Page 40 of Deserving Maisy
“Don’t care. Not moving,” he told her.
She nuzzled his skin and tightened the arm around his belly. “I love you, Jack. If you believe nothing else, please believe that.”
“I do,Stellina. I do.”
She fell asleep quickly, and Jack felt his heart swell with love. The trust she’d shown in him made him determined not to let her down, as he’d obviously done in the past. Things were different now. He was a different man than the one who’d moved across the state for whatever idiotic reason he’d had at the time. It didn’t matter if he regained his memory and remembered what had happened between them. He’d always love her. He couldn’t imagine anything that might change that.
Jack woke up with a start. Maisy still slept like a log next to him. She didn’t stir when he jerked against her. Turning his head to see the clock, he saw it had been two hours since he and Maisy had made love. The sun was just peeking over the horizon outside their window.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The dream had been so vivid. He’d been on a hospital bed. Everything hurt. he had no idea why he was there or what happened, but the beeping from the machines next to his bed were irritating, and he was sick of doctors and nurses looking at him with pity.
The next scene that flashed in his head…he was in a small, cozy bedroom of some sort. Owl was sitting on the floor with a hand over his nose. Jack’s hand hurt, and he knew instinctively that he’d just hit him.
“Are you awake now, Stone?” Owl asked.
“I told you not to touch me when I’m having a nightmare or sleeping,” Jack growled at his friend.
“Fuck you. I’m not gonna let you lie there and scream in pain. I’m fine. Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Right. I had to ask. You sure you’re awake now?”
“Yeah, I’m awake.”
“Good. I’m gonna go make some pancakes. Take a shower. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
Jack winced. The dream felt as if it was overwhelming his brain. It felt so incredibly real. He opened his eyes again and saw that he was still with Maisy in her room. He wasn’t in the hospital and he wasn’t wherever that cozy-looking room was.
Sweat beaded on his brow. Because the dream didn’t feel like a dream at all. Except he had no idea who the man called Owl could be, or why he kept dreaming about him. And who was Stone? Was it reallyhim? It sureseemedas if Owl was calling him Stone. But the name meant nothing. He had no idea if it was a nickname or his last name or what.
He was Jack Smith. Wasn’t he?
His stomach rolled. What the hell was happening? If this was his memory coming back, Jack wasn’t sure he wanted it to anymore.
It was ironic that in his dream, he’d been asked the same thing he’d asked Maisy after she’d woken up from hernightmare. No, he didn’t want to talk about the demons in his head that seemed to only come out at night.
Then something else occurred to him. He’d obviously punched the man called Owl for trying to touch him while he slept. Itcouldn’tbe a memory, because he had no problem with Maisy at his side every night. He obviously didn’t mindhertouching him, in fact, he slept like a freaking baby with her plastered against his side. Whatever he was dreaming had to be something he’d seen in a movie or on TV.
Maisy stirred against him, and Jack turned his attention to her, glad to concentrate on something other than whatever the hell was going on in his brain.
“What time is it?” she mumbled.
He loved her like this. Sleepy, open. Not hiding from him.
“Early. Too early to get up. Close your eyes, hon. You can snooze for a while longer.”
“M’kay, but we need to go down for breakfast. Jason expects us.”
Jack gritted his teeth together. Fuck Jason and his demands that they present themselves for breakfast. They were grown-ass adults, and if they wanted to sleep in, they should be able to do so. But he already knew from experience that if he said that to Maisy, she’d get upset, and it wouldn’t be a good way to start the morning.
Instead, he simply said, “I know. I won’t let you oversleep.”
She sighed against him, and the feel of her warm breath against his chest made his cock twitch, but Jack ignored it. His wife needed sleep more than she needed sex.
He didn’t fall back asleep, just stared up at the ceiling until it was time for them to get up if they were going to make breakfast by Jason’s schedule. And just as he’d thought, as soon as Maisy was up, she morphed back into the introverted, submissive woman she’d become in the last week.
He hated it. He wanted the happy, smiling wife he’d gotten to know before she’d had that outing with her brother. He’d let Maisy talk him into staying at the house, but Jack was second-guessing that decision now. He needed to get Maisy away from her brother. Their relationship wasn’t healthy, that was more obvious than ever. Maybe that was what they’d fought about before, the thing that had made him move to Spokane.
