Free Unbound (Crimson Romance) by Nikkie Locke Page B

right.”
    • • •
    Payten waited for Dean at the back door of the diner. It was only quarter after six, but with the slow evening, cleaning up hadn’t taken long.
    “All locked up,” he told her as he came around the corner.
    “Great.”
    She waited for him to say more while he put his coat on. She thought he would want to talk about their date the next day. They both had the day off. She waited, but he didn’t say anything.
    “So?”
    “So what?” he asked.
    She shook her head. “Forget it.”
    “Forget what?”
    “Nothing. Never mind.”
    He followed her as she walked out the door, and he waited while she locked the door. Taking her hand, he walked her to her car. When she looked up to tell him goodbye, he leaned down, slid his hand into her hair to hold her still, and kissed her senseless.
    “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said when he pulled away.
    It took her a minute to figure out what he was talking about — Definitely senseless, she thought — then she laughed. “You jerk.”
    “What?”
    “You knew exactly what I was asking and pretended like you didn’t.”
    He grinned at her. “Maybe.”
    “You’re mean.”
    “Kiss me again and tell me that.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t think that will happen.”
    “Me neither,” he said.
    • • •
    Late that night, while Payten dreamed peacefully without any creepy calls to interrupt her sleep, Dean woke from a nightmare. He didn’t remember it. He never could remember the nightmares that left him wide awake in the middle of the night, but he could guess what they were about pretty easily.
    The sound of his own heartbeat pounded in his ears. A thin film of sweat covered his body and left him chilled. He lay perfectly still while he fought to slow his breathing from panicked gasps to a somewhat normal pace. When it finally slowed, he untangled his legs from the sheets. He got out of bed and moved slowly to the kitchen.
    The nightmares always left his throat dry. Standing in the kitchen, he debated his choices. The milk in the fridge had probably spoiled. He couldn’t remember when he’d bought it. A beer was a bad idea. Alcohol always made the nightmares worse. He grabbed a cup from the cabinet near the sink and filled it with water.
    One of the several therapists his father had sent him to in the years after his mother’s death had assured his father the nightmares would stop as he got older. He wasn’t buying it. He was twenty-three years old, and the nightmares still came as often as they ever had.
    He didn’t tell anyone about the nightmares. Growing up, he lied to his dad about not having them whenever he asked. He hadn’t wanted to see another therapist. Staring out the small window over the sink, he prayed it wouldn’t take a therapist to make the nightmares stop.
    He drank most of the water before he set the glass in the sink. Knowing sleep would be impossible, he went back to his room. The gym shorts he had gone to bed in were all he wore. He plucked a shirt out of the hamper in his closet.
    Pulling the wrinkled shirt over his head, he stumbled back toward the kitchen. After unlocking the glass doors, he jerked one open. He stepped onto his back porch, not bothering to close the door.
    Shit, he thought. It’s fuckin’ cold.
    He didn’t go back inside, though. He dropped into the rocking chair on the porch. Using his bare feet, he pushed the chair into a gentle rock. Thinking about it, he wasn’t entirely sure he had ever sat in the chair before.
    Aunt Becky had insisted his porch needed a rocking chair when he moved in. The woman had nearly driven him crazy about it. One day, Jack showed up in the ugly truck the guys kept for work with a rocking chair in the back. Jack told him it was to spare them all the bitching and put the damn rocker on the porch.
    Dean did exactly what Jack told him to and never really thought about the chair again. There he was, though, sitting in it in the dead of winter, freezing his ass off.