“Babe. Really. You gotta let them take me back to the clubhouse. Steele can take care of me.”
“And what happens when you fall asleep, Player, and your mind starts with that weird illusion? It’s happening every single night, and the effects are getting stronger. If we can’t figure out what’s happening soon, something bad is going to happen.”
They had to talk about it. He didn’t want to. He never wanted to bring his nightmares out into the open. He wanted to pretend illusions were illusions and nightmares were nightmares, but that wasn’t going to help either one of them.
“You’re right, Zyah. Absolutely right, which is why I have to go. We can’t take chances with Anat. I can’t. I’m not willing to take a chance with either of your lives, and I have the feeling that’s exactly what’s going on here.”
Player stretched his arms behind his head, locking his fingers beneath the thick mass of unruly hair she had the sudden urge to tame. He stared up at the ceiling, not at her, giving her the impression he didn’t want to look at her.
“We’re still going to talk about this,” she said stubbornly. She hadn’t gotten as far as she had in the business world by being a shrinking violet. “I’m in your head every night, Player. It isn’t like I haven’t seen what’s there. Maybe it’s real, maybe it isn’t.”
She knew it was real. No child thought up those kinds of horrors. That dark, dank basement with the rats and chains and too little food. With the pedophiles and bloody bodies. The torture, shivering and biting cold. The discipline and punishments, the turning of bodies into weapons. Most of all, learning to build bombs. She closed her eyes, grateful Player was staring at the ceiling. Let him think she thought his dreams were a child’s nightmares.
“I have no idea why I keep having dreams at night.”
Zyah analyzed his tone. There was truth, but also a lie. “You often had nightmares even before you had a brain injury.”
“Could you just not put it like that?”
She winced at the venom in his voice. He really didn’t like the term brain injury. She’d noticed when Steele had used it a couple of times Player had gone quiet and not responded. He’d been very moody lately. She hated not being able to read him. He saved his sweetness for her grandmother. She wanted that sweetness for her, but then it was dangerous wanting that side of him. She was already too entangled with him. She didn’t want to be wanted because they had off-thecharts chemistry—sex was great until it wasn’t—or because she could fix his brain when he came apart. She wanted someone who loved her, not just needed her.
“I’m sorry, Zyah. I shouldn’t be snapping at you. I need to be outside. Riding on my bike. Feeling the wind in my face. I don’t know. I just feel like something bad is going to happen. And if it does, I don’t want it to happen anywhere near you or your grandmother.”
That was all true. She heard the sincerity in his voice. She could listen to his voice all night. Every night. She could lie in bed beside him, feeling the heat of his body, or sit, like she was now, and just feel him close to her and be happy with him in the same room. She didn’t understand why he didn’t feel the same way.
It wasn’t about him being a player like she’d first thought. He was a good man. She knew that from being with him every single night. She was in his mind. She was connecting with him. He was holding back from her. Deliberately.
She got that he’d been shot, that the injury had been life-threatening, but they shared the same mind every night. Healing him the way she did, she had to give herself to him, surrender who she was to him. He saw her, saw into who she was, just as she could see him. He was rejecting the person she was, and that hurt.
No matter what her grandmother said, she felt her gift had to be faulty. The other women in her family had the gift. They found the men who felt the exact same way about them. She went barefoot in her home, connecting with the earth. Feeling vibrations. So certain. Every single time, it was always Player, and yet he never felt those same strong connections back. The physical, yes. Their chemistry was extremely strong, and he felt that, just as she did. He needed her, certainly. But a devastating connection that was forever, that would bind them together heart to heart, soul to soul—Player had no knowledge of such a thing, or at least he rejected that bond with her.
Zyah knew she should let him leave. Go to his brothers in Torpedo Ink. Let them take him to his clubhouse. Find a way to try to separate herself from him. She was already tangled with him so tightly she knew it would hurt for years to come when they separated. Something undefined, some powerful portent inside, told her if she let him go, he would die. She couldn’t do that. She was always intelligent enough to listen to her instincts, and everything in her shouted to keep him close. She hoped it wasn’t just her wanting to belong to him. Could she really be that lonely? She doubted it. She was independent. She knew she always would be, even if she found the perfect man.