Pit Stop: Baby! (Crescent Cove 4)

I curled my hands around the sides of her tiny sink. Now?

Now, it felt as if she was simply shutting me out for no good reason. I knew I wasn’t a good bet, but I wasn’t a fucking ogre.

Not even close.

I opened the door and went back into her bedroom. She was laying on her side, her back to me. She’d pulled on an oversized T-shirt that dwarfed her and put the bed back together from pillows to blankets.

The sheets were the same color, or I’d have said she stripped the bed to erase me. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost if she wanted to smell me on her sheets for a little longer. But fuck, she looked so small and almost sad. And dammit, I didn’t want that either.

The anger seeped out of me. Clearly, more was going on here than I’d suspected. Maybe she had bad shit in her past that made her wary about trusting men.

I picked up my shirt that she’d neatly set at the end of the bed. I’d just have to work a little harder to prove to her that I was worth a chance.

Ten

I stared out the window as Gage quietly got dressed and left my room. I ached to tell him to stay. To feel his arms around me again.

I understood sex. I wasn’t one of those women who pretended that it wasn’t one of the best things God ever invented on the little rock we called home. Procreation aside, it was a damn fine way to spend a day.

And Gage was generous and inventive without looking for me to do some yoga pose he saw in the Kama Sutra. His freaking tongue should be bronzed—twice, then put in some hall of fame. Secretly, of course, because he didn’t need a bigger head about it.

Though the head at the end of his cock certainly held cause for standing ovations. Jesus, that man knew how to make my body sing.

The part about him making my body sing, I could deal with. It was the sleeping together business that caused me to pause. I could have curled right into a long, lovely nap. His body was warm without being a furnace, which was definitely a problem in my life lately.

If menopause meant hot flashes like the ones I was having, I was not looking forward to my later years.

But the idea of him finding about my sleepwalking? And the possibility of doing something crazy in front of him?

No, no, with a side of hell no. I just couldn’t allow him to see me that way. He’d think I was a freak. Maybe I was.

I slid my pillow over my head.

Never again. My boyfriend in college had found out stress equaled zombie Rylee. And at first, Shane had been super sweet about it. Only teased me a little about my odd little quirks. But when I’d ended up in the middle of the quad at two in the morning—yeah, it had stopped being cute. Especially since there was a party going on that night.

He became known for having the weird girlfriend. And that wouldn’t do.

I’d been horrified, and embarrassed. Add in the fear factor about wandering somewhere on campus and insomnia destroying my class schedule, and well, college hadn’t been for me.

After a few months at home, it had stopped happening. I’d settled into a regular life with a few different jobs over the years. Nothing ever stuck. I’d played around with doing online classes to get a degree, but the whole college experience had been so tainted that eventually, I’d decided to avoid all of it.

I rolled onto my back and pulled the pillow off my face.

God, I didn’t want to go back to being that scared, insecure girl. I hated that this was encroaching on my newfound freedom.

Exhaustion sat on me, but I still couldn’t settle. And Gage had wrung me out so I should be in a near-coma. A single tear slid down my temple into my hair as I shut my eyes and counted backwards with long slow breaths.

If I could just sleep, then maybe I could make sense of my life.

A girl could dream.

I must’ve dozed off, because when I rolled over again, my room was dark. I stumbled out of bed and used the bathroom and because I actually felt achy, I took a long, hot shower.

Maybe it would put me back to sleep.

I was hungry, but too tired to actually fix anything, so I returned to my bed and surfed the internet on my phone. Soon enough, I was drifting off again. The sun was shining the next time I opened my eyes.

Nothing looked amiss in my bedroom. Halle-freaking-lujah.