Stone must notice this too because he shouts over his shoulder. “Bring me my jacket!”
Lucas walks over holding Stone’s black coat jacket and wraps it around me. I tell him thank you as Stone glares at his brother-in-law with disapproval.
“What? Isn’t that what you wanted it for?” Lucas asks.
Stone grumbles something about how it’s his job to place the jacket over me. Stella laughs and Lucas shrugs sheepishly as if the thought never crossed his mind. From the little conversation I’ve had with him, he seems like a good man who looks after those around him.
“Can we go now?” I whisper to Stone with a pleading look in my eyes. “Not to the doctor. Just take me back to Marian’s for now, please.”
He opens his mouth as if to protest, but he relents and places his large hands on my shoulders, guiding me through the whispering crowd of people. I wobble a little and contemplate taking my shoes off, but Stone stops us and picks me up bridal style. I immediately wrap my arms around his neck to keep steady while the once-whispering crowd erupts in applause as if we were the bride and groom of this shindig. My stomach flutters, but this time it’s not from feeling sick. It’s because the thought of me and my playboy boss tying the knot is as vivid an image as the visions that flickered across my thoughts when we first kissed last night. I itch to turn it all—the wedding night, the twin boys, the explosions and heat—into scenes within my stories.
They are visions I need to wash away in the shower when I get back to the house because they’re causing feelings I don’t want to have towards the man hauling me away from onlookers, tucked in his arms, the same way I imagine he emerged from the depths of the pool with me as he saved me.
He saved me.
The phrase repeats in my head as Stone opens the door of his truck while still holding onto me.
He saved me.
Stone sets me down in the seat and reaches over me to buckle me up. I smell the salt clinging to his drying hair.
He saved me.
After shutting the door, he walks around to the driver side and hops in, cranking the truck, which roars to life.
He saved me.
And for the first time in a while… I feel alive. Like maybe dying isn’t such a good idea after all.
“We’re going to the hospital.”
Just kidding.
Chapter 9
Lucy
Upon waking to an aching, heaving chest, panting breaths, and a sticky sweat coating my… everywhere, I check the unnamed red flower app on my phone.
Ovulation week.
That’s why I had that dream. There’s absolutely no other reason that Stone starred in my dreams like a…
Like a…
I groan and smother my face with my pink pillow, resisting the urge to release a built-up scream of sexual frustration and immense guilt. Not to mention my chest is absolutely killing me from the apparent seven CPR compressions I had to be given yesterday. Stone forced me to go to the hospital, and I was checked and cleared with only bruising and no cracked ribs, but the way that man took care of me and watched me with his own two blackened eyes…
It did something to me.
Which is why I think I dreamed of himdoingsomething to me…
Or it could have been my body wanting an extension of what we started yesterday morning.
You can’t control your dreams, Lucy. It’s okay. Give it to God.
Yes, that’s what I have to do. What Imustdo. There’s no other option right now.
I dig around for my journal, which I had shoved under the bed in case Stone came snooping around the room while I wasn’t here. Frantically turning the pages until I’m on a blank one, I begin to jot down my feelings surrounding what happened yesterday and my dream from last night: guilt, pleasure, desire, frustration, anger, disgust… the list goes on and on. I let it all out and give it to the Lord, begging Him to strip away the heated urge to rectify the situation myself.
