Carson
I looked around in the semidarkness. I was sitting in bed, the bright sunlight just barely peeking around the edges of the blackout curtains in Joss’s bedroom.
It was actually our bedroom now. I’d moved in with her a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn’t had a nightmare since, until now.
“Shit,” I muttered, putting my head in my hands.
I was breathing hard and sweating. Joss was sitting next to me, one of her palms resting on my back.
“You okay?” she asked softly, kissing my shoulder.
“Yeah . . . sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay. I’ll go back to sleep.”
Lola got up from her spot at the foot of our bed and came to my lap, curling up there. We hadn’t lasted long kenneling her, because she loved being in bed with us. I put a hand on her warm, soft back and kissed the top of Joss’s head.
“Sorry, babe,” I said.
“You don’t need to apologize.” She rubbed her hand across my back in a soothing arc. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “It was just . . . the usual, I guess. Replaying combat, but it turns even worse in the nightmares. I get shot and can’t move. Then I see those fucking terrorists coming toward me, and I know I’m about to be dismembered slowly.” I blew out a breath. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry, love.” Joss kissed my shoulder again. “That sounds terrifying.”
“Yeah.”
She glanced at the clock, and I did, too. It was almost noon. We’d only been asleep for about two hours.
“Will you do something for me?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Will you try to go back to sleep instead of getting up?”
“I don’t want to wake you up again.”
She ran her hand from my back up into my hair, her fingertips brushing over my scalp in that way that always made me smile. “I don’t mind you waking me up, though. Not at all. You need some more sleep.”
“Yeah, but it’s hard to go back to sleep after . . .”
“I know, but can you just try? We can talk until you’re sleepy again if you want.”
I couldn’t say no to her hopeful tone. I picked Lola up and settled her in between us as we laid back down. She curled up and was snoring softly again in no time.
Me, on the other hand . . . not so much. My heart had returned to its normal rate, but I was wide awake. Joss and I were both on our sides, facing each other, and I could just make out the outline of her face in the near-darkness.
“What should we do with our day off this weekend?” she asked, yawning.
“Fuck our brains out?”
She gave an appreciative hum and smiled. “Done. What about the other twenty-three and a half hours, though?”
“Hey.” I smacked her ass with feigned offense. “What are you insinuating?”
She laughed, and somehow the rich sound managed to turn me on. “Nothing. You’re magnificent in bed. I’m just saying that we know each other well now. We can get the job done without spending six hours in bed.”
“Or we can spend six hours and get the job done many times.”
“Mm-hmm, as many times as you want, babe.” She yawned again.
Within thirty seconds, her breathing had evened out. So much for talking until I was sleepy.
I ran a hand over her soft hair, which always smelled like coconuts. The sweet scent usually drifted into my consciousness before I was even awake in the morning.
“I never want to disappoint you,” I said softly. “No one’s ever seen me the way you do. Like I’m everything you could ever want or need. But what if I’m not?”
Lola gave a little puppy yelp in her sleep and then curled back up against Joss, who didn’t even seem to notice. She was completely out.
I kept talking to her, anyway. “You think I’m nothing like my father, but what if he wasn’t always like that? What if having me turned him that way? Or just . . . life?”
Though I badly wanted to believe I was nothing like him, there was always a glimmer of doubt. I was his son, after all. I’d kept to myself for all my adult life because I worried I’d be toxic to others, just like he was.
Until the army, and then Joss. The soldiers I’d served in combat with were bonded to me forever. They cared for me, and I for them, in a way even families couldn’t understand. We’d been to hell and back together. Toxic or not, they were stuck with me.
But Joss had been the first person to make me want more for myself. To make me wonder if there was more to me than I knew. Living together should have been a big deal to me—a step I had to think over and ponder from all directions, but it hadn’t. With her, it had felt right in every way.
For the first time, I didn’t want to be alone most of the time anymore. I wanted to be with her. I thought about a future with her. But was that selfish of me? Was I thinking about what was best for me when I should have been thinking about what was best for her?
“I want to be what’s best for you,” I whispered into the darkness. “But I’m not sure I know how. And you don’t deserve anything but the very best. I’m so in love with you, though, Joss. I’ll just have to figure it out as we go. I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with me, too.”
It took me almost an hour to find my way back into sleep. And when I did, it was a restful sleep with no more nightmares.