As we got back to the bed, I pulled her into me for a kiss.
“I hate that we’re spending our second night as a couple with us just falling asleep, no romantic dinner, nada, but we’ve had a long day.”
Sighing, she wrapped her arms around me and rested the side of her head on my chest. “I know, but at the same time, I don’t need any of that stuff. You’ve more than romanced me with how you’ve dealt with Cody after the surgery and last night. Consider me wooed.”
Squeezing her gently, I had a moment where I realized—again—how lucky I was to have Evie. I’d realized it in the stages throughout the development of our friendship, but now it was hitting me like a wrecking ball.
Releasing her with one final kiss, I tapped her ass as she walked away from me to get to her side of the bed.
“We’ll get our romance in there, too, but just to say, those incidents weren’t one-offs. You and Cody will always get that treatment for me because you’re too important not to.”
Smiling sleepily as she got under the comforter, she pulled it up until it was over her nose. “Ditto. But if your child asks me one more time if I’m going to adopt him or if he can call me mom, I’ll set Bob Ross on him.”
It took me all of a minute to fall asleep for once, and I did it laughing.
Jerking awake from a nightmare where I was making dance videos for TikTok—yeah, that counted as a nightmare for me—I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t see the weird circular light and tripod Evie used for their videos.
In the dream, I’d been using Bernice’s talk buttons to make a song and had to keep standing on them randomly, a bit like that dance game that was popular about twenty years ago.
“You okay?” Evie asked sleepily, turning over so we were facing each other.
“Yeah, just a nightmare.”
Tilting her head back, she ran the tip of her nail down the stubble on my jaw. “Wanna talk it out? Jacinda gets nightmares, and that sometimes helps her shake them off.”
This information didn’t surprise me. The woman was a bubble of happiness and laughter, but Jacinda’s eyes always gave away that she was fragile when you looked closely at her. I’d also seen her flinch a few times when someone came up behind her, and she wasn’t expecting it. Although many people did that, an abuse victim did it in a different way—Jacinda’s way.
“I dreamt I had Bernice’s buttons laid out in front of me, and I had to use them to win a dance. Every time I stepped on one, if I didn’t get the dance move and word correct, someone would tear a tiny strip of wax off my leg or arm.”
Squinting at me, Evie asked, “And that constituted as a nightmare for you?”
“I can’t dance for shit—I’ve got the rhythm of a roadkill corpse—and the wax strips fucking hurt.”
Evie pressed her face against my chest just in time for a snort to come out, meaning it reverberated off the skin of my chest. “Well, that was kind of you. Please, continue using me as a tissue.”
“Sorry, I just have this awesome mental image in my head of you doing it.”
I’d seen it in the dream, and trust me—it wasn’t a good image for me.
Burying my nose in the hair on the top of her head, I closed my eyes and let her laugh it out. When she finally stopped, she squeezed me.
“Okay, dance champion, time to go back to sleep. You can challenge people to battles and have dance-offs for another four hours.”
Yeah, I didn’t like that option, so it was tempting to go and get coffee and stay awake to avoid it.
“Now I don’t want to go back to sleep.”
Rubbing her cheek over my chest, she said, “Or you could picture us naked in a meadow together. I could be trailing my tongue down your stomach, and you could be holding fistfuls of my hair in both hands to put me where you want me.”
Every part of my body liked this suggestion, and we made it known.
Feeling it, she wiggled closer. “Can you fall asleep like that?”
“I could,” I said slowly, “but it’d be uncomfortable as hell.”
Pushing up onto an arm, she looked around the room for something. “We can’t do it on my bed in case it bangs against the wall or makes any noises that wake Cody up.”
This was a great point.
Picking up my pillow, I dropped it onto the floor beside the bed, then grabbed the comforter and dragged it off as I stood up. It took all of two seconds to get it in position, and then I grabbed her leg and pulled her toward me.