Or should I let these secrets stay secret?
Maybe, in this case, ignorance really would be bliss, but I wasn’t sure if I had the right to make that decision for him.
CHAPTER 25
Mia
A pairof fingers with brightly colored nails snapped in front of my face.
“Hey, Mia, you awake? This is, like, the third time you’ve zoned out in twenty minutes. You’re not having a stroke, or something are you?”
Chantal and I sat at the outdoor table of a café, enjoying the warm weather as we sipped at a pair of iced coffees. In a booster seat between us, Melody kicked her legs in the air as she scribbled in a coloring book, more concerned with her latest masterpiece than the rapidly warming glass of chocolate milk placed in front of her.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said as I swirled the ice in my drink. “Just… tired. I had a nightmare last night. It happens sometimes.”
Except, it hadn’t. I was lying. That was the problem.
Auggie had been unusually distant for nearly a week. If asked to describe how he was acting distant, I couldn’t have pointed to anything specific that he was doing. He still talked to me, still joined me for meals, watched movies with me, and helped me change the few remaining bandages I still had to wear. Yet, whenever he looked at me, I could feel a distance behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
At first, I thought maybe it was because of my new clothing. His unspoken distance had started around the time I changed my wardrobe. So, to test the theory, I’d tried wearing one of the more “masculine” outfits that I still had. Really, it was just a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, but at least it wasn’t a dress.
The sight of me in that outfit had not solved the distance in Auggie’s eyes. There wasn’t even a hint of relief in his expression. All my change in wardrobe did was make him look even more worried about me. I’d made up some lame excuse about one of my more sensitive skin grafts bothering me that day, and he’d spent several hours drawing me a special medicated bath and then rubbing an ointment that he’d gotten from the hospital onto all my burns.
So, my clothing wasn’t the problem.
I’d wracked my brain trying to figure out where his sudden distance had come from. The answer finally came to me when another nightmare made me seek him out in the middle of the night.
Auggie had grown distant with me right after a nightmare had driven me into his bed for the first time.
That had to be the answer, but just to be sure, I’d tested the idea last night. It wasn’t even that hard to pretend that I had anothernightmare. My dreams were rarely pleasant, and all I had to do was overexaggerate them to put on a convincing act of someone overcome by night terrors.
Just like the previous times, Auggie let me into his bed without any complaint. We always started on opposite sides of the mattress, but usually by morning, I would find myself using his chest as a pillow.
Not this time. Last night, I carefully kept to my own side of the bed and didn’t touch him at all. Then, when morning came, and his alarm went off, Auggie got up just like usual. He hadn’t even noticed the difference.
I wasn’t sure what that reaction meant. He didn’t hesitate to let me into his bed, but he also didn’t notice when I put more space between us.
Did that mean he didn’t care one way or another?
Or did he dislike having me in his bed and was just really good at hiding it?
Those questions were bouncing around in my head all day. Even when Chantal invited me out for coffee, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Auggie’s actions meant.
“Nightmares?” Chantal questioned, the concern clear in her voice. “Have you told Auggie about them?”
“Oh, yeah, he…” I paused, realizing what I was about to say.
She was Auggie’s ex-wife. The two of them weren’t married any more, but they had a child together. Surely, there still must be some feelings between them. I couldn’t just tell her that the man who used to be her husband, the father of her child, was bringing me into his bed whenever I got scared at night.
“He knows about them,” I said abruptly.
Chantal stared at me for a moment, her arched brow and pursed lips clearly saying that she’d noticed my abrupt shift in the middle of my sentence.
“Mm hm. Well, speaking of Auggie, that does bring up the main reason I invited you out today.”
I swirled the ice in my glass again, watching the cubes bounce against each other so I wouldn’t have to meet her eye directly. “Oh, you wanted to talk about… is there a problem with Auggie?”
Chantal swallowed the last of her iced coffee, then set the cup down just a little too hard to be casual. “Not a problem, exactly, but Auggie has brought you into his home. He wouldn’t do that with just anyone. Now, I like you, and more importantly, Melody likes you.”