Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

She dipped her head. “I’ll arrange it.”

“Not him,” I snapped.

“Not him,” she agreed.

“Thank you,” I bit out.

Then I turned and walked outside.

Auggie was right there with me, catching my hand.

Lottie came up on my other side.

“I’m so sorry.” She grabbed my forearm. “I’m so sorry, Pez. We just wanted—”

I stopped dead and looked at her.

“I’m not sorry. And don’t you be sorry. If you didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have known. I needed to know, Lots. I need to start dealing. I need to figure out how to help my daughter to deal. And I need to do that now.”

She stared at me, glanced up at Auggie beside me, back to me and nodded.

I started walking again.

Lottie fell back.

Auggie remained at my side.

“Pepper—” he started.

I didn’t look at him, I stared straight ahead when I whispered, “Get me out of here, baby. I’m about to fall apart.”

“You got it, sweetheart.”

And double time, his hand holding mine tight, he got me to his Telluride, opened the door for me, helped me in, shut the door on me, got in beside me, drove out of the church parking lot and found an open stretch of street two blocks away where he pulled over and stopped.

Then his seatbelt was off.

Mine was off.

I was in his arms.

And I did not fall apart.

Because Auggie’s arms were around me.

And as the emotion flowed from me…

Those arms held me together.

Chapter Sixteen

Afternoon Complete

Auggie

Aug wasn’t surprised Pepper passed out about two minutes after she relaxed into his chest on his couch in front of a football game.

After she got over her crying jag in his car, he asked if she wanted him to feed her. She told him she wasn’t hungry, she just wanted to chill out. Then she asked him if he liked football, and when he said he did, he returned the same question.

“Not really,” she’d replied. “I like watching games in social settings, but I wouldn’t catch a game by myself. But if we watch, you can be doing something you dig while I zone out. Would that be cool with you?”

He wanted her to have safe space to zone out, he also wanted to spend time with her, so he agreed.

They headed to his place while she staved off her friends phoning and texting her, all of them understandably concerned after what went down, and all of them wanting to make sure Pepper was okay.

Auggie knew she was tight with her girls, but that didn’t stop him from feeling something settle in his chest that she put them off but wanted to “zone out” with him.

After what happened, she didn’t bag on their date, ask him to take her home.

She found something he could do that he liked that she could do with him that didn’t take a lot of mental capacity from her.

Yeah.

He liked that a lot.

It wasn’t the day he’d hoped to give her, which had included brunch, then a movie, then back to his place so they could kick back, have a few drinks, and she could keep him company while he made her his Philly Cheese Ribeye sandwiches.

Then they would finish the night doing what they both had been wanting to do since the last time they did it.

Have sex.

But this time, they’d be going at each other in his bed with time to explore and discover.

And tomorrow, he’d wake up beside her.

At his place, in his bed, Pepper at his side.

Finally.

That day, obviously, he would have deleted the part where she’d had to confront the extent of her mother’s illness the way she did.

But having Pepper cuddled into him on his couch in his living room while he sipped at a beer and she napped did not suck.

In fact, it was awesome.

So awesome, he could do this every Sunday and look forward to it.

Quiet time, doing absolutely nothing with someone you cared about.

He knew the minute she started to wake, because she also started to stir, her body shifting against his.

When she did this, Aug tucked his chin in his neck and looked down at her until she opened her eyes.

At first, she looked sleepy and unfocused, and Aug didn’t take his attention from her as she came into awareness.

From the first minute he set eyes on her, he’d thought she was beautiful.

But through the last week, he wondered how he hadn’t noticed she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

He felt her cheek move even as he watched her tip her head back, and she caught his gaze.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hey,” she whispered back.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, shifted a little so she was pressed even closer to him (she was tucked down his side, her back to the back of the couch, her bent leg thrown over his thighs, so she was already close, but he liked the closer) and absently turned her eyes to the TV.