My skin was damp. My T-shirt was twisted around my torso. My thighs pressed together on instinct, chasing the ghost of sensation that wasn’t there anymore.
“Goddammit,” I whispered.
I flung an arm over my eyes and lay there, dragging in air. The dream clung to me, sticky and unwelcome. My body was still throbbing, angry at being dragged out of that last, blinding moment. My heart was … worse.
It had been years.
Years.
And still, my subconscious thought it was a great idea to throw him at me like that. To remind me, in excruciating detail, of exactly how good it had been. Of how easily I’d let him in. Of how completely he’d gutted me when he’d chosen secrecy over his promise.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I sat up, shoving my hair out of my face. The room tilted faintly—jet lag doing its thing. I reached for the bottle of water on the nightstand and took a long drink, the coolness sliding down my throat and doing absolutely nothing for the fire under my skin.
My phone lit up when I shifted it.
4:58 a.m.
Charleston was still dark, but it wouldn’t be for long. The city would wake up slowly.
And for once, the time on my phone matched the time on my parents’ bedside clock.
I hesitated, thumb hovering over my contact list.
They’d be up soon, anyway. My dad was always an early riser, and my mom had never been able to sleep past five once she hit fifty. Small-town life in northern Ontario didn’t exactly demand pre-dawn wake-ups, but old habits died hard.
I pressed the call button before I could talk myself out of it.
The line rang twice.
“Hello?” my mother answered, voice soft and a little raspy with sleep.
Guilt flickered. “Hey, Mom. It’s me.”
“Amelia.” The way she said my name—warm and relieved and just this side of anxious—always got me. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I lied automatically, then softened it. “I just … couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d call. It’s not the middle of the night for you, for once.”
She huffed a small laugh. “No, it’s not. Your father will be thrilled. He hates when the phone rings at 3 a.m. and it’s you calling from some mountain with tanks rolling by.”
“Tanks don’t roll by every time,” I protested.
“No,” she said dryly. “Sometimes it’s gunfire.”
I smiled in the dark. “Those are usually farther away than they sound.”
“Mm-hmm.”
There was shuffling, then my dad’s voice in the background. “Is that Amelia? Put her on speaker, Jo.”
A click, then his deeper rumble came through clearer. “Hey, kiddo.”
“Hey, Dad.”
“How’s the war zone?” he asked.
I snorted. “This one has canapés.”
