Drive Me Sane (5 page)

“I was a little high strung,” she said.

“You think?” he teased again.

“Come on, seriously. I wasn’t that bad.”

No, she wasn’t, he thought. In fact, she was pretty damn cute, the reason he’d purposely bumped into her, trying to get her attention. He got it all right, and then she got his and she’d had it ever since.

“Nah. Actually you’re quite adorable when you’re mad.”

When a long silence followed, Tyler wasn’t sure what he said, but it was clear he’d said something wrong. Sera breathed in deeply and then he heard a faint sniffle.

“Sera, what’s wrong?” With no response, he rubbed his thumb across her cheek to ensure he was correct. The moisture immediately tightened his chest as did the turn of her face away. “I’m sorry,” he added.

“Sorry for what?” Her voice broke as she continued to fight the tears.

Sorry for being an asshole. For letting you go. Allowing you to go through all of this on your own. Not being there when you needed me.
“I’m sorry for hurting you.” That pretty much summed it up.

“Don’t,” she said with a shake of her head.

Her last word came out fragile, radiating the ache in Tyler’s upper body to his arms all the way down to his stomach. More tears followed, cutting his injured soul open further.

Unable to thwart temptation any longer, he reached out, prepared to meet her resistance when he pulled her close. But instead of fighting him, she settled into the crook of his shoulder.

Before Sera had the chance to pry her eyelids apart, her heart rate fluttered toward the ceiling. The irregular beats rushed the flow of blood through her veins so fast that she was sure her eardrums would explode. The unbearable throbbing kept her pinned to the bed, unable to move. Nightmares weren’t usually her problem. Once asleep, she normally stayed there. It was the drifting-off part that she had trouble with.

Trying to remember what had been so terrible as to wake her in the middle of the night, she blew out a few small breaths, gulping back the saliva stranded in her throat. It wasn’t Rollins’s blood-soaked face that popped in her head. Tyler’s tormented eyes were what she’d been dreaming about.

With her pulse slowing, she finally opened her eyes, but it wasn’t dark, like she expected. A slice of daylight cast through the window, showing off the mid-morning sun. The sharp rays reminded her of the lights from the train from the night before. It wasn’t a dream. Tyler was—turning to the side, she saw Tyler lying next to her. The incident by the railroad tracks was real. A flush of embarrassment came as she recalled all the details. The train, her meltdown, her and Tyler’s talk, her crying, then the two of them laughing and then her crying again before the sleeping pill she’d taken right before she slipped into bed took effect. The last thing she remembered was not having the energy to fight the strength in his arms as he gathered her into him.

She hated to cry more than anything and now she’d done it not once, but twice in one night. The tears she’d shed for Rollins were easily explainable. It was a traumatic experience even if no one lost their life. However, the tears that came when Tyler began flirting weren’t as easy to acknowledge. He said she was adorable when she was mad, which may not have been much, but she knew Tyler. She knew what that low drawl in his voice meant, and it hurt so badly to know that he could forget how callous he’d been. After planning a future together, he’d ended their engagement with a few words left on a voicemail.

Trying to derail the downturn of emotions that were again piling up, she glanced at the clock and saw it was after nine. A decent night’s sleep in comparison to the couple of hours that she normally got. Yet the rest didn’t resolve her fatigue. Every one of her muscles ached like they did every other morning, and her eyes swelled from the tears she’d shed. If only she could get through a day without feeling like a tightly wound-up jack-in-the-box, ready to pop at any given moment. Everyone kept saying in time it would get better, and some aspects of her disorder had, but others seemed stagnant.

Lack of sleep and the inability to do certain things still interrupted her quality of life, as the army psychiatrist put it.
Quality of life—ha!
She didn’t really care how great the quality of it was. She just wanted it to be her own and not dictated by something that had happened to her.

Ready to forge some distance, she sat up, happy that she and Tyler had fallen apart at some point during the night. At least she didn’t have to add “waking up tangled together” to her list of regrets that morning. But as she took one long look at his thick shoulders before leaving the room, she couldn’t help but think how good it felt when he touched her. Even with all the hurt of the past, she still found comfort from being in his arms.

• • •

Tyler paused just inside the kitchen. Sera sat at the table with one leg pulled up in the chair and wrapped tightly with her arm. Her head cocked slightly to the side, throwing her long hair over a shoulder as she pored over a crossword puzzle book. She would have looked peacefully engrossed if it weren’t for the constant tapping of her pencil against the tabletop. The intrusive sound conveyed clear agitation on her part, which left him somewhat relieved that she was already out of bed when he woke. He’d had two pretty shitty days so far, and he hoped to bypass another if at all possible, and waking up together would have definitely jump-started another toxic day.

After pouring a cup of coffee, he sat at the table, trying to work up the courage to bring up the night before. A week ago, the only real problem in his life was that of his upcoming single. Now he stood under a waterfall. The problems kept piling up and pouring over top of him. All of which revolved around one thing, or rather person: Sera. How was she going to feel about the release? And how was he supposed to find some contentment when the two of them were barely speaking while staying under the same roof? Which brought upon his biggest problem of all: making things right between them was no longer enough. From the moment he saw her standing out in the yard, he knew all the feelings he’d been trying to ignore were still there. He loved her. Simple as that. All the proof he needed was the feeling of completeness he had while she’d slept in his arms.

Any progress they might have made was gone, though, when she didn’t so much as look up to wish him good morning. He should have expected as much. She was never one for easily confiding her feelings. It had taken more than a year after moving to Cobb City before she began telling him about her life in Chicago. A life so different from the small-town upbringing he’d had. He couldn’t begin to imagine the disjuncture of having to attend a different school each year because her mom found a newer or cheaper apartment in another part of the city. The absence of a father or even a name of the man who’d helped create her had never helped either. Not to mention the string of boyfriends Sylvia had in and out of the house. Some were kind to Sera, while others preferred she wasn’t around. By the age of ten she was staying at home by herself while her mom worked the night shift. By thirteen, she was sneaking out at all hours. It wasn’t until the police brought her home stoned for the third time that Sylvia decided she needed help. Roy stepped in. Tyler didn’t want to think about where Sera’s life may have led if he hadn’t. Yet she’d never let any of that beat her. She was tough, that was for sure, but even the tough needed someone to lean on from time to time.

After turning his coffee cup around in circles for the better part of five minutes, the silence began to wear on him. “Sleep well?” he asked.

• • •

“Yeah,” Sera answered, swallowing down just how well she’d slept with him there.

Somehow in the span of the ten minutes since Tyler walked into the kitchen, she’d forgotten that she was supposed to be keeping distance. The hour-long talk she’d just had with herself about how she couldn’t get swept up with how good he looked or the familiarity of their past and the fact that she still somehow trusted him was as if it never happened. All she could think about was how good his arms had felt around her in those few minutes before she drifted off to sleep.

“Have any plans for the day?”

Detecting a strain in Tyler’s voice, as if he was trying his hardest to keep the flow of words coming steadily, but with apprehension at the same time, she forced her head down. She didn’t want to look up and see what she knew was there. Tiptoeing around what he wanted to say infuriated her. She hated when people treated her differently because of her problems. Yet she also knew it could work to her advantage too. If things continued to be awkward between them, they’d be less likely to have canoodling little chats like they’d done the night before.

“No,” she replied back, keeping her focus on the paper in front of her. She wasn’t even sure what number on the puzzle she was working on. Her thoughts were stalled on him and his close proximity. She was pretty sure his eyes were glued to her, but she didn’t dare look up to see. She reread one of the clues, but then realized she’d already answered that number and went to the next. Looking over it once, twice, three times and still unable to comprehend a word she read, she jumped ahead to the next.

“Flag,” Tyler announced.

Confused, her head popped up. Tyler leaned in much too close, his face turned down at the crossword. A whiff of his scent drilled inside her nostrils.

“Flag,” he said again, moving his hand to point at a number on the page.

A brush of his finger across her arm had her jerking back in response.

“Old Glory,” he said, attempting to clarify. “The answer is flag.”

Flag, she thought looking down. Her brain, however, wouldn’t relay the message to her fingers. His hand continued to invade her space, just as his eyes still raided her privacy. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to claw them out or rip off his shirt. Her emotions were suddenly so off kilter. Tossing the pencil, she pushed the paper aside and leaned back in her chair, staring at him much like she did that first day. “Quit looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

The control in his voice riled her even more than the smug grin and crinkle at the corner of his eyes. He knew exactly what he was doing—driving her crazy, crazier than she already was. “I don’t know. Like…” Like, she didn’t know what exactly anymore. She wasn’t even sure why she was angry again.

“Like what, Sera?”

At first she thought it was pity. His eyes did crease in a sympathetic way, but the sexy turn of his lips looked awfully lustful. Oh, hell! Maybe it was just her subconscious wanting him to lust after her, like she was doing him. Feeling the spiraling, she stood, needing some space before she let it all out. “I prefer if you just didn’t look at me at all.”

She made it to the door before Tyler jumped up, thrusting his hand against the frame to block her exit. “Going to be hard being in the same house and not looking at each other for the next two and a half weeks, sweetheart.”

Two and a half more weeks
? She’d barely made it through the last two days. And sweetheart! Where did he get off calling her sweetheart? Her legs weakening, she begged him with her eyes to let her through. Refusing to physically push her way past, her stubbornness wouldn’t let her vocally ask, nor would she demand; because that would only result in Tyler demanding something in return—most likely a talk. She couldn’t handle a talk right now. Not yet. Finally, as if he too saw the fight falling away, he stepped aside and dropped his arm.

• • •

Once more, Sera was nowhere to be found when Tyler came out of the shower. He’d given her a pass in the kitchen. He’d had her right where he wanted, on the verge of letting it all go, and then he’d stepped away. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be a bastard and force something he knew she wasn’t ready for. Not with everything else she was going through.

More than two hours later the screen door swung open, startling him from a nap. Her only explanation of where she’d gone came by way of an expressionless look before she went to the kitchen. She didn’t so much as glance his way when she went back outside. Frustrations building, he jumped off the couch and looked out the window. He expected a reinforcement of some of her defenses, but he didn’t deserve the silent treatment.

Moving to the door, he watched her fill the push mower with gas. Glancing over at the riding mower parked in the shed, he shook his head. “Where did you go?” he asked bitterly, thinking back to her words from earlier. She didn’t want him to look at her. How she could even conceive the idea was crazy. He did nothing but want to look. She was beautiful in the most natural way, the kind of woman who never needed an ounce of makeup to impose her beauty. It was also a completely unfair request since she’d been looking at him too. She might be trying to hide it, but he saw and she could pretend all she wanted. They still had something between them.

Descending the steps, he saw her gaze dart up and then back to the gas can as she twisted the cap back on the jug. “To town for gas.”

Growing more agitated with each passing second, he asked again, “Is there a reason you didn’t ask me to take you?”
Besides the obvious—she hated him again.

Sera let out a huff. “Tyler, look … I don’t want to fight with you, but I don’t know what you expect me to say either. Let’s just let this go and try to be cordial the next couple of weeks?”

The mower roared to life as she pulled the string and then took off, padding across the grass. He let her take about ten steps before bounding out after her.

She cut the engine and planted her hands on her hips. “What?”

“Why aren’t you using the riding mower?”

She glanced toward the shed then back at him, her face creased with discomfort. The weight of all her thoughts piled up inside her head. He wanted them to pour out. To hear what she had on her mind, to give him some sighting of the woman he used to know.

“I don’t know. I just thought I’d use the push mower,” she answered.

Feeling like he was losing the battle, he cursed under his breath. Then, mimicking her actions, he drew his hands up to his hips. “Why are you doing this?”