Unconditional

I pull to a stop in front of my house and let out a sigh. It had started to rain while I was on the way home, and by the time I pulled into my neighborhood the sky had turned the darkest shade of gray and now I was in the middle of a torrential downpour. I check my front and back seats, searching for my bright yellow umbrella. I don’t see it anywhere. Fuck, I cringe as I remember leaving it by the door yesterday. I slap a palm over my forehead and groan as I accept having to walk the forty feet to the house, all the while getting drenched. I’m just about to reach for the handle to make a run for it when my door opens. I yelp and send my foot flying towards the person on instinct when he grabs my leg.

“Hey, easy there! Geeze, who did you think it was?” I look up into warm brown eyes and my heart jumps. God, he’s gorgeous. How is it possible for a man to be that good looking?

Tall and built like he’d spent the majority of his twenties in the gym, Cal Grayson is every woman’s fantasy. I know this because I see it in their eyes at every grocery store, school function, or hell, even the gas station. It’s gotten to the point that I hate bringing him around all the catty and very horny, single and not so single dance moms when he comes to my ballet recitals. It felt almost pornographic looking at him in a swimsuit, and watching him workout sends a shiver down my spine and a dull roar between my legs that I can’t ignore, but pretend I do.

He has a smile that has the power to control my mood and is so lethal it makes my knees weak. It’s one of those genuine smiles that reaches his eyes, and if you aren’t careful, your heart. It’s often masked by a dusting of stubble that sometimes grows into a beard that makes him look like this sexual mountain man or lumberjack or whatever the fuck would make a woman’s ovaries beg for his child. I can’t be the only woman in love with him.

“Shit. What are you doing home?” Great, this puts a delay on my plans to finish the rest of this fantasy and at least two orgasms.

“Preventing you from getting soaked, evidently. You left your umbrella at the door.” I blink up at the man standing next to my car door, holding his huge umbrella and I can’t even try to ignore the throb in my sex from the chivalry. “Come on.” I grab my backpack and he immediately takes it from me while I grab my purse.

“Thank you,” I tell him as we walk towards the house. With every step, my panties dampen and I feel my cheeks heating up at the growing need to relieve myself. As soon as we’re through the door, I ask him again. “Why are you home, though? You’re not usually here at three.” I look at my watch and then back at him.

“I wanted to be here when you got home.” He shrugs and sends a hand through his light brown hair.

“Why? Did you really think I was going to go out without telling you?” I scoff; the lust I was feeling is suddenly gone, replaced with irritation that he doesn’t trust me.

“No, but…” he scratches the back of his neck, “they’re calling for a really bad storm.”

“So?” I knew what he was alluding to, but I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to say that he is here for me.

“I know how you get during storms. I just didn’t want you to freak out, and Aria is working the night shift tonight.”

Aria is one of the few people that Cal allows in the house with me alone. He trusts her wholeheartedly, and while he trusts some of his guys in the same regard, he didn’t want to leave me alone with men at a young age, so Aria became a second parent.

She’d taught me all of the woman things that Cal couldn’t teach me and she was the only person I felt comfortable talking to about boys. The very few boys I forced myself to try and date to keep my mind off of someone I had no business wanting. Cal may have been both my mother and father at times, but Aria was Mom. The warm side, the compassionate side, the side that gave me the best hugs and taught me how to shave my legs and how to bake the best chocolate chip cookies.

Once I’d gotten older, and it wasn’t a requirement for me to have a babysitter physically in the house with me, Cal would get someone from the station to park outside the house to monitor it. But that didn’t help when I got freaked out during the storm. A clap of thunder takes me back to my first storm in this house.

I shoot up in bed as the crack of thunder is so loud it shakes my bed. My eyes immediately go towards my nightlight, a source of comfort that illuminates the room and makes it not so dark. But I don’t see anything. The whole room is pitch black. I look down at my hands and I don’t see them. I don’t see anything.

Am I dead? Am I like Mommy?

Mommy!

I reach around the bed, searching for my bunny. The tears start to fall from my eyes…I think they’re tears. If you can’t see them, how can you be sure? I touch my face, and I feel the wetness. I blink my eyes trying so hard to see, but it’s so dark. Another crack of thunder followed by a flash of lightning illuminates my room for a second and I could have sworn that I saw every monster come to life.

“Not real. Not real. Cal says they’re not real. Your mind just plays tricks on you.” I open my mouth to scream for Aria. She’s babysitting while Cal is at work, but a voice whispers in my ear.

“If you scream the monsters will get you.”

No. No. They’re not real!

“You sure?” it whispers again.

I put my bunny in my mouth and scream just as another crack of thunder moves through the house and I jump off the bed, not realizing that I was tangled in the sheets. I hit the ground wit

h a thud. “Owwwwww!” I cry, and I tuck myself into a ball.

The thunder claps again and I squeeze my eyes tighter. I grip my bunny and slide away from my bed, hoping that nothing comes out from under it to grab me. I manage to crawl despite my hurting leg before I curl into a ball in the middle of the floor.

“Mommy, can you hear me?” I sniffle just as the door opens. I scream and cover my ears because I’ve decided that hearing the monsters is worse than seeing them.

I feel arms around me and I begin to kick and suddenly my hands are away from my ears. “Hey, it’s me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I think he’s sitting down now because I’m sitting too as he rocks me back and forth. I let out a breath.

Cal’s here. No monsters can get me.

“I’m sorry.” He kisses the side of my head. “I sleep through storms usually…I should have figured you’d be scared. And then the power went out…did you fall? I heard something.”