Never Have I Ever (28 page)

The living room light was squelched in favor of the more subdued kitchen light, and we reclined together on the couch, me with my head in his lap, and talked about anything and everything. His trip to Paris and my finals were the hottest of topics that morning.

“I can’t believe you’re not walking,” he said as he brushed his fingers through my hair. I loved the soothing, comfortable feeling of safety that simple action brought. “My parents would have killed me if I told them I didn’t want the photo-op.”

“Nah.
The ceremonies are long and arduous and I’m not going to subject my friends to that particular form of boredom. Everyone important was at Tannigan’s anyhow.”

“Your family wouldn’t fly in from New York?”

We were so wrapped up in the here and now that I never got the chance to tell him about my family.
Or, for that matter, my lack of one.

“Ah. No. My dad did for my Bachelor’s degree. That’s all I needed. I’ll see him during the holidays.”

“You two aren’t close?”

“No, we are. We’re really close. We’re all we’ve got.”

He paused for a moment as if to decide whether or not to ask the next question. “Is that an implication your mother isn’t in the picture?”

“She died when I was in the second grade,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh.” The question hadn’t bothered me, but I began to get the impression it was almost like walking on broken glass for him. “Sorry. That’s… terrible.”

“Understatement of the year.”

“No, it really is. I can’t imagine what losing a parent is like.”

“Neither could I,” I replied with a deep, tired breath. “But then it happened and I could imagine it quite vividly. It was like my whole world shattered and froze in time all at once.”

“How did she die?
If you don’t mind my asking, that is.”

I didn’t mind. It was awful of me to say so, but I was better off without her. She was a cheat and a drunk and not at all deserving of my father. Instead of giving him the entirety of my life story I said, “Oh God, talk about complicated. You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but in the simplest of terms: she died of her own stupidity and selfishness.”

“That’s not cryptic at all,” Noah encouraged with a wan smile.

My voice was near to monotone as I said, “On the night she died my mother had a Blood Alcohol Content of point two four.”

“And she got behind the wheel,” he inferred. I nodded. Noah squeezed his eyes shut and pinched his fingers against the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, Christ.
I’m the stupidest man alive. How could you let me drive you home the first night we met after that?”

“All my faculties weren’t exactly in order that night.”

“Fuck, I feel like a Grade-
A
imbecile.”

“No-no-no,” I reached for his hand and pulled it back down to my face. I held on tight and kissed his fingers. “You didn’t know, Sir. You couldn’t have known. Besides, that night all worked out for the best didn’t it?”

He smiled and brushed his thumb across my chin. “I suppose it did at that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him.

“Just… promise you’ll never let me do that again, all right?”

“All right, I promise.”

“Thank you.” He pulled my hand up to his lips to kiss the back of it. “What time is it anyway?”

“Late,” I said.
“Or early depending on your perception of time.
Probably close to five o’clock.”

“Shit. I really should go.” He bent down to kiss my forehead and moved to slide out from his place as my pillow. “I have a meeting later today.”

I watched him gather his clothing with my arm propping me up on the sofa. “Wait. You’re leaving? You just got back.”

“Don’t you have work today too?”

“No. I took the day off because I had a feeling I would be smashed by the end of the night.” I was smashed, just a different flavor of smashed than I expected.

“Still, you need your sleep just as much as I need mine, sweetness.”

“Then stay here, Sir. I have a big comfy bed and everything.” I motioned to my bedroom.

“I know, I’ve been on it,” he said suggestively.

“Didn’t we just have a conversation about driving? Don’t you think you’ve worn yourself out enough?”

“Drunk driving,” he corrected. He shrugged on his shirt. “And what I meant was with you in the car. I don’t care about me.”

What the hell kind of statement was that? I sat bolt upright and shot him a glare. “I care about you. That doesn’t count for anything?”

“It does. Of course it does.”

“Then stay, Sir. Please.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

And then it hit me. It wasn’t that he was tired or that he couldn’t wake up in time for the meeting; it was that he was afraid. I watched him dress in silence, trying to weigh the pros and cons of telling him I already knew about his fears. I decided to be subtle about it. He would tell me in his own time, I was sure. I stood from the couch, still naked as the day I was born, and walked over to him as he gathered up his wallet and keys.

“Please,” I requested once more.

“Don’t, Piper.”

My brow knitted together in frustration. “Then, this trust thing only goes one way?”

So much for subtlety.

“What?”

“I put myself on the line for you. I went to a random dance studio and put myself on display for a complete stranger, scared out of my mind that I’d wind up dead in a ditch somewhere all because I wanted to prove to you I could do it. The least you can do is put a little faith in me in return.”

There was no hiding the look on his face. The confusion was replaced with understanding, but he tried to play it off like he had no clue I knew his secret.

“I trust you, Piper,” he lied coolly. He closed the distance between us to give me a quick kiss. “And I am going to walk away from this conversation because we are both exhausted. People say things they shouldn’t when in our present frame of mind. Emotions overrule reason. Good night, sweetness.”

“You don’t trust me enough yet to tell me about the night terrors.” The words were out of my mouth before I realized I said them.

He froze at the door and glanced back at me. A beat later he connected the dots with a sigh.

“Declan.”

“Don’t think he’s at fault; I practically pried it from him.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“How long were you expecting to hide it from me?”

He turned to face me again and smoothed his hair back in aggravation. “Forever, if I could help it.
Forever.
Yeah, that sounds about right.”

I sort of laughed and shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way. Shouldn’t I have the right to know?”

“It’s not something I want to discuss. Though I guess it’s too late now.”

“Sooner or later you’ll have to.” I allowed the words to hang a moment before I continued, “Look, you don’t have to tell me what happened to cause them. I have a feeling it’s got something to do with Selene. But I won’t push it. There’s this old, corny saying: Like someone for their virtues; love them for their faults. How am I even supposed to like your faults when you won’t let me in far enough to see them?”

“You’re not supposed to like them! That’s why they’re called faults, as in;” he bounced his hand in the air as if pointing out each word in the sentence in front of him.
“Undesirable qualities in a person.”

“Nothing is undesirable about you, Sir,” I said flatly. Noah opened his mouth to speak, then immediately shut it. For once in my life I was the one making someone speechless. I dared to chip at his defenses a little more. “Maybe I’m out of line. And maybe, as your sub, I shouldn’t be saying these things. But you deserve to know how I feel. Besides, we’ve slept in the same bed before.”

“No. No, it’s different. It was my bed then,” he countered. He was struggling with this something awful. “For some reason they get worse in unfamiliar places. That’s why—
Agh
, never mind. No, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“That’s why,” I trailed off, tilting my head up and nodding slowly as I finished his thought aloud, “you called me from Paris at three in the morning talking about Oscar Wilde’s permanent residency at your hotel.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “Yes, that’s it exactly. And now you know. And now I’m going.”

I stepped up to him and touched his arm, trailing my fingers up and over his bicep. “Tell me, how else are you going to make someplace familiar if you don’t stay long enough to get to know it?”

“Stop making sense,” he said sharply. He was shaking a little. “Please.”

I snorted a laugh. “What? Why?”

“Because pretending to be normal is something I excel at. With you it’s difficult to pretend. I might very well give up on my delusions of normalcy and give in to your conviction.”

“That’s the idea. I don’t want a mask. I want you; undesirable qualities and all.” I slipped my hand into his unbuttoned shirt to glide my nails across his chest. “Let me convince you.”

He took a deep breath. “You are incorrigible, pet. I’ve already broken so many of my own rules for you, you know that?” I nodded. He went on, “I don’t want you to see me in that state. I don’t want to hurt you when it happens. Not be
be
overly dramatic, but you shouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open wondering if I’ll snap. Eventually, I will. It’s not pretty.”

“Law of Probability aside, I won’t lose sleep over it. I mean, the only alternative is to never sleep next to me again.”

“Seems to be,” he said with a solemnity I didn’t expect.

“Does that mean you’re staying,” I asked with a hopeful smile.

Noah tossed his key across the room. They clattered against the coffee table and slid to a stop at the other end. “All right… However! Only because I’m too tired to argue, and I want to test a hypothesis anyway.”

Of course, it had nothing to do with my begging.

“What hypothesis?”

“I’ll let you know if the result is a success.”

Watching Noah undress again was just as enticing as the first time, even if it was merely to sleep. At first he seemed stiff and wary. I couldn’t blame him. The idea of waking up screaming from something that wasn’t real with a witness to what could be construed as personal weakness would scare me too. Exhaustion eventually took its toll on him though and he relaxed enough to pull me to him. I felt completely safe and at ease with my back to him and his arms around me, cuddled between the summer comforter and cool sheets.

He made certain to warn, “If something does happen just stay back and let it pass.”

The flicker of fear that anything would trigger a terror in the middle of the night barely existed as a blip on my radar. We would cross that bridge when we came to it.

***

I was the first one up. It was nice to not be jolted awake by an alarm for once. The morning had passed without incident. A small smile crept across my face as I kissed his cheek then reluctantly climbed from bed to make a pot of coffee and whip something up for breakfast—one in the afternoon—okay, brunch. After such a long month and so much time awake I decided to let him sleep as much as he needed.

Cantaloupe, granola and some small sandwiches were the easiest things to throw together once I was dressed. I sipped on coffee and orange juice while I scrolled through my email to make sure the observatory hadn’t blown to pieces in my absence. Soon, Noah was awake. He meandered out of my bedroom in his boxers to join me in the kitchen. His hair was hopelessly mussed. The look suited him.

I glanced up from my laptop. “Good morning, Sir. I made coffee if you’d like some.”

“Sounds great.”

I poured him a mug while he plucked a slice of cantaloupe from the plate on the counter. When I set the coffee in front of him I asked, “Sleep well?”

He bent down to kiss me. “I did. Thank you.”

“Good,” I said with a smile.

“Piper, I have a request.”

“Name it.”

“How much vacation time do you have saved up?”

“As much as I want.
I work insane hours, but I’m not technically on full time as of yet. Dr. Fairbanks lets me set my schedules as I need them for the experience more than the paycheck.”

“Take the summer off. Travel with me.”

“Really?”
I asked with sudden surprise.

“Sure. Why not? We’ll start on our list of Nevers this weekend.”

“Don’t you have obligations?”

He put his arms around me and let his hands rest at the small of my back. “Money flows whether I’m there or not as long as Ethan holds down the fort and I delegate. All of my travel this year has been for business. I want to relax.
With you.”

“Traveling requires hotels. Last night you said you didn’t like sleeping in strange places.”

“And then I tested my theory,” he said. He paused to take in my look of confusion. “One of the rules I broke for you is not to fall asleep with women. That rule was in place because the first few times I tried after… well, after Selene, the dreams got worse without fail. They scared every last one of them off. I have now slept in the same bed with you three times. And not a single one of those nights was a bad one. In fact, they’ve been the best nights of sleep I’ve had in a long while.”