He fired again, the sound jarring through her as Maryanne’s body jerked one last time.
The light in her eyes died.
Lila looked up and into the barrel of the gun and knew her life was over.
And that it had all been meaningless.* * *• • •
She gasped as she came out of the dream, her whole body shaking. It took a moment to remember where she was. Not in Dallas. She wasn’t in Dallas, and it had been a long time since she’d faced down Maryanne’s husband, since she’d looked up and known he would pull that trigger and that no one would miss her. That wasn’t true. Her brother and sisters would mourn her. Her mom might think about her from time to time, but they would all move on and she would be nothing more than a memory. She hadn’t been essential to anyone.
She’d never truly loved someone, and in that moment, she’d understood that loving someone was more important than anything else. Not having someone love her. It was different. She wanted to look into that gun and pray for one more minute with the man she loved, but all she’d felt was impatience to get it over with, regret that she didn’t care more.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
“Come here.”
Oh god, she wasn’t alone. Not that she could forget that Armie LaVigne was in her bed since he was taking up almost all the space. She should get up and let him sleep. When she dreamed about that day, she never got back to sleep. It was only four in the morning. Armie didn’t have to be back at the station house until nine. He needed rest.
“Go back to sleep. I’m okay.” She hated this, hated that she would think about it for the rest of the night, hated that it was going to ruin what had been almost perfect.
Almost? He’d been beyond perfect. He’d shown her how good sex could be, and now that seemed to be erased.
She wanted to go back to that moment when he’d been her whole world. For a brief time, everything else had fallen away and Armie had been all that mattered. Armie had played her body like a master, drawing her out of herself and giving her pleasure and more importantly, peace.
His hand came out, reaching for hers and drawing her toward him. “Tell me about it. You had a bad dream, right?”
He was so damn sexy lying there taking up two thirds of her bed. Moonlight streamed in through the filmy curtains and illuminated his sleepy eyes. Her comforter was down around his waist, showing off that cut chest with its dusting of dark hair.
But she couldn’t go there with him. Not now. This was a one-night thing.
Why? Because he said something that pissed you off? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you get pissed off pretty easily. You said some stuff you shouldn’t have said, either, and he’s still here. How about you chill and see where things go? You do not always have to know where a relationship is heading to enjoy one.
He tugged on her hand and she decided to indulge him. She slid under the covers and let him pull her close. She sighed as his arm went around her and her head found his chest.
“It was only a dream,” she said, settling in. She would wait until he fell back asleep and then she would sneak out of bed. Or she could lie here and hold him and try to think about something other than the demons that hadn’t stayed in Dallas, where they’d belonged.
“Dreams can kick your ass,” he murmured with a sleepy sigh.
“You have nightmares?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I have some recurring dreams that aren’t so pleasant. A couple of them come from when I was on the force in New Orleans. I got pinned down in a nasty neighborhood once. My partner and I were chasing a suspect and ended up in a part of the city where we weren’t welcome. We wound up in an alley with nowhere to go. He took a bullet to the chest. I had to drag him behind a dumpster and keep him alive until backup came.”
It was easy to forget his job hadn’t always been as sheriff of a sleepy town, where most of his job was enforcing the speed limit and making sure the tourists didn’t irritate the locals. “Was your partner okay?”
“Yeah, but it was a close thing. I couldn’t sleep without dreaming about it for months afterward. And I swear I still dream about the accident Noelle was in and I wasn’t even there. My mind fills in the blanks. Sometimes I feel guilty that I wasn’t in the car, that I wasn’t the one who got stuck in that wheelchair. Hell, sometimes I wish I was the one who died. I worry Noelle would have been better off with her mom.”