Authors: Ranae Rose
She didn’t ask how her mother had reacted when he’d placed an offer on the house. She didn’t want to know.
“I figured you’d never come back.” Her chicken was getting cold, but she only picked at it.
“Likewise.”
“Well.” She tried for a light tone. “I guess we’re both crazier than the other imagined.”
He didn’t smile. “Guess so.”
* * * * *
“Goddamn it, this is crazy.” Clad in clean pajamas and socks again, Clementine approached the darkened kitchen. Shuffling and banging sounds from the first floor had woken her, and she’d thought immediately back to the night before.
This time, when she flipped the light on, Donovan was there. He stood at the counter opposite the sink, a coffee mug lying in pieces by his feet. He’d clearly ignored her suggestion that he wear underwear to bed.
“Donovan. Donovan, wake up!” she called from the archway, lingering on the threshold, wary of being hit or shoved again.
He moved more quickly than she would’ve thought a sleepwalker could, one muscular arm flexing and bunching as he grabbed something from the counter.
A knife.
Her mouth went dry as he gripped it by the handle, holding it like he meant to use it.
It wasn’t a kitchen knife, either. It looked more like a Ka-Bar, the blade black and long enough to go more than halfway through a person. Had he brought it downstairs? Maybe he kept it in the military-green canvas sack he’d hauled to the bedroom across from hers.
“Hollins?” he asked, his voice rough. “That you?”
“No,” she managed to say. “No, it’s me, Clementine. Put the knife down.”
“What’d you do with my rifle, Hollins?”
“Donovan!” He hadn’t moved, but he still held the knife. Mustering as much bravado as she could, she tried for a firm tone. “Wake UP!” She tasted copper, the metallic tang of adrenaline.
“Fuck you, Hollins. Want some coffee anyway?”
He laid down the knife and started groping along the countertop.
“Yes,” she breathed, her heart slowing just a little at the sight of the relinquished weapon. “I want coffee. Make me some.” Inspired by desperation, she crept across the kitchen in her sock feet as he fumbled with the coffee maker.
Thank God he was at the counter by the stove, not the sink. Reaching for a glass in the cupboard above, she glanced over her shoulder repeatedly as she filled it at the tap.
He shoveled grounds into the coffee maker with surprising accuracy, spilling only a little. As she watched, her gaze was drawn to the knife lying less than a foot from his hand.
It was now or never – at least he was no longer holding the weapon.
Drawing in a deep breath and holding it, she flung the water from the cup, sending it flying across the kitchen.
It hit him square between the shoulders, colliding with a
splash
and gushing down his back, glistening wet against his skin as it ran down the crack of his ass and coursed over his thighs in rivulets.
He dropped the spoon he’d been using to scoop coffee grounds.
For half a second, that was it – no other reaction.
Then he turned, slowly, eyes open.
“Donovan?” Her voice came out too high, strained by fear that she’d done the wrong thing – woken him the wrong way. “Are you awake?”
“Was I asleep?”
His eyes focused rapidly, narrowing as they met hers. He seemed more alert than he’d been upon waking the night before – thank God.
She hurried across the kitchen, still too on edge to care that he was naked and wet. “Yes.” Reaching for the knife, she gripped the handle. His lingering body heat warmed her fingers. “Don’t you remember anything?”
“No.” His gaze dropped to the weapon she held.
“You were holding this. Then you put it down – you thought I was someone else. And you started making coffee.”
“You threw water on me?” He touched one of his arms, holding up wet fingers like he’d never seen water before.
She nodded. “I was afraid to come near you – afraid you’d pick up the knife again. Last night, you hit me.”
“I hit you?” His eyes went wide, and he took a step backward, like she’d just swung the knife at him.
“Well, it was more of a shove,” she amended, her heart skipping a beat at the sight of his horrified expression. “You just sort of threw your arm out and bumped me on the shoulder. I went down on my ass in the mud – for the record, that’s why the pajama bottoms I hung to dry over the bathtub are stained brown across the butt.”
He didn’t laugh, didn’t even stop gaping at her like she’d just told him he’d grown horns, a pointy tail and stabbed her with a pitchfork.
“The ground was soft after all the rain. I was completely fine.”
“Jesus.” He braced himself with a hand against the counter.
“Watch out,” she said. “You broke a mug. Don’t step on it.”
He was motionless as she bent to pick up the pieces. The ceramic had fractured into large chunks and was easier to clean up than typical glass. “Do you sleepwalk often?”
“No.” His voice was hoarse, like he’d been yelling. “Haven’t in a while, anyway.”
“You used to?” It must have started sometime during the past seven years; she didn’t recall him ever doing or mentioning it before then.
“Started in Afghanistan.”
She stiffened as she stood, nearly dropping the pieces of the ruined mug.
“You were in Afghanistan?” She tried to sound casual as she dumped the burden into the trash.
He nodded. “Seven months, near the end of my enlistment period.”
“Wasn’t it dangerous to sleepwalk there?” Hell, it was dangerous for him to sleepwalk inside the house. How had he survived doing the same in a war zone?
“Fuck, yeah. We slept outside the wire a lot. Or tried to sleep, anyway. I never really could – not for long. And even when I did, I’d get up, load my gun, walk around – shit like that. Ended up having to set up trip lines so I’d bust my ass before I made it anywhere.”
“That sounds terrible.” Her heart contracted, growing small and hard beneath the pressure of trying to imagine what he was describing. Donovan, stumbling around in the desert, throwing himself even farther into harm’s way than war necessitated without realizing it. God, she would’ve crumbled into pieces if she’d known at the time. Even now, her throat felt too tight. “How long has it been since you’ve walked in your sleep – before last night, I mean?”
He shrugged. “Two years? Did some therapy. Drugs just made it worse, but I learned some … rituals … that help. It’s all about calming down before you go to sleep.”
“So you haven’t been calm these past two nights?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, and the obvious hit her like a ton of bricks. “Is it because I’m here?”
Stupid question. What else would it be? He’d been fine until she’d shown up, apparently. “My being here is stressing you out, isn’t it?”
“Clementine—”
“I’ll leave tomorrow. Even if my tires aren’t in yet, you can give me a ride to a motel, right?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you staying in some sleazy motel. And after your penny-pinching speech, don’t tell me it won’t be sleazy. Your only cheap options are the Willow Heights Rest Inn and that place with the take-out restaurant on the first floor. I’ll be damned before I drop you off at either of those dumps.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll survive a week in a cheap motel. It’s a hell of a lot safer than you wandering around with a knife in your sleep.”
“Take the knife.” His voice was harder, insistent. “Hide it. For fuck’s sake, I’m not leaving you at a place that should charge by the hour.”
His chest had expanded, and there was a hint of a flush beneath his suntanned skin. The hand he didn’t have on the counter was clenched in a fist.
He was awake, but everything wasn’t all right. “Just calm down. We’ll talk about it in the morning. For now, I’m not going anywhere.”
That seemed to placate him. Breathing a sigh, he closed the coffee maker’s open lid. “Want a cup?”
“It’s going to be strong.” He’d shoveled half a dozen heaping tablespoons of grounds into the machine before she’d thrown water at him.
“I’m not going to go back to sleep anyway.”
Her heart thumped against her ribs. If he was going to stay up… She didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone any more than he liked the idea of abandoning her at the Willow Heights Rest Inn. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to be able to drift off into dreamland with images of him wielding a knife burnt into the backs of her eyelids. “Me neither. Bring on the caffeine.”
Ten minutes later, she was sipping a cup of something so strong it nearly activated her gag reflex. “Have any creamer?” she asked Donovan, who was gulping his coffee like it was water. He might like it black, but they’d always been polar opposites when it came to java. “I don’t think I can handle your special sleepwalking brew without a little something to help it go down.”
“Half and half.” He shuffled to the fridge. “Bought it earlier today. For you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, stifling a snort as he presented her with a carton, “but you’ve either got to put on a pair of pants or go back to playing the role of a nudist. That looks ridiculous.”
“What, you don’t like my loincloth?” He glanced down at the checkered kitchen towel he’d slung around his hips. It covered the manliest bits of his anatomy and most of the dark hair at his groin, but flapped pathetically around his muscular butt cheeks. “I thought it was Tarzan-esque.”
“I’m serious. Pants or nothing.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel…” He hooked a thumb beneath one side of the towel. “Look away if you’re shy.”
She laughed, covering her mouth and then her eyes as the soft
fwip
of the towel snapping sounded.
“Guess it’s time for pants, anyway. It’s almost morning.” His footsteps were soft against the kitchen tile as he retreated.
She glanced across the kitchen, checking out his bare ass surreptitiously before checking the time. 3:45 AM, according to the clock above the stove. Not quite “almost morning” in her book, but if the hour had prompted him to get dressed, she wasn’t about to argue. Now that he’d calmed down – and made her laugh – his nudity was a temptation she didn’t need.
Damn it, why did a man with the physique of an underwear model think he could walk around naked in front of a woman like it was no big deal? True, it was nothing she hadn’t seen before … but that just made it worse.
“Jeans,” she said when he returned, sinking back into his chair. “Good choice.”
He shrugged. “I was partial to the loincloth, myself.”
He still wasn’t wearing a shirt. And some sort of sexually-charged spidey-sense told her he wasn’t wearing underwear, either. So much for modesty.
Not that she was the picture of propriety, either. Her flimsy cami was only an obligatory layer between her breasts and his eyes. Beneath the cotton, her shape showed clearly, natural contours straining the fabric. At least it wasn’t like she was especially busty. He, on the other hand, had been packing a lot beneath that kitchen towel.
“So if I ever catch you sleepwalking again, should I throw water on you?” She thought back to the recent ordeal, infusing her wayward thoughts with the gravity of the situation they’d so narrowly escaped.
“Again? Thought you were determined to leave?”
Oh
. Right. “It’s not morning yet.” She spoke quickly, trying to cover her mistake. She
would
be leaving. God, why had she asked?
He didn’t say anything, but looked satisfied.
Inside her head, she called herself every name in the book.
“Water seemed to work,” he said eventually. “Don’t ever come near me – don’t touch me. Not when I’m like that. Fuck, if I ever hurt you…”
“I learned my lesson,” she hurried to say. “Don’t worry about that. It’s just that waking you up is scary no matter how I do it. I didn’t know what your reaction would be, and you know the old wives’ tales about waking a sleepwalker.”
“Were you afraid you’d give me a heart attack?”
“I always heard that if you woke a sleepwalker, their soul would remain trapped outside of their body.” She flashed him a weak smile.
“My soul has been trapped outside of my body for the past ten years.”