board that train.
If he wanted more, I would be naked by now, pressed up against his body, hard with desire.
If he wanted more, I’d be aching in different places.
And since I didn’t remember anything, and I didn’t get the impression that Holden was the drug-you-so-you-can’t-consent kind of guy, clearly nothing of the sort had taken place. No, the impression I got from Holden was that he held himself to such rigid standards that he probably gave the women he slept with keys to his house and the PIN to his debit card before getting undressed.
I laughed at the thought. He’d asked me last night why I trusted him, and I hadn’t been able to give him a real answer. I just knew, deep down, that he was good.
My laugh must have woken him up though, because I felt Holden stir behind me, murmuring something incomprehensible and sleepy as he surfaced from his dreams. Then he froze, his body going stiff for several seconds.
I braced for the inevitable, and sure enough, he pushed himself back in bed, opening up space between us. He cleared his throat, multiple times.
I rolled over and regarded him. He looked panicked, and confused, and surprised. It was actually kind of cute, seeing his masculine features go all flustered and unsure. I smiled.
“Morning,” I whispered, expecting my throat to ache, but it actually felt a little better than it had yesterday. It still felt like someone had dumped wet cement down my throat and I was trying to talk around it, but some of the burning was gone.
Holden’s eyes went wide. “I—I didn’t—I wasn’t sure you—”
I lost the rest of it when I started laughing. I knew he was trying to backpedal out of the situation, desperate to make it clear that him cuddling me as we slept did not mean he was interested. I got it. But since this was probably the first and last time I’d ever share a bed with him, I decided to enjoy it a little longer.
“I didn’t mean to—you were just—you were thrashing in your sleep again,” Holden stammered. “I was just trying to keep you from hurting yourself. Or screaming.”
I raised my hand, waved it once, and let it fall back to the mattress, trying to indicate that it was okay.
“I never meant to—” he didn’t even finish the sentence, just pushed himself back another few inches and sat up. “I should go.”
He scrambled over me and out of bed, and now I felt dumb, still lying horizontal, so I sat up too. Holden looked around the room like he was trying to locate a set of car keys—the better to high-tail it out of my presence, I guess—and he shoved his hands in his pockets.
I sighed, felt on the floor for my notebook, and grabbed the pen. Just because I could talk didn’t mean it was all that pleasant. I held the notebook up when I was done.
“Relax, dude. It’s not a big deal.”
“I didn’t say it was a big deal,” Holden snapped.
I tried to remind myself that I was amused by this whole freak-out thing, but what was cute at first was becoming a bit insulting.
“I just have to get to work, is all.” Holden looked longingly at the door. “You’ll be—I mean, I’m sure you want to—that is, you’ll want to research. About what you remembered. Right? Or do…whatever it is you wanted to do in the library.”
“Sure. No worries.”
I held the notebook up, then waved, officially giving him permission to withdraw and have his gay panic attack elsewhere. You’d think the guy had never spooned with a male friend before.
But even if he were being weird, he was right that I had things I should be doing today. And probably, he did too. So, I smiled and nodded and tried not to feel disappointed when he practically ran out of the room.
The trouble was that none of what I’d remembered from the dream made it any easier to google myself. Probably because I still didn’t know anything useful, like my name or age or where the hell I’d been when I got kidnapped. Or even—I hated to admit it, but it was true—whether it had really happened.
I felt sure it had. In my bones. The boat thing would explain how I ended up in the water, someone strangling me would explain my neck. The whole situation could explain why I was so terrified of going back out into the world right now.
But I didn’t have a