Page 29 of From the Embers
Jesus, what a double slap in the face.
After rolling out of bed, I wandered to the bathroom and turned the shower on. There was still an hour before my alarm was set to go off, but I didn’t trust my brain enough not to cast Eason in a temporal lobe reboot of Magic Mike.
Though, if I was being honest, the teenage wet dream of sorts wasn’t the only thing I needed to wash off. The fear I’d experienced when Eason had slowly disappeared was the kind that embedded itself in your bones. Now that I was awake, I could process that Eason was only yards away, asleep in the pool house, but the panic and loss still lingered in my veins.
I’d never been one to read into dreams. In high school, I used to have a reoccurring one that my history teacher lived under my bed and kept me awake all hours of the night by pelting me with Pop Rocks and women’s shoes. I was sure there was a doctor out there somewhere who could have had a field day with that one. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this one meant something more.
Maybe it was shame, but that morning as I got ready, I saw Rob everywhere. From his body wash still on the shelf in the shower to his toothbrush on the charger beside his sink. There was a handful of change on his nightstand and a pair of shoes still tucked out of sight under the bed. I’d cleaned and tidied around his things week after week, making sure nothing collected dust, but I’d never quite gotten to the point where I was ready to get rid of them.
But as I stood in the middle of my room, it all felt so sad and suffocating.
“You’re ready,” Eason repeated in my head with that intense, dominating tone.
Yeah, okay, fine. The dream had been hot, but so was Eason. That was no secret. I was a woman. I had eyes. But a tantalizing game of push-and-pull wasn’t who we were. He was Jessica’s husband and Rob’s best friend. That dream wasn’t who we would ever be.
But maybe Dream Eason was right. Maybe it was time to finally let go. Rob wouldn’t have wanted me to live in limbo forever. Moving on didn’t mean erasing him from our lives. He was still Asher and Madison’s dad. And my first love. But, at the end of the day, he was never coming home, and while it felt like I’d come to terms with that, I was still holding on to bits and pieces of the life we’d shared.
It was time.
Drawing in a deep breath, I smiled and closed my eyes, trying to conjure a memory of my husband’s smile.
Only he wasn’t the man on the backs of my lids.
“Hurry up, Bree. Before I’m gone.”
Fuck.
“Bree?”
A pair of toffee-brown eyes I couldn’t stop thinking about disappeared as my office came back into focus. “Huh?”
“Are you okay?” my secretary Jillian asked as she sat across the desk from me, equal parts concern and bewilderment showing in the wrinkles on her forehead.
Clearing my throat, I straightened in my chair. “Yeah, I’m just a little, um, distracted today. Go ahead and finish what you were saying.”
She pointedly lifted her yellow legal pad. “Actually, you were saying. I was taking notes.”
Shit. “Right. Okay. And…um, what exactly was I saying?”
Resting her notepad in her lap, she leaned forward and offered me a tight smile. “How are you doing, honey? I know we hit the one-year mark without your Rob not too long ago. After I lost my Edgar, the anniversaries were hardest.”
Yes. The anniversary of the fire had been awful. Eason and I had both been zombies that week, lost in a sea of regret. But that wasn’t why a boulder of guilt sat on my chest as the most inconvenient desire of my life sparked between my thighs.
“No, it’s not that.”
She offered me a warm, motherly grin. “You know I’m always here if you’d like to talk.”
Damn, I missed Jessica. Not that, if she were still alive, I could call her up and say, “Oh, hey, I had a sex dream about your husband last night.” God, I was an awful person.
Sure, I had Eason. We talked about everything, though I suspected this was going to be a smidge out of his comfort zone. And like twenty-four thousand miles beyond mine.
Jillian stared at me expectantly. “Anything you need, Bree, I’m here, okay?”
I let out a sigh. This was going to feel like talking to my grandmother, but I was just desperate enough not to care. I was sure I could find a way to ask her about it without scandalizing her too much.
“Actually, can I ask you a personal question?”
She inched forward in her chair. “Of course. Anything.”
