Page 109 of Between Never and Forever

“I’m offended you would even accuse me of that.” She rolled her eyes, but I knew her to be one of the best hackers in the country, right alongside her husband. “Anyway, Lilah and I have to go. We need to get on another call so we can talk about what we’ll be doing there.”

Before I could say anything else, they both disappeared and left Cade and Dante to talk business with us.

“Fuck me,” I grumbled.

Cade said, “We’re coming next week, I guess, because I’m not fighting with her today.”

“Whatever.” I was only half paying attention now as I stared at my watch. I got updates on the resort and one notification came through about Kee. Her body temperature started to climb, along with her heart rate. I pressed a button to pull up her camera on my phone. Her muscles started to tense as she whimpered, and her heart rate spiked. I jumped up. She was experiencing fear on another level in her sleep. “I have to go.”

“Go where?”

“Home to my fiancée,” I said.

“Oh, nowhe’swhipped after acting like we were ridiculous in our relationships,” Dante grumbled while Cade chuckled.

I flipped him off. “You almost got my sister killed.” Then I looked at Cade’s face on the screen. “You too. If you’re coming, your asses are working.”

“Oh, like I don’t have kids to take care of?” Cade acted like I couldn’t figure a damn thing out.

“I know you have a nanny too. You’ll be fine.”

I hurried out of the conference room. I wasn’t going to admit it to any of them, but they were all right. I saw her hurting, so I was going to drop everything.

I rushed through the casino floor, around slot machines and poker tables. My fast pace turned from a jog to a damn run as I tried to catch the elevator doors closing. I swiped my watch to signal I was going to the top floor and waited.

Two seconds felt like two hours, and I found myself turning to say to a couple HEAT members, “Don’t even think about coming on this elevator with me.”

They got the point.

When I reached her bedside, I sat down fast to pull her into my arms and wake her. “I got you, Kee. I got you.”

Her dark eyes opened with tears in them. “Dex?”

“Just a nightmare, heartbreaker. The car wreck… It’s over,” I whispered in her ear, because I felt her shaking against me, knew the fear she was feeling.

“How do you know it’s about the car wreck?”

“The rain always triggers my nightmares too.”

“You get them?”

“I do.”

She snuggled into my chest and murmured, “You said I was your nightmare once.”

I nodded but she didn’t understand. “I get nightmares about losing you. One way or the other.” I rocked her back and forth for what felt like only moments, but we might have sat there for hours. The world melted away when I was with her. The fear of losing her, the fear of losing control.

She rubbed at my heart before she looked up at me and said, “Stay with me?”

Didn’t she know I wasn’t going to leave again? I was done denying our connection. I was about to marry her. I was about to make sure she was forever in my life.

I stood up and stripped off my jeans and T-shirt. She watched me the whole time. Once I was beside her, she cuddled close. “Do you think they’ll ever stop?”

“I think the body has to remind us of what we’ve lived through.”

“I wish it would remind me of something else.”

“Reminders are there so we can learn and prepare for the future. They mark us and tattoo a memory into our soul for reference.”