“I saw an ad for one of those silent balls that makes no noise when you bounce it,” I’d said. “Maybe we could order one?”
“It’s not the same,” he’d admitted. “The weight’s different. It’d be a cool present, but she’d just go back to that old ball. I can’t believe she even found it. I had Dad ship it to me because it was one of her older ones and she wouldn’t notice it missing. But it’s like she’s laser-focused wherever there’s a soccer ball concerned.”
Now, after just getting into bed, he was getting out of it.
“Sleep,” he urged as he saw me shift under the covers. “I’m going to head out. I probably won’t be long, but it still takes time to get to the office, get the truck, and get back.”
“No rush,” I slurred. “I’ll just freeze without you.”
He chuckled quietly, and I had the urge to reach out and tug him closer by his pants leg, asking for a kiss.
We hadn’t gone much further than sleeping in the same bed seeing as his daughter was taking up the only spare room he had. But the tension was there.
He hadn’t so much as kissed me since the day we’d gone all the way in his laundry room. However, that didn’t matter to my heart.
I was so irrevocably in love with him that he could never kiss me again, and I’d still be just as in love.
Our relationship had started out purely sexual.
Our relationship now, however? It was something that they wrote romance novels about.
The tension. The need. The yearning.
It was all there.
The casual glances across the room. The long, shared looks over dinner. The way I felt against his heart as we watched movies. The way he checked my injuries every day. The way he came to my appointments to make sure that I was okay. The way he made dinner every night. The way he laughed with his daughter.
There were just so many things that I’d found attractive about the man that I was finding it hard to breathe.
“Be careful,” I told him when he started out of the room. “Love you.”
I was asleep moments later, unaware of just what I’d said to him as I’d fallen back under, but he was more than aware.
I missed the way he came back to the bed and pressed a kiss to my throat and the way he pulled the covers up high, tucking me in slightly.
I was so deeply asleep that I wasn’t aware that something was wrong until Boston all but hissed into my ear.
“Wake up.”
I started awake, which had my ribs screaming.
“What’s wrong?” I said through the pain.
“There’s someone here.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded scared, and I didn’t like hearing the fear in her voice.
“Call 9-1-1,” I ordered.
She swallowed thickly before saying, “I tried on the way in here. Every time I place the call, it makes this weird beeping sound.”
I got out of bed with zero dexterity and made my way to the drawers of Weaver’s nightstand.
I’d seen the gun there when I’d opened the drawer looking for a remote to turn on the television last week.
Being a native Montanan, I’d grown up with guns. I knew how to shoot. I knew how to protect myself. And I knew what to do in case of emergencies.
