Stop, Trafford.If he carried on like this, he would drive himself crazy.
She was here, with him, legs and arms touching, his nose filled with her enticing scent. Alex was in New York City. Dane would be solidly moronic if he didn’t use that to his advantage—to push the man out of her head. And out of his.
He wouldn’t give the guy’s return any more thought or emotional energy; he refused to allow him, present or not, to be the third wheel in this—whatever this was. He’d never been a man who wasted time on what-ifs. He was good at the now, at being in the moment. It was how he lived his life. Dane looked at Wren, taking in her stubborn chin, her sexy mouth, the pain-tinged intelligence in her eyes.
He didn’t need forever. He didn’t need promises. She was here, he was here … it was enough.
Feeling on more solid ground, he released the air he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Why don’t you shift your pretty butt and come sit beside me?” he suggested. “You can hold me when I get scared.”
She changed positions and settled herself into his side. It felt like she belonged there. “Do horror movies scare you?” she asked, resting her head on his collarbone.
He slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close. “They are terrifying,” he murmured in her ear. “You’d better hold me tight.”
She laughed, and Dane looked at the screen, thinking that nothing supernatural came close to the horrors he’d seen in the field, the damage nature could wreak on humans and humans on each other. Nothing could scare him as much…
And as they watched the opening scene, neither noticed the three inflatables lined up in a perfect row directly behind them.
* * *
Behind them, Ruby lifted her hand for Lila to slap. It took Lila a while to work out what she was supposed to do, but eventually their hands passed through each other. “Forced proximity, baby,” Ruby crowed, drumming her feet in delight. “I’ve read enough romance novels to know that it works every time!”
ChapterTwelve
Holy hell.
Walking on the lakeside road, Wren lifted her hand and noticed it was still trembling. She’d spent most of the movie with her face in Dane’s strong neck—not a bad place to hang out—his arms wrapped around her. He’d seemed completely unfazed by the movie and, as she walked beside him, tall, solid, so very masculine, she felt safe from ghouls and beasties, both paranormal and human.
He had a way of calming her fears, reducing her tension, and allowing her space to just be. To feel what she felt without having to push anything down or away. Except for the recent bomb he’d dropped and left her to deal with, Alex always took over and removed obstacles—or, if he couldn’t, told her to ignore them. Dane allowed her the space to work through her issues and find her own solutions. He made her feel like she could trust herself, trust her choices.
And that was huge.
After a week of thinking about little else but what she wanted from her old life—and whether she should step back into it—she finally understood what going back to Alex would mean.
It would be exactly that. Stepping back. She’d be going back to old habits, to a previous version of herself. To the past, and she didn’t live there anymore. She wasn’t the same person, and she didn’t look at Alex in the same way. She didn’t need him the way she once did.
And, let’s be frank, she couldn’t help questioning how “safe” he really was. If she looked at his actions, rather than at his words: his proposal to and, essentially, rejection of Jess—there was an announcement postponing their wedding on IG—his running back to Wren, none of them were terribly reassuring. His actions didn’t exactly screamI will never chase another shiny thing and leave you.
No, she needed something different, something … more. With Alex, she’d be settling into comfort, into familiarity, surface-level safety, and deep down she knew that wasn’t enough for her anymore.
An owl hooted from somewhere within the woods, and she moved closer to Dane, wishing she had the guts to hold his hand, to wrap her hand around his bicep. She’d had an excuse to cling to him earlier: hanging out on a dark lake watching one of the scariest movies ever made, practically demanded clinging. But the movie was over, she was a grown woman, and she needed to hang on to her dignity.
But Dane, because he was Dane and a good guy, wrapped his arm around her shoulder and hauled her to his side. Itseemed rude not to wrap her arm around his waist, not to drop her head onto his chest.
“You okay, Wren?” he asked, his grip on her shoulder reassuring. She was now. “You were pretty freaked out by that movie.”
“I never expected to be so scared,” Wren admitted. “I mean, being an H-Town kid, I grew up on horror movies, but that one scared the crap out of me. To make it worse, I kept feeling these wafts of cold air, like someone was breathing on my neck, like someone was watching me.”
It had been the weirdest thing; it was as if she’d been sucked into the movie on every sensory level. It had been too real, too in your face. She waved her words away.
“I’m being ridiculous,” she muttered, lifting her free hand to shake the wet ends of her cover-up. The temperature had fallen a little, and the damp fabric against her skin raised goosebumps. She still had a ten-minute walk to Luna’s and couldn’t wait to get in a hot shower.
“Are you cold?”
“Mmm,” she replied, not wanting to whine. “A little.”
He nodded, and instead of taking the next right to walk her to Luna’s, he carried on straight. “My house is just up ahead. Let’s get you into a dry T-shirt at least.”
His house, where they would be alone. Wren swallowed and looked up at his rugged profile in the dappled moonlight. The chemistry between them was a living, breathing thing, and she knew that she just had to look at him, just had to stand on her toes to reach his mouth, and clothes would start flying.
