Page 104 of Mine

“You know I’m sorry for everything that happened, right? I mean, I’m sorry about Benji and Adrian, but that guy Kady, he was bad news, so I’m glad he’s not around to try and hurt you.”

I nodded.

“I just, out of all this shit, I feel like we’re still us, you know? We’re Trev and Landry, and we’ll always be okay because we always have each other.”

“Yes, we will,” I told him.

“Yes, we will,” he repeated before he released a deep breath. “Now seriously, I need to eat. I’m frickin’ starving. Get in the shower; you reek. I’ll start making calls.”

“What?”

He nodded, wincing. “You smell, but you’ve gone almost two days without a shower, it’s really not that surprising.”

“Nice.”

He shrugged as I turned toward the bathroom.

“I’ll hurry.”

But he wasn’t listening; he was already on the phone.

BREAKFAST was nice. Our friends all gushed over Landry, kissed the boo-boos on his face, and told him how brave he’d been and how strong. They were all in awe of him, and he ate it up—the looks on their faces, the way they all had to touch him, and of course, the hugs and the petting. Landry loved to be smothered in open displays of affection. He was basically floating on cloud nine.

Back home, I told him to go take a nap, but he didn’t want to. I told him if he did that I would watch his shows instead of mine that evening. Since his were all frou-frou girl shows and I watched the History Channel, he was cackling as he went to lie down. I was sure the snickering was what it sounded like when you made a deal with the devil.

I was right, though, he needed to sleep. I didn’t want to leave in case he woke up, so I called for deep-dish spinach pizza, his favorite, and had it delivered. He woke up yelling for me, which he did sometimes.

“Hey,” I soothed him as I walked into the room. He looked so good with soft eyes, bedhead, and his face flushed with heat from being under the down comforter. He was just staring at me, mouth open, like a fish. “You okay, baby?”

There was no change, no signal that he heard me, no sign of life, and I started to get a little worried. “Love?”

“I had a dream about Robbie Stone’s party.”

“Robbie Stone.” I took a breath of relief. “What made you think of him?”

“You guys used to be friends.”

“Yeah.”

“But you stopped being friends because of me.”

“No,” I assured him, even knowing it was a lie. Robbie and I had absolutely parted ways over Landry Carter.

“Yeah, ya did.”

“We didn’t, but who cares.” I wanted to move on. “Tell me why you were dreaming about him.”

“Not about him, about that party we went to.”

“Okay. Why?”

“I dunno.”

But I had an idea. It was the last time the man had felt powerless, and being kidnapped had reminded him. “That was right after we started dating.”

He nodded.

WE WENT together, like our fifth time out as a couple, and Kent Jeffries, a guy I had never liked, came up to us as we were standing with Robbie and his date for the evening, some underwear model who was walking around in leather chaps and nothing else.