“Come here,” he whispered into my ear and pulled me in until he was spooning me. I could feel his rock hard erection now, pressed up against my ass, which only invigorated me more. He held me tight and I felt his lips at the back of my neck.
“Perry,” he murmured through my hair.
I cleared my throat, trying to find my vocal chords. “Yeah?”
Silence. I listened, waiting in the black for his answer. Heavy breathing was my reply. He was asleep.
Minutes later I joined him, drifting off in his arms. It was one of the deepest sleeps I’d ever had.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I woke up the next morning, I wasn’t surprised to find Dex gone. At first I thought maybe the whole thing had been some crazy dream. I mean, I have had plenty of Dex dreams before, of course those all involved hot, uninhibited sex. Not purely kissing and spooning.
Then I heard a few muffled thumps from his room and I got up, feeling a chill as the morning mountain air seeped in through the thin windows. I pulled on a pair of jeans and slipped on a sweater and knocked lightly at his adjoining door.
“Dex?” I asked.
“Enter,” was his formal response.
I opened the door and poked my head in. The bed was back in its place, covers and bedding looking freshly made. The only sign that something had gone wrong was the mirror. It was shattered in the middle, cracks seeping outward.
Oh, and Dex’s wrist. He was standing at the sink, attempting to wrap a gauze bandage around it.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” I asked and hustled toward him.
“Can you help me?” he inquired. I looked up at him, and seeing he looked fine, at least better than last night, I held up his wrist, the bandage falling away.
It wasn’t too bad but the outer side of his wrist was bruised and bloody. At least the bleeding had stopped.
“What happened?” I asked again, grabbing for the bandage. “Seriously. Tell me.”
He bit his lip momentarily and his eyes flitted to the mirror.
“I had an accident last night.”
“I saw. You flipped over your bed.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“Why did you do that?”
And how?
He looked down at his wrist and the tendons around his neck stiffened. “I told you.”
“You didn’t. Last night you just said that you saw her.”
“And that’s the truth.”
“Who is her?”
“She was in the mirror.”
My mouth gaped and the grip on his wrist became loose. “You saw someone in the mirror?”
He nodded. “So, maybe I’m having a hard time adjusting to being drug-free after all. You think they have a drugstore around here?”
“Did you smash the mirror with your hand?”
He was silent. I took that as a yes.
I sighed. “And then you flipped over the bed. Why?”
He rubbed at his forehead with his spare hand and avoided my eyes. “Perry, I can’t really say.”
“You were trying to keep something out,” I answered for him.
His breath hitched. For a moment I thought he was going to spill the beans. I was wrong.
“Please. I know you’re worried-”
“Of course I’m worried, Dex!” I cried out. His eyes softened at my outburst.
“All right. It’s all right.”
“It’s not.”
“It was a ghost. It was just a ghost. And it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her. It might not mean anything and I don’t need this distraction right now. We have a mythical beast to shoot, I need to focus on that. Sasquatch and ghosts don’t mix.”
“Tell me who the ghost is.”
“If I tell you, will you wrap up my wrist and promise not to ask any more questions about it? Ever?” he pushed.
I didn’t want to promise that. I knew whatever he’d tell me would only bring a billion questions along with it. But I said, “Yes” and began to slowly rewrap his wrist.
“The ghost…” he said reluctantly, face turned away from mine. “The ghost was my mother.”
I froze.
He jerked his attention back to me and gave a hard glance at my hands. “Keep wrapping.”
I didn’t know if I could. His mother. Dex had seen the ghost of his mother last night. In the mirror. And that sight was enough for him to smash it and make a dramatic barricade against it, flip over a f**king bed. It was enough to make him cower in fear and seek the comfort of my company. Normally I wouldn’t put that past him, but last night Dex didn’t want sex. He just didn’t want to be alone. And that vulnerability, that was a side of him I rarely saw.
He rolled his eyes. “Here, do you want me to do it?”
I shook myself alert, feeling drugged and hazy. My fingers fumbled around the fabric. “Uh no. No I’ve got it.”
“I hope you’re packed, we gotta leave soon,” he said. I looked up at him, so many questions begging to tumble from my lips. But his expression was a warning and I knew I made that promise. I couldn’t push my luck. It would only annoy him and I didn’t want to do that.
I nodded and quickly finished up his wrist, tucking the ends together.
He held it up to his face and examined it. “Nice work, Florence.”
I pretended I wasn’t examining the mirror, having a sick hope of seeing her myself, his infamous mother. Before he could catch me, I gave him a quick smile and took off to my room, throwing my clothes in the bag and remembering to put on a bra and do a quick application of makeup on my face. I wasn’t on camera but I was still meeting people today and needed to look professional.
All the while my thoughts drifted back to Dex and his mother. He had never told me anything about her. I only knew a little bit about his father, that he left them when Dex was a teen and at some point during that whole thing, Pippa ended up being his nanny. He never told me how his mother died. Though, there was a strange feeling at the back of my head, like I was forgetting something. Like I knew something about her without ever knowing it, if that makes any sense.
Then it happened. My eyes filled with a flash of being in Roman’s home, the demon fighting inside me during the exorcism. A feeling of utter hate rolling around in my guts. A French accent that had spoken through me: “Your little secret. You don’t want anyone to know what happened to your dear old mother.”