Refrain (Soul Series Book 3) (26 page)
Like a conductor with a baton, he brings us down in concert. His hips slowing our rhythm to nothing. His breath easing in my ear until my shallow breaths match his deeper ones. His palm rolls up and down my leg still wrapped around and holding him close. By inches, he rolls us until we face one another in the bed, our bodies still unified.
“We can’t go a week again.” He pushes the tousled mass of my hair out of my eyes. “We might seriously injure each other one day fucking like that.”
Laughter bubbles up in me and spills onto the pillow we share.
“You went six weeks after Aria was born.” I lovingly trace the bold lines of his nose and chin and cheekbone.
“‘Self-improvement is masturbation,’” he quotes, brows upping and downing suggestively.
“I cannot believe you’re quoting
Fight Club
when my brain still isn’t working properly.”
“Your brain’s working well enough to recognize the quote.” He slowly slides out of me, a reluctant separation of our bodies. He props up on his elbow and starts lifting my hair and letting it fall.
“I love your hair long like this.” A grin softens the beautiful austerity of his face. “But I’d probably love it buzzed as long as it’s attached to you.”
I haven’t cut my hair since Aria was born, and it hangs almost to my elbows. The weight stretches most of the wave out, and it pours down my back nearly bone straight, longer than I’ve worn it since I was a child. I look in the mirror each morning surprised by how much more it makes me look like Mama.
“I had that dream again,” I confess quietly. He stiffens beside me, the hair falling from his fingers unnoticed as his eyes zero in on mine. “The one where Aria and I are in Heaven with my mom and I can’t find you.”
He doesn’t say anything, but cradles my cheeks between his warm palms and kisses me. It’s tinged with desperation and gratitude. He hates that dream. It’s bittersweet for me because I see my mother exactly as I want to remember her, but it’s always filmed with fear until I wake up and find Rhyson beside me. I return the kiss in full measure. One day my heart may burst from this love that burgeons, that overflows. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for sparing my life. For sparing Aria’s. Really for sparing Rhyson’s because I know he would have been a shell of himself if he’d lost us.
“I want to dedicate Aria,” I whisper into our kiss. He goes still and pulls back, peering at my face in the light of our bedside lamp.
“Is that like sprinkling her or something?” His eyes narrow suspiciously.
Poor Aria. The only person Rhyson’s more protective of than me is that baby. He knows where she is every minute of every day. He went a little overboard for a while after Vegas. We barely left the house. He was obsessed with no one ever getting a photo of me once I started showing. He doubled the security team, even though Gep assured him it was unnecessary. I didn’t give him a hard time about it because he told me how it felt to hold me bleeding in his arms. How helpless he felt standing against the wall while I flat-lined.
It still haunts me too. As much as I look forward to this tour, there’s a part of me dreading it. I haven’t been onstage in front of a live audience since the shooting. I have no idea how I’ll respond, but I’ve admitted to myself and to Rhyson that I’m anxious. So is he. I’m the one who was shot, but sometimes I think Rhyson bears the deepest scars.
He turns me over to cradle my bottom against him, and my back presses into his chest.
“Not sprinkling, no,” I answer once we’re settled.
“So what does it mean to be dedicated? It sounds like a pagan ritual.”
“It’s not.” I laugh until I feel the vibration of him laughing back. “The Baptists don’t do pagan. Believe me.”
“You were dedicated?”
“Yeah. My father actually dedicated me himself.” I force back sudden emotion before going on. “It signifies that parents trust God to take care of their child. That ultimately it’s His child, and they have faith He’ll take care of His own.”
Rhyson’s silent behind me so long that I twist my neck to see him.
“Faith, huh?” He nods, a small smile curving his mouth. “Where do we do it?”
“We could do it at Aunt Ruthie’s new church.” I grin up at him. “Leave it to Aunt Ruthie to find a Southern Baptist church in LA. She says no grandbaby of hers is growing up a heathen.”
Rhyson’s fingers stroke over my stomach until they reach the prayer wrapped around my ribs.
Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
“Are you gonna teach Aria that prayer?” Rhyson’s fingers are gentle over the tattoo.
So many things from my childhood still shape me, especially the simplicity of my family’s faith. A faith sorely tested and sometimes even broken. But those nights Mama knelt by the bed and whispered that prayer with me, those nights I’ll carry with me forever.
“Yeah. I think I will.”
I huddle into the man who has stolen my heart and healed my soul, closing my eyes with peace as my lullaby.
When peace like a river attendeth my way.
I’m wrapped in cotton. Warm. Secure. Safe.
This feels like Heaven.
Grip + Bristol’s story comes January 2017!
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I’m a wife, a mom, a writer, and an advocate for families living with autism.
That’s me in a nutshell. Crack the nut, and you’ll find a Southern girl gone Southern California who loves pizza and Diet Coke, and wishes she got to watch a lot more television. You can usually catch me up too late, on social media too much, or FINALLY putting a dent in my ever-growing To Be Read list!
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SOUL SERIES
Refrain, Book 3
THE BENNETT SERIES
When You Are Mine (Bennett Book)
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