AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You kept me from anything more than these few cuts and bruises. That concussion doesn’t exactly seem like a mild one… Are you sure you shouldn’t have stayed in the hospital a little longer?” she asked hesitantly.
“I’ll be fine,” I grumbled, a little harsher than intended, but her loud voice was sparking a ringing in my ears that I wanted to go away.
“Okay,” she whispered, even quieter than before.
Somehow, I managed to stumble into my bedroom and close the door softly enough that it didn’t set my eardrums alight. There was no need to pull the curtains closed on my large window to the right as the night sky was blank tonight. The typical silver bloom of the stars twinkling was absent along with the moon, hidden behind clouds that blurred my sight as much as this concussion did.
Fumbling across the slick, dark-brown hardwood, I found my cedar dresser and pulled open the middle drawer. Digging out some shorts, I stripped, pulled on the clean pair of boxers, and stumbled over to my nice, four-poster bed. Navy silk sheets waited beneath a plush duvet with a matching cover to my blankets. Thick pillows were propped up against the walnut headboard.
Like an old television without a channel on, fuzzy speckles played behind my eyelids as I waited for sleep to come. The crisp coolness of my clean sheets did little to invite the evading monster in.
It was quiet, almost too quiet. Normally, I could hear a creak from Briar doing something in her room, or turning the shower on as quietly as she could. There was usually some evidence that I wasn’t alone in my own house, and I guess I hadn’t realized how much comfort I’d found in that until this moment.
I felt very alone. Regardless of the pictures and paintings hanging on my walls, regardless of the full body-length golden mirror in the corner, regardless of the familiarity of my own bedroom, things felt unusually lonely.
No matter what my head felt like, laying here, waiting for rest that apparently was not to come seemed fruitless. Flipping onto my side, I glanced at the clock blinking a dull orange. That wasn’t possible, was it? Apparently, I’d already been laying here for over two hours.
Two hours of nothing and yet everything. All of the worry kept my head pounding and my mind reeling.
The pounding increased, echoing as if not just in my head but also the room.
Wait…
Sitting upright, I heard it. Again. Not a heavy pounding but a light knocking of knuckles against wood.
Slipping out of the sheets, my bare feet padded across the chilly floor, and I cracked open my bedroom door. Light from the hallway pierced through the new fissure, and a shadowed figure met my gaze.
Briar stood quiet and still with her arms dangling limply by her sides. A crinkled, oversized white T-shirt that had seen better days hung from her shoulders hiding most of her little shorts she called pajamas.
Slipping my eyes back up to hers, everything melted inside me. Full of fright, her stare was wide and wet with tears that begged to be released down her cheeks. She sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth as her entire body shuddered.
Without hesitation, I stepped forward and wrapped one arm around her waist while slipping the other one behind her thighs. As I hoisted her from the ground, she slung her legs around my torso and threw herself at me, clinging to me as if I was the last thing keeping her in this life.
Turning around without a word, I kicked my door closed and, ignoring the dull hammering in my head, marched right over to my bed. Sitting down on the edge of the mattress, she kept herself wound tightly around me, burying her face against my neck, and my skin quickly turned wet.
“I’ve got you, Goldie,” I whispered, running a hand up and down her back. She shivered at my touch, and I tightened my hold on her.
“What if Wayde sent him?” she muttered against my neck.
I shook my head. “The driver was drunk. It was entirely an accident. There’s no way Wayde knows you’re here, or even remotely where you are. Rooney said he was careful when loading your cattle, and I know he’s a bit of a recluse, so he wouldn’t have had much contact with this Wayde guy anyway.”
Briar sniffled, pulling away from me an inch. “I got a text while we were getting checked over by the paramedics, Cassidy,” she whispered. My skin crawled as if there were a thousand spiders beneath the surface.
“What’d it say?” I hesitantly asked.
She ran a hand beneath her nose. “‘I’m coming for what’s mine.’”
Inhaling a deep breath, more to give myself a moment of calm than anything else, I lied. “It’s just a coincidence. The driver who hit us was drunk, so there was no way he was aware enough to make sure it was specifically us he hit,” I explained, which seemed somewhat true. But only somewhat. Her comfort, making sure she wasn’t scared, was more important right now than admitting that those words had me suspicious like she was.
Leaning away from me, she sniffed again. I quickly swiped the stains from her cheeks with my thumbs. Everything roared confusingly hot as she remained in my lap, straddling me. I wanted this intimacy with her, but her actions behind this were befuddling to say the least.
Her shoulders slowly sagged, tension rolling away from her figure, which remained wrapped so closely against my body. A small sigh left her lips, giving me a small indication that whatever I was doing seemed to be helping soothe her.
Keeping my hands on her face, my fingers slid across the strange, silky thing her hair was wrapped up in—hair I desperately wanted to see and feel again. “What the heck are you wearing?” I blurted out, my brows knitting together. The unintentional shift in conversation seemed much needed as she giggled and gently flopped to the side, landing on a couple of my pillows.
“It’s my bonnet, dummy. You know, to protect my hair while I sleep?” she replied.
My gaze slid across the one really girly thing she’d worn other than her outfit to the rodeo last night. “So, what’s the point of all those different hair products in the shower? There’s at least twelve containers with descriptions on them that make zero sense to me.”
