Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Godfuckingdammit, Brady. You should still be here.”
I searched for Ethan’s number and when I found it, I slid my thumb across the side of my phone, trying to keep myself from pushing dial. I’d just had that dinner with him—just shown him how much fun a prostate could be—a few days earlier, but for some fucking reason, I needed to know he was safe. Needed his voice to shake this lingering worry that my nightmare had left me with.
As soon as I hit dial, I considered hanging up, but I figured if he asked, I could just say I butt-dialed him.
“What’s wrong?” he said, his voice as urgent as ever.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong? But you’re calling me at two thirty?”
I quieted. I was too disoriented to come up with a good excuse. I opted for a joke instead. “I was making the rounds. Ninja has to go around saving the world one drunk Straighty at a time.”
I could hear Ethan’s chuckle on the other end of the phone, and it brought me some relief.
God, what was he going to think about our conversation tomorrow morning? That I’d gone all creepy stalker on him?
“So you gonna tell me why you really called?” His voice was soft…like he genuinely wanted to know.
“Probably not.”
“Well, that’s not really fair, is it?”
He would have thought I was out of my mind if I told him the truth, but after what he’d shared with me the other night about his father and his grandmother, I figured it was only fair for me to open up.
“Sometimes I have these dreams about my brother,” I confessed. “Nightmares, really, that feel very real—disturbingly real. I used to have them all the time, but now I’d say every few months. And they…shake me up a bit.”
“I can imagine.”
“Do you ever do that? Dream about your parents?” The words pushed past my lips before I had a chance to consider the consequences of asking such a strange question.
“I’ve had a few. Nothing as frequent as what it sounds like you have, but I do understand the feeling you’re talking about. Waking up shaking and sweating and crying.”
“Oh, God, you don’t know what a relief that is to hear right now,” I said, nearly tearing up just knowing that I was talking to someone else who could understand what I’d gone through, and knowing he probably wasn’t going to think I was a total stalker for calling him over it.
“I like making you feel good, so I’ll take that,” he said, and I laughed. He was just trying to set me more at ease, which I appreciated.
“So what made you decide to call me, of all people?” he asked.
“It was more than just my brother. My nightmare was from that night when that kid held you up at gunpoint. Everything was the same…only let’s just say the outcome was a little different.”
“That doesn’t sound like the sort of dream I’m used to people having about me.”
I laughed right through all the discomfort I was feeling.
“I figured you’d be dreaming about me hurrying on over to get my dick in your ass,” he continued.
“Oh, I’m sure. Anyway, it was nice just to hear your voice. Not in like a weird I wanted to hear your voice way, but in a making-sure-you’re-okay way.”
“Because of the circumstances, I’m going to let this instance of you acting like you need to check in on me slide, but you’re on thin ice, Ninja.” The playfulness in his tone soothed me, but it shifted when he added, “But really. What happened in the dream? You said the outcome was different, but how?”
“I wanted to do something, to try and get over there to help you, but I couldn’t. My legs were stuck in place. And then…obviously things didn’t work out well for you.”
“Well, let’s just be glad it didn’t happen that way in real life.”
“But when I went over, it wasn’t you on the ground. It was my brother.”
“That must have been really hard.” His words reminded me of all the different sides of Ethan—Tough Ethan, Cocky Ethan, and Sympathetic Ethan. I liked discovering there was so much more to him than I’d considered when we first met at Wreckage.
“It was only a dream,” I said, “but it brought back all those feelings of being helpless and not having been able to do anything for Brady.”
“I figure, especially considering how it happened. It’s not easy when someone you love is there one minute and gone the next.”
I understood why he’d said that. That was his experience with his parents, but there was more to my story than I’d shared with him. And I felt compelled to share the truth with him. “It wasn’t really that simple. Brady was attacked one night at a bar, like I told you before, but he didn’t die right away. He made it to the hospital, hanging on to his life by a thread. I did get to see him before he died, but he wasn’t conscious…and he just lay in that hospital bed, bandaged up, not moving, hooked up to a respirator. I don’t know how to make anyone understand what seeing him like that did to me. Brady was the strongest, bravest guy I’d ever known. He was always encouraging me to face my fears and to never let shit get me down. So to see him like that, so defeated, so weak and helpless…it was horrible.”