Incipient A Dark Paranormal Romance - Bianca Scardoni Page 0,59
felt content. At peace. And also, a little afraid. Mostly because of the movie and its cheesy jump scares, but also because of how easy it was to fall back into this place with him. How easy it was to let myself love him and forget everything that had come before. All the pain. The fighting. The bloodshed. The darkness. The death.
It was so easy to forget all of that. Loving Trace had always been as easy and natural as breathing. It was easy then and it was still easy now. It was the losing him part that nearly broke me in two. The figuring out a way to live without him. I already knew I wouldn’t be able to survive that again…
And that was the part that scared me most.
22. NIGHT CRAWLING
The sound of the curtains flapping against the window roused me from my sleep. The credits were rolling on the television screen and Trace was sleeping quietly beside me. Apparently, we’d both been too tired to make it through to the end of the movie, but unfortunately for me, I hadn’t been enough to keep me asleep.
Carefully climbing out of bed, I walked to the window and peered outside. The street was empty and dark, save for the few streetlights chasing the shadows away. I half expected Dominic to be leaning up against one, watching the house from afar, waiting for the perfect moment to strike out at me.
My skin prickled at the thought.
Shutting the window, I made my way out of the bedroom and then headed downstairs for a drink of water. The oven range light was still on, offering just enough light for me to get around the kitchen without bumping into anything. I searched a few cabinets until I found the one with the glasses and then poured myself a glass of water.
Drinking it down, I turned and rested my back against the counter, momentarily lost in thought. I found my mind going to Gabriel and the exceptional price he’d paid to help me earlier that day. I would need to pay him a visit tomorrow, to thank him properly, and to make sure that he was holding up alright. The last thing I needed was another Huntington brother running amok.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
I jumped at the sound of Trace’s unexpected voice, accidently dropping my glass of water in the process. The glass shattered at my feet as remnants of its wreckage scattered all over the kitchen floor.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” I cried as I tried to rush across the room to fetch something to clean it up with.
“Don’t move,” said Trace and then his arm was around my waist, plucking me off the ground as though I weighed nothing more than a small paperweight and setting me down on the other side of the calamity. “There’s broken glass everywhere,” he said, eyeing me as though I were an idiot for trying to run over it.
Which, I supposed, I sort of was.
Reaching behind me, he flicked on the light switch and I squinted as the blaring light assaulted my eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as his gaze racked over my body to assess any damage before grimacing at my feet.
I followed the direction of his gaze and then winced as I took in the sharp triangular piece of glass sticking out of my ankle like a tortilla chip. I hadn’t even felt it go in but suddenly, looking at it, it hurt like a bitch! Yelping like a total wimp, I quickly bent over and tried to dislodge the piece of glass, but Trace caught my wrists and stopped me.
“You don’t want to do that,” he warned as I straightened and met his troubled eyes, my wrists singing from where his hands had closed around them.
“Oh, yes, I do,” I insisted.
“You can’t just yank it out. You might nick an artery.”
My eyes widened. I absolutely did not want to nick an artery, accidently or otherwise. “But it really hurts,” I whined.
“I’ll get it out, don’t worry,” he said and then scooped me into his arms. “Since when are you such a baby?”
“I’m not a baby. It hurts, dammit!” I ignored the insult and then cringed at the thick coat of red blood oozing down my foot. Granted, this was hardly the worst wound I’d ever suffered—heck, it wasn’t even in my top ten—but I didn’t have the numbness of shock or the pain reliever of adrenaline or the rapture of a vampire bite to help get me through it.