In My Dreams (First Tracks Book 2) Read Free Page A

and
look at you, and have my body back. I want to kiss you, really kiss you, like
we were daydreaming. Remember that?”
    “Um, yeah…” Heat pooled as images raced through my head of
all the things we’d wanted to do before. His fingertips traced over my
shoulder.
    “There’s so much coming back, I don’t know where to begin.
It’s like a puzzle with a million pieces spread all over the table right now.”
    “I know what you mean,” I say, and then he joined me in
saying, “But we’ll figure it out.” That made us laugh together again.
    My face buried in his chest, I lightly ran my hand over him
and bumped into the cast on his arm. Suddenly I felt like a jerk for bringing
his guitar here, but it had made him smile when he saw it.
    It was his right arm in a cast, but I thought (hoped) he was
left handed. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to remind him. It’d been a
while since the accident, so I hoped it was mostly healed by now.
    “Ave…”
    He sounded thoughtful and I lifted my head to see his
expression. The faded bruises were still a little starling—I didn’t focus on
that earlier because I was so happy to see him awake and conscious of
everything. As I watched him, all the lights came on in those amber eyes, like
he remembered the best news ever.
    “Ave, we can do your birthday. We can go to the beach and go
swimming. We can rent a house and sit in the hot tub. Us. Together. We can do
all of that now.”
    His idea made me almost giggle, but a second later, his face
went slack.
    “Marcus?”
    “We can do something about Kyle.” His hardened voice gave me
chills. I didn’t want to dig all that up again—not right now. I started shaking
my head and he reached and touched my face. “Babe, what he did was wrong. Then
he kept pushing it on that trip. He’s not getting away with all of that. Not
now.”
    “That’s behind us…” I said, lamely shrugging. I didn’t want
Marcus to track Kyle down and beat the shit out of him. Somehow, though, that
didn’t seem like Marcus. And right now, he didn’t seem able to get out of bed.
    He just woke up. Give it time.
    “Why don’t you want to do anything?” he asked, shaking his
head.
    “Do we need to talk about it?” I countered. “I mean, we can
later, just not right this sec. We just found each other. And, I don’t know,
everything back in Ashland with my friends is so messed up right now.”
    His forehead creased. “Oh. Right. Damn, I forgot about the
whole Nash and Kyle thing…” I watched his expression morph, going from
realization to worry to something like jealousy and anger.
    I might like a little jealousy. A little. But I didn’t want
Marcus to worry about us or anything else for that matter. And, I wasn’t ready
to deal with all that yet. I didn’t know where things stood with Jazz. Kris and
Nash probably wouldn’t speak to me. Life had gotten so out of whack and I just
left it that way.
    All of that had faded away when I thought I had lost Marcus.
    “What happened? Before this?” I asked, shuddering at the
thought of how things almost ended, but my curiosity was getting the better of me.
“At the beach, you were just gone…and then you woke up here?”
    “I…” He gazed off over my head for a minute. “I was with
you… but then I woke up here and everything was blank. I’m sorry I didn’t
remember you right away. I feel like shit about it.”
    His face showed it too, his mouth frowning and his eyes
darkening with guilt.
    “No, no, don’t worry.” I kissed his mouth softly and then
around his face, kissing the bruises as gently as I could.
    He closed his eyes, and I suddenly I just wanted to be close
to him, as close as possible. I leaned carefully over him and rested my
forehead against his chest.
    This all felt so crazy. Panic swelled inside my chest, but
then his hand smoothed down my hair, as if he could still feel my emotions and
knew about the storm inside of me. He ran his fingers through my hair and
tucked