Page 79 of Broken Heart

I nodded.

“Every night?”

“I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night,” I shared.

The silence stretched between us, and I grew concerned that Cooper might be rethinking his decision to spend the night with me.

Maybe I was being selfish. He worked a physically demanding job and needed to go to work tomorrow. But he was too nice of a guy to go back on his word, so he’d simply deal with it. Perhaps I needed to give him an out.

“You know, I really wasn’t thinking when I asked you to stay with me tonight,” I said, breaking the silence. “I understand you need to be refreshed for work, so if you’re regretting your decision to spend the night, you don’t have to feel that way. I should have considered that before I asked you.”

“What makes you think I don’t want to spend the night with you?” Cooper questioned me.

I licked my lips and allowed my eyes to dart all over as I returned, “Well, once I revealed that I haven’t slept through the night in so long, you didn’t say anything. So, I started thinking that maybe you were concerned about how you’d be able to function properly at work.”

Cooper captured my chin in his hand and tipped my head back, making it impossible for me to look anywhere but him. “I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort,” he insisted, his eyes boring into mine. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about something.”

After swallowing hard, I rasped, “What is it?”

There was a long pause before Cooper spoke, which was enough to make me feel slightly more anxious than I already did about the situation. To top it off, there was a tortured look on his face when he finally did respond. “He’s still on your mind.”

I blinked my eyes in surprise. “What?”

“Your ex,” Cooper clarified. “You still wake up thinking about what he did to you.”

Suddenly, it all made sense. Cooper thought Simon was still at the forefront of my mind. “No. No, that’s not true.”

“But—”

“I stopped waking up at night thinking about Simon, Maria, and what they did when I met you,” I shared, cutting him off.

“But you said you’re continuing to wake up at night,” he reminded me.

I offered a nod in return. “Yes. Because I’ve been waking up feeling so lonely and finding my thoughts immediately drift to you. For weeks now, you’re all I can think about.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

There was a look of utter disbelief written all over him. But once my admission had a chance to sink in, that disbelief turned to determination. Cooper lifted his hand to the side of my head, pressed his fingers in firmly, and promised, “We’re going to make sure you start sleeping, Skye. If I need to be here every night to make that happen, I’m going to do that for you. I love knowing that you’ve been thinking about me. Honest to God, it makes me so happy to know you’ve been into me as long as I’ve been into you. But we need to fix this for you. I want you sleeping through the night. I’d prefer you dream about me instead.”

Tears filled my eyes.

The sheer determination Cooper had was enough to send me over the edge, but it was more than that. Maybe he didn’t mean it the way I took it, but when he said he wanted me to dream about him, something clicked.

Perhaps he’d been referring to nightly dreams involving him. My mind went bigger than that. Could I start dreaming about Cooper in a way that had nothing to do with sleep?

Unsure I wouldn’t make a fool of myself if I said that to him, I remained quiet and allowed the tear to fall to the pillow.

Cooper watched it go, and he gave me all of two or three seconds to see his features soften before he wrapped his arms around me again and kissed me. “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

“You’ve made me so happy,” I rasped.

“And I’m going to keep doing it,” he assured me. “It’s been happening for a while now, and tonight, we made it official. You’re with me now. You are no longer alone. Do you hear me?”

I chewed on my lip to not burst into tears. It took me a moment to rein in my emotions, and I wasn’t entirely successful, but I managed to hold back the rivers of tears threatening to fall. Finally, I answered, “I hear you.”

Cooper kissed my forehead, allowing his lips to linger there for a while. “Good.”