Page 103 of Saving the Rain

Although having Kayce next to me, I’ve found more and more nights have been dreamless. Waking up almost with a start to realize that I’ve slept for hours undisturbed.

Maybe that’s why I feel like I need to watch him, to make sure he actually gets some rest—or if not, I want to be here if he’s awake and struggling with the intrusive thoughts laying siege at two a.m.

He turns into me a fraction more, his fingers pressing firmer into my bare chest, and I hear a small hum of a noise in the back of his throat. It’s so faint, but my heart stills, trying to figure out what might be causing him to cry out in his sleep. The next second it comes a little stronger, but still muffled. A wordless plea.

Jesus. I’m no stranger to the horrors the mind can conjure up at night. I’ve spent years waking up in cold sweats and thrashing so hard the sheets dislodge off the mattress.

I shift my weight a little, not sure whether he’ll settle back into a deeper sleep, or wake up.

Kayce’s body jerks, and he makes a grunting, guttural noise. His head lifts off my chest when he startles out of the dream. It takes him amoment, head swiveling around as he must be coming back to the here and now, then blows out a breath before sinking back down.

“Are you ok?” Keeping my voice low, I watch carefully as he nods and then readjusts to nuzzle closer. My entire fucking heart is ready to explode when he immediately places a kiss against my chest. The first thing he does when waking up from a bad dream is to curl into me. To feel safe enough to give me that. If I didn’t already know that I’ve got both feet in this thing with him, that just sealed it for me.

I love being at his side. I love being the person he can turn to.

I’m in love with him.

Kayce rubs at his eyes, then makes a sleepy noise that vibrates into me. “Yeah. Just crappy memories coming back.”

“I’m right here. Try to get some more sleep.”

He sighs. “You were in my dream, too.”

“I was?”

“It was more of a memory really. A night you didn’t think I was awake... you didn’t know that I heard you outside my door.” His words are punctuated by a yawn, and he twines our legs together.

My mind ransacks through times that I’ve tried so damn hard to forget—a lot of them have been eliminated, hardly a foggy recollection anymore. It’s like my brain has taken a whiteboard eraser to so many pieces of my past, swiping things away and leaving a blank nothingness where they used to be.

“It was a time when you blocked the door. I could hear you refusing to let your dad in that end of the house because he was drunk and mad.” His voice is thick with sleep. “It was like he was right there. All the horrible shit he was slurring about me. That I was just a skinny little runt. A piece of shit who would end up a whoring little bastard.Just like his momma,he was saying it over and over.” He shivers against me, a brief tremor rolling through his muscles, even though it’s toasty warm in here.

“Just a dream.” There’s a rock lodged in the back of my throat that I struggle to swallow down.

“You never knew I found you sleeping on the floor outside my bedroom the day after that.” Kayce sighs, words dragging a little slower over his tongue as sleep starts to reach for him again. “When Iasked you about it, you said it was just because you’d been out with friends. That you’d had too much to drink, so you crashed out and didn’t make it to your room.”

My heart thuds harder. I can remember slumping to the ground that night in front of his door, with a bruise forming around my eye as I stayed there on guard for hour after hour.

“I knew you were lying.” His next yawn makes the words elongate, as he starts to drift off.

Stroking his spine, I reveal the raw truth, freeing it into the darkness—not caring if he’ll hear me or if he’s already asleep. Because it’s the fierce reality, and it’s been that way since long before I cared about Kayce in the manner I do now. Back then I did it for entirely different reasons, but now those words feel even more powerful with the depth of my feelings for him sneaking up on me.

“I’ll always be here to protect you.”

Chapter 42

“It’s early... way too early for you to be cooking for me.” I rub one eye with the heel of my palm as a full-bodied yawn and stretch combination takes over.

Raine rolls his eyes in my direction and continues cracking eggs into a bowl before whisking them.

Outside, there’s only blackness to be found beyond the crack in the curtains, and the dawn chorus has begun, those faint chirps when the earliest of birds first wake up.

“I gotta eat before work anyway, and I’m not letting you go all the way back up Devil’s Peak on an empty stomach,” he grumbles at me.

Am I protesting that mymaybe-kinda-sortaboyfriend is making breakfast in nothing but a slutty pair of sweats and a sexy scowl? Not in this lifetime.

I’m still processing the events of last night, but certainly having him here to hold me and just be there—without judgment or turning me away for being such a terrible fucking screw-up like I was terrified he’d do the moment I told him about my mom—that helped me more than he could ever know.

No one could ever possibly judge me harder than I already do. And even with the black fucking headspace I’d been in when I got here, he didn’t think of me that way. God, I don’t know what I’ve done todeserve this man. Or to earn a place in his bed... wrapped securely in his arms.