Page 74 of Never the Same

I kept still, not ready to move with her lightly scratching my back. Plus, if I turned around, she’d undoubtedly notice the bulge quickly forming in my jeans. Damn body, betraying me at every turn.

“I’m useless in helping you and your team, and it’s making me a little crazy that my own brain is the key to unlocking what the heck happened to me, and yet anytime I try to remember, I wind up . . . well, going back to that dream,” she explained, her voice far more level than it’d been in her bedroom.

As for me, I was about to be no better than Ranger and let my tongue hang out, if she kept up with the back scratches.

“So I guess I keep focusing on that dream since that’s all that actually occupies my mind. If only I could remember even one other thing, we’d get closer to the answers.”

This was what I’d been trying to tell her two hours ago. Now there she was, admitting it, and I was standing here one back scratch away from telling her, Screw what I said, I was wrong. I don’t know jack shit.

“I, uh, can’t imagine how you feel,” I settled on instead, drawing my hands to the bar cart. “It has to be frustrating to not remember anything but me and those children that don’t exist.”

In another life, in another world, maybe they could. All three of them. And I’d learn from the mistakes of my parents and do the opposite. I’d help them with their homework. Teach them values. Raise them to respect their mom and others. Maybe teach them to shoot a firearm (or soccer, there was that, too).

“I’m sorry.” Two words I’d never heard my parents say to each other after a fight poured from my lips faster than I anticipated. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you earlier.”

I supposed I could be a better man in this reality, too. I opened my eyes, checked my crotch to ensure my erection had taken a chill pill, then pushed away from the bar cart to man up and face her.

“Not your fault. I broke your rules.”

“I broke them first by getting in bed with you,” I said roughly, keying in on her jawline and the throat I’d held the other day. What had I been thinking? “This whole situation is—”

“Confusing?”

I went stiff, doing my best to recalibrate, especially with her up in my personal space, smelling like my body wash.

“How can I help you get through this?” That was what I should have asked her in the bedroom. That should have been plan A.

“Distract me?” She angled her head toward the TV, fidgeting with the chain around her neck. “More Mad Men, or . . . well, do you have any other ideas for stress relief?”

Yeah, my body had other ideas, all right. I needed my head out of the gutter before my hard-on made a comeback.

I did my best to fake a tight-lipped smile, worried I was giving her American Psycho vibes with how off I was right now. Pulled in a hundred different directions with her at the center, tugging my strings. “I think it’d be best if Audrey distracted you, since I’m the one you need distracting from.”

She stayed quiet, and so did I, frozen in place. No vortex dragging me into the darkness this time. Just me, rooted in front of her, and my heart had the audacity to question my head, to wonder whether my path to redemption could ever include her.

She released her chain and wrapped her fingers around as much of my wrist as she could grab. I should have walked backward. To hell with the bar cart there. Let the bottles crash. That three-foot rule was needed because she was dragging me tighter into her orbit where there was no her or me, just us.

“Can I ask you something that hopefully won’t push your buttons?” Her words cracked through the unbearable tension.

“Is it personal?” I dropped my eyes to where her fingers pressed against my skin, the contact humming through me.

“Breaks your second rule, but I figured since we were breaking your first . . .”

I couldn’t believe it, but instead of getting upset, a legitimate smile stole over my lips. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?” She really did have no control over her tongue, and it was taking all my restraint not to offer her some assistance and take control of it with my own.

“As established.” The side of her mouth lifted as she smoothed her thumb along my heated skin where she held me, piercing me with her intense stare. Seeing through my walls and to my soul. To the soul I’d worked so hard to get back after bartering it to the devil a decade ago.

Her dark lashes fell like a curtain, but I wasn’t ready for that to be the closing act. No, I needed an encore. For her to never stop looking at me like I was someone special to her.

“Go ahead, ask away,” I relented, my muscles tightening as I waited for the impact of her question.

She slowly opened her eyes. “I apparently chose to become this person, this warrior.” Her chin wobbled as she held back her emotions, as stubborn as me. “So I’m curious: Why’d you choose to be one? What led you down the road to wearing the uniform, serving others?”

“No choice.” I didn’t want her putting me up on some hero pedestal. “It was the only way.” I eased my wrist free of her grasp and sidestepped her, unable to look at her while I got through this. “I didn’t join for any righteous reason, I did it to escape.”

I rested my hands on my hips and hung my head, surprised I was about to tell her the truth, but there was no more dancing around the fact that at this point, I’d pretty much do anything for her. I didn’t even recognize that until this very moment. Those rules were made to be broken when it came to her.

She began touching my back again. Walking her fingers up and down my spine in a rhythmic way that I didn’t deserve. I needed to comfort her, not the other way around. And yet she kept pivoting back to my life, and I supposed it made sense seeing as though we couldn’t talk about hers.