of the shirts off the floor, making her way down to the bedroom before shutting the door. She slipped out of her clothes, draping Stone’s shirt over her head before crawling into bed. The last thing she remembered doing was reaching over to grab his pillow, burying her face in it as exhaustion pulled her under again.
Five
Fuck, his body hurt.
Right? That was the sensation he was feeling. Or not really feeling. Shit, everything felt so strange. Disconnected. How bad had the mission gone that he’d gotten so fucked up?
A cave. Dark. Empty. That’s where he was. Where he had to be. Stone tried to reach for the light he had on his belt. Standard issue. The guys should be turning theirs on too. Only… his body wasn’t responding. What the hell? He could hear sounds, voices all around him. Murmurs, like he was on one side of a thick door, and everyone else was on the other. What the fuck was that beeping noise… Was it all a dream?
He could wake up.
He needed to wake up.
Instead, the darkness pulled him back.
“You better wake up, man. I have about ten thousand questions for you, and youaregoing to answer them. So ifyou’re being a stubborn idiot just to get out of talking to me, you can knock it off. The doctors here already told us we have to treat you like you’re made of glass when you finally stop being so damn dramatic and wake up.”
Phoenix.
