Page 60 of Passing Notes
Her worried gaze scanned my face. “What’s wrong? I hope you know you can talk to me too, about anything.”
“I want you back in my bed. Now that I know what it’s like to fall asleep with you, it’s all I can think about when I close my eyes. And then I start missing you.”
“Nick, I miss you too.”
“We’ll get there. Count on it.”
CHAPTER 19
CLARA
It’s supposed to rain tonight. You come to me. - HB
Confession: I had a recliner in my walk-in closet, and I hid out in there whenever the weather got bad, like right now. I was mostly okay as long as I had a book to distract myself with. I startled easily and each clap of thunder had me jolting in fear, but as long as I stayed in here, surrounded by four walls and zero windows, I’d live through it.
Thunder crashed in the distance and I snuggled further beneath the quilt I’d buried myself under. The lights went out, leaving my Kindle and flameless candles as my only illumination.
Crash after crash had my heart racing until my book was no longer enough to prevent me from freaking out. I set it aside and covered my face with the blanket. I could be brave. It was just a little bit of rain.
Think of something else. Anything else. Think of Nick.
The school year was flying by. August to November had poofed away in a blink of an eye, and it was already almost Thanksgiving. I was coming to realize that nothing in the past truly mattered, because all of it had led me to right here. I was falling for Nick even harder than I’d fallen for him the first time.
Seeing him be such a wonderful dad to his children was healing wounds I never even knew I’d had. I’d forgotten what it had been like with my father around. He’d been the buffer between us and our mother, and it had broken me and my sisters when he left.
Years of therapy had tried to tell me that I could heal my own heart and that not every man would turn out like my father and leave me behind. But my experiences throughout the years had told me otherwise, and deep down, I hadn’t believed it was possible to find happiness—until now.
Being with Nick this time around was something new.
He was steadily blowing every issue I had out of the water one by one, and I trusted him more as each day went by.
Sasha and Ethan were the luckiest kids in the entire world.
Could I be that lucky too?
Loud banging on the French doors of my balcony almost sent my jumpy ass flying to the ceiling and I lost my grip on any bravado I’d been clinging to.
What the hell?
Would a serial killer knock?
What about that big-ass bug? Was it back for revenge?
“Clara! Open up. I tried ringing your bell and texting you. It’s Nick!”
It seems like maybe I could be that lucky. Holy crap.
Tossing my blanket to the side, I made it to the door and threw it open. “You’re all wet. What are you doing up here?”
“I knew you’d be scared. Were you in the closet?” His lips turned up in a grin. But not the making-fun-of-me kind; this grin was the Clara-is-cute kind. The type of grin that would lead to something if I wasn’t having a thunderstorm-induced, on-the-verge-of-a-panic-attack episode.
“Pfft. No,” I scoffed, letting out a relieved sigh when the lights came back on.
He looked past me, his eyebrows raised when he spotted my recliner and blankets in the closet. “Hmm, right, okay. So we’re pretending that adorable little closet hidey-hole doesn’t exist?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s perfectly normal to keep a chair in the closet. I sit there when I put on my shoes.”
“Of course, how silly of me. I’ll have to get a chair for my closet. The edge of the bed is such a poor choice when it comes to putting on shoes,” he teased. He stepped closer and began to rub his hands up and down my arms. “So, I dropped the kids off at Morgan’s and I thought you might be nervous over here all alone. I decided to stop by and check on you.”