“Hey, I don’t want some random woman at a bar that I don’t care about.” He chews on his lower lip. “I mean, yeah, it’s been a long time. But I still want it to be with someone I care about. Someone important to me.”
“Shane…”
“Like the mother of my son…”
His words stir something inside of me. The mother of my son. Shane is something to me that nobody else can be. He is Josh’s biological father. After all these years, he is the only man who can make this family whole. He wants to be here with me, and our son will never be second best to him like I feared he would be to any other man I chose to marry.
“Brooke?” he says. His eyes are filled with unmistakable lust.
“You should get to have that,” I tell him. “You shouldn’t settle. You should have that special connection.”
When he leans forward and kisses me, I don’t stop him.
Chapter 48
I wake up covered in a cold sweat.
Shane and I ended up having sex last night. I didn’t quite mean for it to go all the way, but I could tell it was what he wanted very badly, and I couldn’t bring myself to say no. After all, he had been deprived of this for ten years. You can’t say no to giving a glass of water to a guy who has been lost in the desert for ten years.
Okay, I realize it’s not the same thing. Still.
It was over quickly, and afterward, I felt strangely empty. Shane drifted off to sleep almost instantly, so we didn’t have a chance to talk, which was for the best. I slipped out of the guest bedroom and back into my own room, where I tossed and turned for over an hour before finally drifting off into a restless sleep.
And of course, that sleep was filled with nightmares.
It was the same nightmare I always had. I was back at the farmhouse, in the black living room with the storm raging outside. And that snowflake necklace was tightening around my neck. The bolt of thunder shook the farmhouse, and a link on the necklace snapped.
And that’s when I woke up at three in the morning, my nightshirt drenched.
I lie in bed shaking. It wasn’t so much a nightmare as it was reliving what happened that night. Tim choking me with that necklace. And then the bolt of thunder. And then…
Something else.
I heard something else just as the thunder erupted. I’m sure of it. But I can’t remember what it was. The memory claws at the outskirts of my subconscious, and I squeeze my eyes shut in frustration.
Well, if I haven’t been able to remember for ten years, I won’t remember now.
I realize that a sound had woken me up from sleep. Something from outside. There’s still a snowstorm outside, so it was hard to make out, but it almost sounds like…
A car engine. Right outside my window. And something else:
The garage door opening.
I climb out of bed, my head spinning. I navigate through the dark to the window that overlooks the front of my house. It’s pretty dark out there, with just the dim light from one street lamp, but I can tell my garage door is closed. And…
Are those tire tracks in the snow?
I squint down at the front of my garage door, trying to decide if I should go check it out. Am I losing my mind here? Why would somebody be using my car? The garage door is locked. Nobody is getting in there except from the inside. And the only other person in the house is Shane, and he doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license. Not that he isn’t capable of driving, but…
My heart is pounding too loudly to even attempt to get back to sleep right now. I shove my feet into my fuzzy slippers and creep down the hallway to the guest bedroom, where Shane was sound asleep last time I saw him. And presumably, he still is.