The idea rankled, hitting a place inside him he hadn’t realized was sore.
Of course, he shouldn’t want her to need him. He shouldn’t want her to be haunted by nightmares that dragged her from her own bed and sent her running into his. But hell if her midnight visits hadn’t been the best thing to ever happen to him.
And he missed them.
Missed the way she hooked her knees behind his. Missed the way she spread her fingers over his ribs and murmured barely there nothings against his neck. Missed the heat of her breath and the softness of her breasts against his back.
Sabrina, the river goddess.
She didn’t know it, but her ethereal sweetness, her delicate vulnerability, had knitted his broken pieces together. Pieces he hadn’t even realized needed mending.
And now, she was dating. Dating.
Not that he begrudged her happiness. Not that he expected her to remain a nun. And certainly not that he didn’t want her to move past the hurt and the horror that had kept her trapped inside BKI and inside her own mind.
But it’s too soon. She’s not ready.
As her friend, he hated the thought of her pushing herself when there was no reason for?—
Are ya sure that’s all it is? The unwelcome question zipped through his mind, and he clenched his jaw so hard his back teeth creaked.
Instead of answering, he reached for his watch on the bedside table. Depressing the side button made the face glow blue.
Almost 6 A.M.
Seven hours since she left.
Any other guy might assume she’d snuck in while he was out cold. But Hew slept with one eye open and both ears cocked. A pin dropping was enough to rouse him from stone-cold slumber.
If Sabrina had come home, he’d have heard her footsteps. Heard the tiny whine of her door hinges and the rustle of her sheets.
Seven hours since she left, he thought again. And his brain spooled out a series of horror reels.
Her, stuck behind the wheel because her car lost traction on the wet roads and plowed into a tree. Her, desperately trying to escape her Prius as it filled with water because she missed a curve and drove into one of the many small kettle lakes that dotted the countryside outside the city. Her, broken and bleeding and needing him and?—
Another thought stabbed into his brain with the destructive force of a Ka-Bar.
Martin...
What if she’d gone to see Martin?
An image of the charming bastard with his perfect hair and even more perfect smile emblazoned itself in Hew’s mind’s eye. He was reminded of Martin's possessive hand at the small of Sabrina’s back in the parking lot at Red Delilah’s after they’d paid the tab and made moves toward home. Reminded of the blush on Sabrina’s cheeks when Martin had leaned in to kiss the corner of her mouth.
Hew had pretended not to watch the couple’s exchange as he slipped on his motorcycle helmet. But behind his visor, he’d read Martin’s lips.
“Come home with me tonight.”
Sabrina had made excuses, and Hew had heaved a sigh of relief.
But what if she changed her mind? he thought now.
What if, right at this very moment, she’s curled up against that fuckstick’s back, her nose pressed to his neck, her fingers ghostin’ across his ribs like they used to ghost across mine?
He squeezed shut his eyes, hoping to stop the images that poured through his head. But that only made things worse. On the backs of his eyelids, he could actually see her there, in Martin’s bed, her pale skin contrasting with Martin’s and?—
The door hinges squealed. He shot upright. “Sabrina?”
But it wasn’t her. Peanut sat in the threshold, his gray fur as black as a shadow in the darkness, and his silhouette looking as round as a soccer ball.
