Chapter Eleven

Alex

I sat upright in bed, my brain foggy with an interrupted dream. I scanned the pitch dark room for the source of whatever woke me up, but it was impossible to see anything. Reaching over, I grabbed for my cell phone on my bedside table and missed, knocking it to the floor.

“Shit.”

My bedroom floor was a wasteland of objects I kept promising myself I would put away, knowing full well it was never going to happen. I leaned over the side and brushed back an empty wine bottle and the shirt I’d worn yesterday. My fingers gripped the hard plastic case, and I raised it up to my face in triumph.

Two thirty a.m.

“Son of a bitch.”

I clicked off the screen and flounced back on the bed. It had been a crap day at work, the exact opposite of what I’d planned for Lake’s first day of vacation. Melissa and I had spent hours decontaminating the bottling room. I declined her offer to get a late dinner with her and Anthony and wolfed down half a pizza from my couch before crashing around midnight.

What I needed was a good night’s sleep.

“Crap.”

Since I was awake, my brain was never going to shut down again. Instead of falling back into REM, my thoughts swirled around all the items I needed to get done tomorrow, which included everything I didn’t get to today because I’d been busy cleaning blood off a conveyor belt.

I ran my hands over my face and forced my eyes closed. If I could just lie here long enough, eventually exhaustion would take over. It might take a while, but I could get five hours or so. That, paired with enough caffeine, would get me through the next day.

A blood-curdling scream burst through my window, and all thoughts of sleep disappeared.

“What the holy fucking hell?”

I jumped out of the bed and banged my toe on the edge of my nightstand turning the light on. Outside was dark, stillness, but I was certain something had to be dying right outside my window. The scream had seemed so raw and panicked.

“Nooooooooooo!”

My stomach sank. It wasn’t a wounded animal. Not exactly. The shout had come from Damian’s rental cabin. Walsh had warned me this might happen, but I’d really thought he was being a worry wart. Guess not.

I waded through the bathroom, threw on my robe, and grabbed the extra key I had the foresight to hang next to the door. Damian’s cabin was next door, but it was the middle of the night, and there were a lot of trees and probably more than a few wild animals between his place and mine, so I hopped in my Aston Martin and drove over.

Pulling my robe tighter, I knocked on the front door, but it was just a courtesy. As I got closer, the softer mumblings and cries were easy to hear, pouring out of the bedroom window. The tortured sounds broke my heart. I didn’t know the full story of what they’d been through, but from the bits I’d gleaned from Walsh and Lake, I knew it was horrific.

I let myself in and let out a soft whistle at the high-end decor. We might be neighbors, but our homes couldn’t be more different. My place was Lake’s dad’s old cabin. Charming would be a fitting description since it certainly wasn’t modern or spacious. But Damian’s cabin was more like a chalet than anything else. The vaulted ceilings made the main room feel like a cathedral more than a cabin tucked away in the woods.

This place definitely needed a full exploration, but that would have to wait. Following the sounds of a nightmare ramping up, I made my way to Damian’s bedroom.

Moonlight spilled into the room, spotlighting Damian tossing and turning on the bed. His face was contorted in pain, making the scars on the right side more dramatic than they looked in the light of day. He was deep inside the dream torturing his mind.

“Damian.” I crept to the side of his bed, hesitant to wake him. “Damian, wake up.”

He moaned and turned to the side, pulling his shirt up and exposing the right side of his abdomen. The skin there was scarred and puckered just like his face. Jesus. What had he been through?

I laid my hand on his cheek, and the contact instantly pulled him out of his nightmare. He jerked away and launched to his feet, curled up like a cat prepared to pounce.

“What are you doing here?” His words growled out of his chest, his voice rough from the screams that tortured his sleep.

I took a step back but held my hand up. “You were having a nightmare.”

Damian flinched and then nodded. According to Walsh, this happened with varying frequency. More often when Damian was stressed. He might be used to it, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with it happening.

Without saying a word, Damian marched out of the room.

I followed him as he turned on every light in the house on his way to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet, filling it straight from the tap, and gulped down the lukewarm water like a man dying of thirst.

“So now what?” I asked. “Should I stay until you fall back to sleep?”

Damian laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “That’s the end of my sleep for the night. You should go home.”

I stood there, watching him gulp down water as he stared at the wall. My heart hurt. Damian’s scars went so much deeper than the ones on his face. “I can’t just leave you here. I’ll never get any sleep, knowing you’re sitting over here by yourself, not sleeping.”

“I’ll be fine.” Damian turned to me slightly but was careful to keep the right side of his face to the wall. “I’ll just watch a movie and wait for the sun to come up so I can go to work just like a normal person.”

I walked out of the kitchen and into the main living room. “Where’s your TV?”

“Why?” Damian followed me to the living room but stayed several feet behind me.

“Because if we’re watching movies, I get first pick.”

“You don’t have to—”

I held up my hand to hold off whatever protests he was about to toss up. “Yeah, not sure if you noticed, but I’m not really a take-suggestions kind of girl. I said I’m staying here to watch a movie with you, so that’s pretty much exactly what’s going to happen.”

Damian stood at the edge of the room and stared at me. His face didn’t have the clouded and confused expression of someone just waking up anymore, but his eyes were bloodshot and dark circles lay under them. Even with those signs of exhaustion, he was still handsome. How long had it been since he’d had a truly decent night’s sleep?

After several minutes of uncomfortable silence, Damian nodded as if he’d been waging some kind of mental battle and a winner had been declared. He turned and walked back to the kitchen but called out over his shoulder, “Do you like popcorn?”

I followed him and tried to choke down my victory grin. “It’s a movie requirement, but only the good stuff, so I’ll pass on whatever overly salted, soggy microwavable junk you’ve got in the pantry.”

Damian bent down and pulled an old school, hand-crank, stove-top popper out of a cabinet. He lit the gas and measured out oil. “Microwavable popcorn is shit in a bag. I bought this baby my first day here. It’s not quite as good as the free-standing popper I have at home, but it works.”

The scent of hot peanut oil filled the kitchen. I closed my eyes and smiled, letting the aroma take me to my happy place. The tinkling of dried kernels hitting the sizzling oil brought my attention back to the moment. “You should check out Grundy’s. They have the best popcorn in town.”

Damian held up the bag of kernels, the purple diamond Grundy logo prominent on the front. “Where do you think I got the popper?” He turned the crank, and we both stood next to the stove, letting the sound of corn popping inside the metal container ease away the awkward tension.

When the popping grew less regular, Damian pulled the popper off the stove and dumped the hot popcorn into a giant bowl. Without asking how I liked it, he squirted the whole batch with specialty spray butter and then topped it with white cheddar seasoning, my favorite of all the Grundy flavors.

He met my eyes for a second and nodded at the bowl.

I grabbed a handful and tossed the whole thing in my mouth. It was perfect. The salty puffed kernels melted when they hit my tongue.

“All right,” he said, picking up the bowl and walking out of the kitchen toward the back of the cabin. “You’ve got good taste in popcorn. Let’s see if that translates to movies.”

“Clue.” I followed behind him and smiled when he nodded. I’d seen the film at least a hundred times, but that’s what made it perfect. I could give half my attention to the who-done-it on the screen and the other half to figuring out the mystery that was Damian Thorne.