Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance (13 page)

And then, just like that, time unsticks, and I can turn my head.

And there’s Ollie, lying in the battered bed of the blue Nissan. His eyes are open, but he doesn’t see me. His eyes, those beautiful brown eyes like melted chocolate, they’re dead and lifeless. Blood trickles out of his mouth. His forehead is smashed open, and I can see brain matter mingling with his blood on his cheekbone.
 

There’s blood, sticky, tacky, old blood, so dark as to be nearly black, pooling beneath him. His chest is ripped open. He’s freshly dead. Still warm. And the blood is now seeping out, trickling down his forehead, and I can hear the gushing whistle of his breath and the gurgle-gasp of blood in his throat, even though he’s dead. I’m hot. The heat from the sun is beating down on me, punishing me for letting Ollie die. For arguing about stupid music. For not paying attention to the road, not seeing the semi swerving toward us, clipping our front end, sending us spinning, tumbling.
 

We’re on the PCH, now. In the car. I see the semi, and I can’t do a damned thing. I watch the huge bumper of the semi smash into our hood, send us twisting, tumbling, flying, rolling. I watch in slow motion the moment Ollie flies out of the windshield. I see him hurtle through space, and the car is spinning and smashing against the ground and rolling and landing upside down. And through the broken driver’s side window, I can see Ollie.
 

Limp.
 

Lifeless.

Bleeding.

Not dead yet.

And I have to get to him.

My seatbelt is locked, and everything hurts, and I have to get to Ollie, but I can’t.
 

I can’t.
 

I have to look at him, and then I can’t look away because now the slow-sludge of dreaming is back and I can’t look away.

And Ollie, he’s still dead.
 

Bu somehow he looks at me. His eyes roll and swivel and find me. He blinks, once.

He doesn’t say anything, but he judges me.

He hates me.

He blames me for killing him.

In real life, Oliver would never hate me, would never blame me, would never judge me.

But this is dead dream-Oliver.

And I cannot escape the baleful glare in his cold, dead eyes.

He bleeds, and hates me.

When I wake up I’m soaked with sweat, and I’m sobbing. My mouth is caked with thirst-effluvia, I’m so thirsty it hurts to swallow, and my head pounds, and I’m sobbing so hard I can’t breathe.

I collapse to the floor, thirst forgotten, and try to conjure up an image of Oliver when he was alive. The way he’d grin at me, knowingly. A grin that said later, after work was done, he’d get me naked in our little room on the MSF compound and he’d make love to me under a sheet, even if we were both dead tired from endless hours on our feet, even if we could barely walk, barely see. He’d make love to me, and his salt-and-pepper hair would fall in front of his eyes while he stared down at me.

“Oh god, honey,” he’d whisper to me. “I’m coming. Are you with me?”

“Yes…god, yes,” I’d whisper back.

“Niall, oh god, Niall, honey, I’m coming so hard…”

And I’d come with him, and we’d roll over when we were both finished and he’d wrap an arm around my middle and nestle his sticky, slackening manhood between the globes of my butt and wiggle as close as he could get, and we’d fall asleep like that.
 

And for some godforsaken reason, I hear a different voice calling me “honey”. It was a throwaway term, something thrown out because of habit, the way some guys do.

But the way he growled that term,
honey
—it shook something inside me.

Made me hear it the way my Ollie would murmur it when he came, but now it’s a different voice. A new voice. Calling me honey while he comes. And that sends spears of guilt slicing through me, cutting me to ribbons all over again.

I sob on the floor, sob till I shake, till I can’t breathe, can’t breathe, and I could vomit from the shaking and the sobbing and the lack of oxygen.

Pep finds me. Curls up in front of my face, sitting like a sphinx directly in front of my eyes, and he boops my nose with his little paw.

Somehow, that comforts me.

I pull Pep to my chest and hold him there until I can breathe again.

I think I fall asleep on the floor, because that’s where I wake up, on the floor outside my bathroom.

It’s early morning. There’s bright sunlight bathing the hallway.
 

I stumble to my feet and into the kitchen, start some coffee—at least I have coffee, and thank god for that. While the coffee maker burbles and glugs, I drink several cups of water from the sink, to slake the demonic thirst of my cheap-wine-hangover.

My kitchen sink has a window over it, which faces the road, and my driveway. I can see anyone coming for a good mile. And if they pass the Jensens’ driveway, they’re coming here because I’m at the end of the road, with nothing beyond me but grass.

Dust is being kicked around, way up the road. It’s been dry as hell lately, so the road has been churned into powdery dust, which means I can’t make out the approaching vehicle until it’s past the Jensens’.

It’s my truck.

What the hell?

Like the sleepy, hungover idiot I am, I stand at my kitchen sink, cup of water in hand, watching my truck approach. I watch as it parks in my driveway, right in front of the slab of concrete that passes for my front porch. And I watch the blond god who rescued me from the intersection unfold his tall frame. That beast of a dog is in the passenger seat of
my
truck.
 

Once again…what the
hell?
 

I watch him approach my front door.
 

God, he’s handsome.

I mean, he’s scruffy, unkempt, and wild looking. But he’s clean. He’s ripped. And his eyes are arresting, blue-green like the deepest sea.
 

He knocks on my door, and it takes me a few seconds to realize that yes, I do have to answer the door.
 

I move to the front door and pull it open. There’s a screen door, which I don’t open, yet.

“What are you doing here?” I demand.

His eyes widen, and his gaze slowly, deliberately rakes down my body. I’ve never been looked at that way in my entire life, as if I’m something delicious to eat and he’s starving. He doesn’t just look at me, doesn’t just check me out.
 

He
scours
every inch of my body with his gaze, from toes to hair, up and down. Twice.
 

He drinks me in, as if he’s never seen anything like me in his life. His chest rises and falls, and his fingers tighten into fists at his sides. His eyes narrow. His nostrils flare. I swear the zipper of his faded blue jeans tightens.

And yeah, I’m checking him out too.

But the way he’s looking at me, it’s…intoxicating. Bizarre, but wild and heated and ravenous.

And that is when I realize what I’m wearing.

Or…not wearing.

I’m in a T-shirt, and that’s it. And by T-shirt, I don’t mean Ollie’s big old UCLA shirt. It’s one of mine, and it’s old, so it doesn’t quite fit me. I never wear it except to bed.
 

It doesn’t quite cover my ass, and it’s super tight around my chest.
 

No bra.

No panties.

Just the T-shirt.

I don’t remember undressing, don’t remember putting on this T-shirt. I remember watching TV and maybe possibly uncorking a second bottle of wine to go with
Vanderpump Rules
. But clearly, at some point last night, I took off all my clothes and put on this ridiculous shirt.
 

It’s not ridiculous, though. It’s my second favorite sleep shirt, after Ollie’s UCLA tee. It’s comfy. And it’s also not ridiculous for me to be basically naked in my own home, not when I have no neighbors, and especially since no one ever has and—I thought—
would ever
visit me, so there’s no reason to ever worry about modesty.
 

Which means I’m standing here, basically naked, oblivious, staring at the most attractive man I’ve ever seen in my life. My hoo-ha is playing peekaboo, for sure. My tits might as well be bare, because this shirt is so old and has been washed so many times it’s basically see-through, and now that I’m aware he’s scrutinizing me and that I’m naked, my nipples are pebbling, thickening, going hard and tingling. I see his eyes go to them.

And yeah, his zipper is totally bulging.

I feel a blush creep into my cheeks, fiery.

“Fuck.” I murmur this under my breath.

“Yes, please,” he growls.

And I swear to god, he puts his hand on the lever of the screen door.
 

What? No. Don’t do that.
 

I’m frozen, unable to move as he swings open my door. Steps over the threshold, and stands in front of me. Towers over me. I’m not a tall girl—I stand five-five and a quarter when barefoot. So this man, at six-feet and several inches, does indeed tower over me. He stares down at me, those sea-churn eyes flitting over my face, back down my body as if he can’t stop looking at me.
 

And for my part, I can’t stop looking either. The bulge in his jeans is
huge
.
 

I unfreeze then, and back up. Tug the hem of the shirt down in front, which covers my hoo-ha but tightens it around my breasts. Can’t win, I don’t think.

“You need to leave,” I grate out.

“You shouldn’t answer the door like that.”

“I’m tired. I just woke up.” I don’t know what’s come over me. I should be kicking him out, not talking to him. “And I’m hungover.”

“It’s past noon, and you just woke up?” He smirks. “That’s a hell of a hangover.”

“Past—did you say past
noon?
”

“Yeah.” He checks the watch on his wrist, an expensive, waterproof-looking thing. “Twelve thirty-four.”
 

“Shit!” I forget him, forget my shirt, forget that I’m naked. “I’m late for work!”
 

I was supposed to work at eleven again today. I turn and scramble to my bedroom, pull my emergency prepaid cell phone from the bottom of my purse.
 

Dead.
 

Where the hell is the charger? My room is kind of a disaster, because I’m not the neatest girl in the world. There are clothes everywhere; half a dozen pairs of scrubs on the floor, more folded in a basket, bras on door handles and on the floor, along with panties and towels.
 

I can’t find my charger anywhere.

“SHIT!”
 

“Something wrong?” His canyon-deep voice comes from somewhere behind me.

I’m on the floor near the bedside table, rooting through the clothes and old junk mail for the charger. “Yes, there’s something wrong. I was supposed to be at work an hour and a half ago.” I finally find it, buried. Plug it in, but the phone is old and it takes a while to get enough of a charge to turn on once it’s died. “And my phone is dead.”
 

“At least you have your truck, now.”
 

I look at him. He’s in the doorway to my bedroom, filling it completely. He’s wearing a thin black V-neck T-shirt that hugs his torso and biceps, and the way he’s standing, one arm over his head against the door frame, has his shirt hiked up so I can see grooved abdominal definition, and a thick trail of blond body hair leading under his waistband.
 

“My truck?” I remember how he got here in the first place. “How did you get my truck here?”
 

“I had it towed, had it fixed, and then drove it here.”
 

“Wait.” I stand up, and remember that I’m naked, and sit back down, cover my lap with old clothes. “What are you doing in my house? What are you doing in my
bedroom?
You know what?—Don’t answer; you need to leave.”
 

“You want to call your work with my phone?” He digs into his hip pocket, withdraws a sleek smart phone and extends it to me.
 

Equanimous. How can he be so damn equanimous all the time?
 

“Stop being so nice.” I stretch up from the floor, holding clothes against me to shield me from his gaze, and to hide the evidence that I’m sincerely and severely affected by him. “It’s creepy.”

“Since when is nice creepy?”

“Since no one is ever nice for no reason,” I say, dialing the office.

“I have a reason.” More leaning, more smirking, more bulging biceps.

“Oh, yeah?” The line is ringing, ringing, ringing. “What reason?”

“The reason is nice doesn’t need a reason.”

“That’s stupid. Try again.”

“Okay.” He strokes his beard with long, strong fingers. “Umm…okay, how about this: you’re seriously hot, and being nice to you stands to benefit me in some way, at some point, even if it’s just more free glances at those big, juicy tits of yours.”

I’m struck dumb by this response for a moment, until I recover my wits. “Jesus, you’re a pig.”
 

A laconic shrug. “You asked.”
 

“They’re not that big.” I cross my arms over my chest, not exactly self-conscious, but—okay, plenty self-conscious.
 

“Big enough, from what I saw, and I’m pretty sure I saw plenty.”
 

I glare at him, sigh in frustration because no one at the office is answering the phone. “Can we stop talking about my breasts?” I say this as someone finally picks up, which means they catch that statement.
 

“Um, hello?” Lindsey answers, confused.

“Oh, god, Lindsey, hi, it’s Niall.”
 

“Niall! Are you okay? We were all worried about you.”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine. My truck broke down last night, and I slept through my alarm this morning. I’m so sorry, Lindsey. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Half an hour, maybe?”

Lindsey confers with someone, the words muffled. “Well, actually Dr. Beardsley is here and he says it’s fine, just take the day off.”