Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS by Raffin Barbara

Author:Raffin, Barbara [Raffin, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Plain Wrapper Publishing
Published: 2015-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Cole woke with a start, the bedroom in deep darkness. Was Andi having a nightmare?

No. Judging by the cold sweat making his tee cling to him, the cry that awakened him was his own. He'd had a nightmare.

He closed his eyes, trying to remember what he'd been dreaming. He got an image of a gun and a sense of being inside a car. Was this about his latest wound?

No. His fingers reached for the old scar on his shoulder, the old bullet wound. He shivered, chilled by more than a sweat-drenched tee. He wasn't alone in that car and the shooter had been outside the car.

He sat up, pulled off the shirt, and flung it aside, the movement cutting off any further remnant of the nightmare. Why? He wanted to know who he was.

But there was something in that nightmare he was afraid to see. Maybe if he weren't alone to face it.

That only reminded him how alone Andi had been all her life facing her nightmares. He had no right imposing his on her.

He ran his hands through his hair. Still, he missed Andi in his bed—missed having her to hang onto. How easy it would be to go to her on the couch and invite her into his—her bed.

But if he'd had any doubt before about how toxic he was to her, the residual terror his nightmare left with him confirmed he needed to keep his distance from Andi. At least he now knew he wasn't the kind of guy who used women.

#

In the grays of predawn, Andi slid her legs out from under the comforter and planted her feet on the floor, even the throw rug in front of the couch cold against her stockinged feet. She speed-walked to the woodstove and added a couple logs to the embers, then scooted back to the couch where she curled up in the corner of couch wrapped in her fanciful, sky-blue fleece throw.

Sleep had been long in coming to her last night. And when she had slept, it'd been restless with dreams.

But no nightmares. No excuses to run to Cole—to climb into bed beside him and sink into his arms. Just dreams of how his arms felt hugging her close the previous two nights, dreams of Cole looking deep into her eyes outside the back door when she was gathering wood…dreams rife with what she wanted the look in his eyes to mean as she changed his dressing for the last time.

Tuff Stuff propped her head on the arm of the couch and peered at her with sympathetic eyes.

"He's going to leave," Andi murmured and scratched the big dog behind her ears. "But you don't know anything about that yet. Right now, you're just sensing my sadness."

Tuff snuffled.

She smiled sadly into the dog's big, brown eyes. "And when he leaves, you too will mourn losing him. And he will leave. He has a life somewhere out there and, when he remembers it, he'll want to go back to it.

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