This wasn’t over forever. He knew it wasn’t, but it was over for now.
Chapter Seven
This was the most comfortable bed in the world. Nicole felt that with her entire being.
The boy hadn’t skimped on Egyptian cotton sheets, the down comforter, or the pillows that were the perfect combo of soft and firm.
She missed him.
Nicole sighed and read the last few sentences of her book again because her mind had been drifting and not paying attention to the lesson in this chapter. It was a book on love languages, one she wanted to recommend to one of her clients who had a very different love language than her spouse. They were on the brink of a breakthrough in her sessions with them, but it was volatile at times, and one of them would be on the verge of quitting the marriage every other week. Their entire problem was communication and both feeling unimportant. And in her heart, and from what she’d learned in school and in her years as a therapist, that was completely fixable if they would take a breath and put in the work to make each other feel valued in a way each of them truly understood and absorbed.
Nicole was hopeful this book could help them, but she wanted to read it before she endorsed it.
She missed him.
Curling her feet under her, Nicole checked the door for the hundredth time. It was getting late. The clock on the nightstand read 2:11 in the morning, and she needed to sleep. She was lucky in that she could push her client meetings to later in the day so she could get more hours in with Evan, but he and the boys hunted the killer at nights, and…she missed him.
The door creaked open, and for a second, it startled her. Evan leaned on the open door frame and canted his head. The way he looked at her always gave her bats fluttering around in her chest.
“Hey, you,” she murmured, moving to pull her glasses off her face.
“Leave them. I love when you wear those.”
She was struck, as she had been so many times over the last couple of weeks, by how soft he was with her. Like the pillows on the bed. The perfect combination of soft and firm. He was comfort.
Tonight, he was wearing a dark blue V-neck shirt over dark jeans that clung to his powerful legs just right. His broad shoulders and muscular arms looked even bigger when he had his arms crossed like this, and though exhaustion swam in his blue eyes, they looked at her with appreciation, feeding her unspoken compliments.
When he pushed off the frame and closed the door behind him, she closed her book and set it on the nightstand. 2:20 now. She hadn’t realized they’d been lost just looking at each other for minutes.
Nicole thought he would climb over her and kiss her, like he did every night he came in from the hunt. She thought he would pull her sleep shirt over her head and take her hard and quick like he did sometimes. But he didn’t.
Instead, he laid beside her and rested his head on her stomach, wrapped his arms around her and lay there, a stone against her body.
Something was wrong.
He didn’t need words right now, though. He needed some sort of comfort, and she was capable of being there for him. She was happy to. Nicole scratched her nails through his hair and traced the edge of his ear, massaged his neck gently and rubbed his back, then started all over again. And as time passed, he relaxed.
“Garret and Dawn are going to try for a baby.”
A happy smile took her lips. “Dawn told me.”
“I guess I never thought that was an option. Not for someone like me.”
“Someone like you,” she repeated softly, scratching his scalp gently.
“A monster.”
“I’ve seen a monster, Evan. You aren’t one.”
“I’ve done awful things.”
She traced his ear. “Do you know why I’m here?”
He shook his head. “That I’ll never figure out.”
A soft laugh worked its way up her throat. “I’m here for your future.”
The giant man rolled over but kept his head resting in her lap. A slight frown marred his chiseled face.
She continued before he could speak, eyes on his, fingertips tracing his sharp jawline. “I’m not here for your past. In my line of work, do you know the biggest ruiner of lives?”
Evan pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, shook his head.
“Pasts. The inability to move on and letting a bad past poison the present. The future. Did you hurt people?”
He nodded. “At times.”
“Did you kill people?”
“If they deserved it, and in war times. Other vampires.”
“Then it’s your responsibility to deal with that. To grow. To go after the man you want to be, and from where I’m sitting? You’ve spent two weeks obsessively hunting a terrifying creature just to keep me safe, at the risk of your own life. You’ve brought me presents, been kind to me, and showed me time and time again that I’m important to you. You take care of my emotional needs even though it isn’t natural for you. You care about my day, how I feel, and you make it impossible to feel bad about myself. You elevate me. Make me want to do better in my career and better in my life. You try. You don’t get pissed off and leave when I do something or say something you don’t understand. You ask me why and try to understand my heart. You make me happy. You’re selfless, Evan. So, whoever you were in the past, that’s not the man I know, and it’ll never be the man I judge. Your present is important to me. Your future is important
