“Hey.” I didn’t turn round.
Rami stepped closer, his breath feathering my bare skin as his scalding palm slid higher until it was splayed across the nape of my neck, his thumb millimetres from the scar I’d fled the room to avoid thinking about. He pressed tight against me, his body fitting to mine, and wound his other arm around my abdomen.
It was a hug, of sorts, but it felt like an intervention too. A hot intervention, if there was such a thing, because my head could be as noisy and scratchy as it wanted, there was nothing in the world loud enough to drown out the effect Rami’s touch had on the heat of my blood. The speed at which it pumped around my body, pooling south with a heady kick to my thundering pulse.
I let out a slow, shaky breath. “What are you doing to me, Stone?”
Rami laughed, soft and warm. “You looked lost, so I found you.”
“Lost? In my own house?”
“Hey, it’s my interpretation, not fact. We can debate it if you like, or…”
“Or what?”
“Or you can come back to the couch and drink my beer while we watchDie Hard. It’s my favourite Christmas film.”
“It’s not a Christmas film.”
“Okay, well…you’re wrong, but whatever. Come sit so we can argue about it.”
I didn’t want to argue with him, but the rest of his proposition sounded like heaven.
The fridge door slipped from my hand, swinging shut. I turned around. Rami smiled and took my hand, leading me back to the sofa I rarely got round to sitting on when I was alone. It was low-slung and comfortable, the kind of couch that sucked you in and spat you out again eight hours later with cushion imprints on your cheek and drool on your chin.
It was built for two.
Rami sat, tugging me along with him. I was a stone heavier than him, but there was zero fight in me as he pulled me down next to him.
He passed me his beer.
I took it and pressed the bottle to my lips, seeking perspective in the cool glass.
None came. Rami turned the volume up on the TV. Bruce Willis filled the screen without a festive light or bauble to be seen. Smirking, I drained the beer and sank into the couch, heaviness smothering me, but not the bad kind.
Rami chuckled and plucked the empty bottle from my fingers.
He put it somewhere—I missed the details—and somehow I found myself leaning on him, sliding down his hard, warm body until my head was pillowed on his belly.
And then, because this strange limbo we were trapped in persisted in warped moments of perfection, I fell asleep.
5
Rami
Paddy came for me at the crack of dawn, startling me out of the deep sleep I’d sunk into on Fen’s sofa before anyone, even Charlie, was awake.
He let himself in the front door, calling my name, and giving Fen just enough time to scramble from my lap and disappear.
Head thick, I staggered upright as my favourite—and only—brother-in-law filled the kitchen doorway, big and brawny in a way that made Fen seem small. “There you are.” His bright gaze found me. “I told your sister you’d be dead to the world, but she wanted me to come as soon as the road cleared.”
“It’s cleared?” I cast a mystified glance to the window. The ground was still white, but the overnight rain had flattened it and the morning sun was sparkling bright, glittering off the frosted trees.
“Kind of,” Paddy clarified. “It’s still icy as hell, but the tyres on my truck can handle it now it’s not a foot deep.”
I opened my mouth again, but nothing came out. My phone was on the arm of the couch, half hidden by the blanket I’d pulled over Fen when he’d fallen asleep. I picked it up. It was 7 a.m., the witching hour for me, but practically lunchtime for Paddy.
What about Fen? What time does he usually get up?