From the kitchen came a cry and a crash, and he went running.
Piper was at the sink staring out the window, both hands on her mouth, a broken glass at her feet, eyes wide and unseeing on the storm outside. There was a tree branch brushing against the window and he moved toward her, intending to pull her away in case it broke. But the moment he set his hands on her shoulders, she jerked and whipped around, catching him with a surprise roundhouse kick to the gut.
“Oh my God,” he heard her gasp as he straightened gingerly. “I’m so sorry!”
“No problem,” he said on a rough exhale, rubbing his abs as he eyed her. “And here I was worried about not sparring with my team while I was here. Maybe we should hit the mats together sometime.”
She didn’t smile. Her eyes were still huge and haunted, hollow in a way he understood better than he wanted to.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me.”
Closing her eyes, she nodded and turned away again, only to jump at the next flash of lightning and the immediate, earsplitting boom of thunder.
She was terrified of the storm. “Piper.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know,” he murmured, gently turning her to face him. Slowly she opened those slay-me eyes of hers and leveled him with all the emotion swimming in them. “Bad memory?”
She hesitated and then gave a barely there shoulder lift. “The thunder gets me. Reminds me of the bombs.”
Bombs? She was shaking almost violently now, and he ran his hands up and down her arms, realizing she wasn’t all the way back with him, but somewhere else, somewhere far away. “You’re cold and wet. Let’s—”
“If you say get naked so we don’t die of hypothermia, I might kick you again.”
Feisty, even when she was down. He liked that, very much. “Actually, it’d be only fair since you’ve already seen me naked.”
“Keep dreaming.”
She said this utterly without heat, and he got even more worried. “Piper. What can I do to help?”
“I’m—”
“Fine. Yeah, yeah, I know. But maybe I’m not.”
She stared at him, and then slowly stepped into him so that their bodies brushed together. Offering him comfort, he realized, going still at the shock of human contact. He’d been burying emotions for so long, he’d almost forgotten how to access them. Or how much he loved the feel of a woman. Almost. He closed his arms around her, remembering he hadn’t put his shirt back on only when her chilled hands clutched his bare back. Allowing himself this, the contact he’d mostly shut himself off from, he let himself get lost in it.
When her phone buzzed between them, she pulled away and tugged the thing from her pocket, breaking eye contact to read her text. “Your dad says that according to the police radio, there’s been a mudslide that wiped out access to our street, and that the creek is now a raging river of mud. He doesn’t think you should try to get back until daylight.”
That had better be true and not some misguided sense of matchmaking.
Clearly on the same page, Piper looked at him. “If he’s playing Cupid, I’ll kick his diabetic ass.”
“I’ll help.”
“Good. So we’re in agreement.”
Cam knew he could get back to his dad’s with no problem. He could get just about anywhere under any conditions. It was what he did. But, even though Piper was clearly capable of handling herself, he hesitated to leave her alone.
She led them back to the living room and pulled up the top of the coffee table, revealing a compartment that held blankets and pillows. She threw one of each at him and gestured to the couch.
He’d slept on far worse.
“Meow.”
They both turned to look at Sweet Cheeks.
“The couch is his tonight,” Piper told the cat. “You’re with me.”
Ten minutes later, Cam was lying on the couch, his feet hanging off one end, staring up at the ceiling wondering how one simple hug had felt like so much more. In the matter of a single evening, Piper had turned him around and upside down, taking him completely off mission. At the thought of that mission and what had precipitated it, he braced for the now-familiar pain. It hit on cue, slicing through his chest, making the cat’s scratches feel like a caress.
He’d gotten way off mission tonight. He’d come to make sure his dad was okay after Rowan’s death. Because God knew, Cam wasn’t. Not even close. But the other part of his mission related to a promise he’d made to Rowan. Cam intended to fulfill that promise no matter what, at any cost. Just thinking about it, remembering he was never going to see Rowan again, his chest got so tight that he couldn’t breathe for a long, torturous moment. When his lungs finally released, he sucked in air for a few beats. He was still concentrating on that when another crack of lightning and an ensuing boom of thunder hit, rocking the house on its foundation.
He heard running footsteps, down a hall, down the stairs. Bare feet . . . and then incoming, which was a woman landing right on him.
Burrowing in tight, Piper pressed her face to his throat.
Drawing her in as close as he could, he pulled her under the blanket with him, wrapping her icy form up tight, reminding himself that this was about comfort and absolutely not about her sweet, warm, curvy bod plastered to his. She was clutching something in her hand—her journal. “You sleep with that thing?” he asked.
“I was making a shopping list.” Her voice was muffled against his skin, and he smiled.
“In the dark?”
“My phone’s got a flashlight.”
“Your phone also has a notes app,” he said.
“I like to write by hand. It soothes me.”
He’d laugh, but every time either of them shifted even a little bit, he could feel every inch of her against him. “How’s that working for you tonight?”
“Clearly not so well. I’m . . . not a fan of these violent storms.”
He was getting that. “Did something happen to you in a storm like this?”
Silence.
A tactic he’d used often enough, so he got it. “Storms used to freak me out too.”
She lifted her face to look at him.
He was guessing she hadn’t looked in the mirror because she still had mud on her nose and cheek.
“What did you do? To get . . . not freaked out?” she asked.
“My mom and I used to hide in the cellar. In hindsight, my fear probably came from her anxiety, but at the time I didn’t know that. I just knew I was five years old and terrified because my mom was.”
“Was your mom young?”
“Yes, very. And bipolar.”
Her eyes went soft and sympathetic. “That must have made things really difficult for you.”
He shrugged and ran a hand down her back. To soothe, he told himself, but she was still cold, so he wrapped both arms around her, and for the longest moment, they just stared at each other, sharing air. Until, once again, lightning lit up the room for a single heartbeat, with the inevitable crack of thunder right on its heels.
Piper remained rigid, silent and tense enough to shatter, until he slowly pulled her in closer, sliding a hand up her back to palm the nape of her neck, where he rubbed at the muscles that were tight with tension.