Page 60 of Delirium
Besides, I didn’t want to traipse through the Clubhouse in the middle of the evening, looking for a place to crash, when so many people wanted me dead. Maybe they didn’t live inside the Clubhouse, but if Nova could infiltrate this place, anybody else could have.
Even though I would never admit it, sleeping in his bed, surrounded by his scent, calmed me more than I wanted it to.
“Okay,” I mumbled, removing my hands from his head. “I’ll stay here. But, Storm—”
“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. I know, Sunshine.”
He detached himself from me, and I hated my body for already crying out for the loss of heat from him. The man was like a furnace, his body burning, feeding me with warmth.
“Do you like your new phone?” he asked as he stood up, looking at the device lying on top of the nightstand now. He must have picked it up after I threw it on the floor.
“I guess.” I shrugged. “It’s a phone.”
My eyes connected with his, and I knew he wanted to say more. I could feel the tension seeping into the room, emanating from each and every pore of his body, but I didn’t move. I didn’t say a thing as he stepped backward, going toward the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said instead, keeping his thoughts to himself, and I suddenly regretted not talking this through.
I didn’t want to go to sleep feeling this angry.
“Storm,” I said, taking a step toward him.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he murmured instead. Without a second glance, he disappeared through the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
And it bugged me more than I wanted to admit.
* * *
I couldn’t fucking sleep.
I turned this and that way, went on my stomach, then on my back… I even tried counting sheep, but nothing worked. As the moonlight seeped into the room, illuminating the empty space around me, I wondered if I should just give up altogether, or keep lying here, pretending I was asleep.
The shadows danced on the wall opposite the bed, my mind seeing things that weren’t there. Images of destruction, of the past I wanted to forget, swirling ominously, cackling viciously because they knew, they always knew that I wouldn’t be able to run from them.
The hold I had on the blankets tightened, wrapping myself like a fucking burrito, turning to the other side, facing the door, wishing for him to be here with me. But I knew Storm wouldn’t come in unless I asked him to, and it would be too selfish of me to ask him to just hold me, when I still couldn’t forgive everything he’d done.
His keeping secrets from me hurt more than anything else. It wasn’t even about the fact that he agreed to marry our daughter to Nico’s son. Now, after a couple of hours of tossing and turning, I could understand that deep inside I wasn’t even hurt over that as much as I was hurt over the fact that he didn’t tell me.
He kept it from me. Even though their pact was made before I got pregnant, he should have told me. He shouldn’t have fucking kept me in the dark.
And now I couldn’t sleep without him. I couldn’t sleep, knowing that we weren’t on the best of terms, with this chasm between us. That fucking idiot.
He made me feel like this. Pregnant, alone, needy, hormonal… This was all his fault.
I couldn’t sleep without him by my side anymore. I couldn’t imagine my life without him, and it fucking sucked because I wasn’t ready to forgive him.
But if I wanted to sleep tonight, to rest as the doctor ordered when I last visited him, Storm would have to come here and do something about it. I didn’t care what it was as long as I could close my eyes.
I took the phone from the nightstand, wincing at the blinding light that came on the moment I unlocked it, frowning when I saw the time flashing brightly at me.
“Three in the morning.” I frowned. “Beautiful.”
Huffing and puffing like a wild animal, I placed the phone back on the nightstand, and untangled myself from my makeshift burrito blanket, lowering my feet on the ground, almost jumping back onto the bed from how cold it got overnight.
Santa Monica wasn’t New York, but it didn’t mean that this period of the year didn’t get chilly during the night.
Wiggling my toes, trying to get used to the chill seeping through the floor, I cursed him for the hundredth time for putting me in this situation. I just had to find him and then I’d be able to curse him in person.
Then he would help me to go back to sleep. I had a solid plan, now I just needed to survive this fucking cold.
