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I stepped on the hoodie he’d taken off before pushing it to the side with my foot and bending to his side, low enough to have my brittle joints clicking.
His response was no more than a twitch of facial muscles, his features frozen in a frown.
There was a little room on the edge of the sofa, and I took advantage of it by crawling on and slipping under the thin decorative blanket that covered him. I tucked my body into his side and wiggled, and I ended up closer to his chest, to the heart that rapidly beat beneath my ear. I blinked a few times, clearing the sleep haze still lingering in my vision, and I eyed the scruffy cat tattoo that was done so perfectly, with its bushy gray tail springing high in the air and its piercing orange eyes, giving it a hint of color.
Remi’s arm fell over my waist and turned to steel around me, squeezing a little too tight.
My name fell through his lips in an almost silent murmur, but I heard it.
His face twisted in distress, his stiff body the perfect evidence of the nightmare that caused it—the nightmare involving me.
I shouldn’t be in here. He’d given me his room. His bed and then disappeared.
He’d clearly changed his mind about wanting distance, again.
This was too much. Too soon. For him, or we wouldn’t be out here.
But I felt safer here, wrapped in the arms of a man who was a stranger but who looked at me like he saw every cry I’d never voiced, felt every pain like he shared them all.
He’d given me a safe space where things didn’t have to be complicated, but complicated was better than lonely.
I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. The safest space was here, with the man who’d ended the lives of the people who brought so much agony to mine.
My fingers trailed the tattooed tail.
The touch of my skin on his tingled at my fingertips, and I couldn’t explain it.
A spark.
“Cat.” My name, which was still so new to me, was a strain leaving his mouth.
He preferred Cat to Aribella. Catharina. The name my mother had chosen upon my birth.
A realization hit me hard. She was no longer here, he’d said. Neither was my dad, and my name was the only thing I had left of them.
“Catharina,” I said, trying to remind myself who I was while cementing the refusal to use Aribella again—to never respond to it.
Remi knew me. He knew who I really was. I’d been called Aribella for as long as I could remember, which wasn’t very long, but it had never felt right to me.
I tried to adjust my position slightly, the muscles in my injured shoulder aching as I leaned on them.
Remi’s fingers tightened on the fabric of his hoodie, unintentionally digging into the bruises that still lingered on my ribs.
“I’m here.” I fingered the surprisingly soft dark stubble on his face, ignoring my own pain to soothe his.
“Cat...” It was almost like he was trying to find his way to me.
“You have nightmares, too, huh?”
I smoothed his cheek, feeling over a deep scar that sliced through the perfection of his face. It started below his right cheekbone and continued to his top lip. His skin was so hot beneath my fingers.
“Don’t...” he spat out the word roughly, and I froze, my fingers unmoving against his skin, before he struggled through his dream and voiced another, “Leave. Don’t leave.”
“I won’t. I’m here. I’m right here with you.”
The tight feeling surrounding me faded out, the weight of his arm slackening. He couldn’t hear me, but he felt me with each gentle touch.
I finally adjusted my position, but I stayed huddled to his skin, and it didn’t feel wrong holding on to him when I’d never been around a man I hadn’t wanted to push away. Here, where safety surrounded me, my eyes dared to close again to face our nightmares together.
