Page 81 of Down Shift (Driven 8)
No, he already admitted he screwed up and hurt people. But maybe tonight just reinforced that for him.
The knock on my door startles me.
“You awake?”
“Hmm?” I murmur, trying not to sound obvious that I’m in here concerned for him.
The door creaks open farther, but the light from the hall is off and so I’m left with his shadowed figure in the darkened doorway. He stands there for a moment, and somehow I can sense his need to talk across the distance.
“Can I come in?” His voice is quiet but gruff.
> “Yes.”
He crosses the few feet in silence and the mattress dips as he sits on the edge. But he doesn’t stop there. He surprises the hell out of me when, without another word, he pulls back the covers and slides into the bed beside me. Strong hands reach out and pull me firmly against him, my back to his front, before he wraps his arms tight around me.
I’m shocked, surprised, and every other adjective there is to describe being thrown for a loop from his actions—and yet I try not to let my body relay that to him.
“This okay?” he murmurs, his chin moving against my shoulder where it rests and the heat of his breath on my ears.
Coherent thoughts are hard to come by, so I do the best I can with a murmur of agreement.
“I just need a minute,” he whispers my own words from earlier back to me.
“Okay.” I sink against the firmness of his body, that warmth I craved earlier seeking me out this time. I can all but hear his mind turning next to me. His silence more powerful than a scream.
I know we both want to say more, but instead we let the magnitude of the moment—the unspoken admission that he needs me—eat us whole. Devour our insecurities. Gnaw at our doubt. Consume us with emotion. Relish in the connection. Create potential. For what? I can only hope we’re moving toward something.
After a bit of time, my nerves feeling more alive than ever from the body-to-body connection and my mind overthinking the situation, I realize how much he is missing out in his life by being here: his family, his passion, his job. I hate the thought as soon as it fleets through my mind, but I still can’t deny that the quicker he confronts his past, the sooner he can decide when he wants to return to that normalcy. And while that means I’ll be here alone again, I can’t hold him tight for my own selfish reasons.
But oh, how I’d like to.
I break the silence. “If you want me to help you go through the box, I will.”
I can hear immediate rejection of the idea in the subtle hitch of his breath. But he doesn’t speak, just pulls me in a little tighter, giving the idea time to settle.
“I think I’d like that. . . . Thank you,” he murmurs to my surprise when I thought he wouldn’t respond. “I can’t promise you I’m not going to be a moody jerk over it, Getty, and I’d like to think I should do it myself . . . because, you know, boundaries.” I feel his shoulders shrug and the reverberation of his soft chuckle against my back makes me smile.
“Boundaries, huh? How’re they working out for you right now?”
His laugh grows louder and joins mine. It’s a comforting sound in the quiet of the room, but he doesn’t answer the question. I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn’t it: Zander curled up behind me, his breath evening out, and his muscles falling lax.
Seconds turn to minutes and minutes to an hour as we lie in a tangled mass of arms and legs, him asleep and me awake, while I wonder what just happened. We’ve created a day-to-day routine, and after tonight, we’ve knowingly added our pasts to the equation.
Thoughts, hints of more, flicker and fade. My pulse accelerates. My mind tells me to shut down. To fall asleep. To stop thinking how nice this feels.
But it proves impossible. So the digital clock on my nightstand shows the passage of time, when I just want to stay right here in this moment.
Chapter 23
ZANDER
With a flick of the power switch, the table saw falls silent. After I gather the freshly cut wood and shake the sawdust from my hair, I glance up and my eyes fall on the lone figure on the beach beyond.
Getty. Her brown hair is pulled up in a loose bun and her feet are bare. She’s enjoying the warmth of the sun with her face angled up to the sky, and she’s holding a bag of shells I’ve been watching her aimlessly collect in one hand.
And that’s the problem—how much I’ve been watching her. How much I’ve been reliving that unexpected, purge-your-emotions, use-each-other sex we had in the kitchen. Then immediately thinking about the way she bounced back after the cruel shit her father said to her without shedding a tear. Who says that kind of unbelievable crap to their kid? I realize that I’m starting to care about her in other aspects beyond sex.
But fuck, how can I not? I’m not that much of a prick. To think she lived in that life for twenty-five years before finding the courage to escape. To make a life on her own terms.
