Chapter 8

Blake heldhis breath for a split second, part of him expecting her to pull away. He hoped that didn't happen because her anguish, her almost tangible fear, had shaken him to the core, and he needed to take care of her as much as she needed someone to console her.

Erika blinked slowly, her gaze locked on his. He could see her trying to process his intentions. He was used to his Erik being confident, steady, low-key, and positive.

None of those things were present at the moment.

While her shaking had stopped, every now and then, another tear slid down her cheek. He wasn't sure she realized she was still crying.

"I…" she whispered, pausing, then—hallelujah—nodding.

"Stay right there." He placed a kiss on her cheek.

Heading to his bedroom, he quickly rummaged through his dresser drawers for clothing for her. Crossing the hall to grab some of her own things felt like too big a journey to make. He didn't want to leave her alone long enough for Erika to come up with an excuse to leave.

Returning to the bathroom, he was pleased—and surprised—to discover her exactly as he'd left her. Numbness and exhaustion were winning the day in his poor girl.

Blake grabbed another towel, using it to dry off her arms, her back, and her chest. The fact her bra was as wet as her shirt told him she'd been out in the elements for way too long. He tugged the T-shirt he'd grabbed for her over her head, unsurprised that it hung to mid-thigh. He had at least six inches on Erika, and he had to size up to accommodate his muscular arms, so the extra-large shirt swallowed her runner's body.

He heard her sharp intake of breath when he reached beneath the shirt, his arms encircling her so that he could find the hooks on her bra. Once it was unfastened, he pulled his arms away and gave her a smile.

"Do that woman trick where you pull it off with the shirt on," he said.

She laughed lightly, the sound music to his ears after the pain of listening to his typically happy best friend sobbing.

She pulled the straps of her bra free of her arms beneath the shirt and deposited the bra on top of the growing pile of wet clothing.

Blake wasted no time moving on to the next part, worried this might be the bridge too far. Kneeling before her, he helped her out of her socks and shoes. Then he lifted the hem of the shirt just enough that he could reach the button and zipper on her jeans. The wet denim was clinging to her legs, which meant, he had his work cut out for him in terms of stripping it off.

Erika remained still when he unfastened the jeans, then she tried to help, shimmying her hips as he worked the tight denim down. It took a couple of minutes before they managed to get the jeans completely off.

Rising, he bent slightly, reaching for the elastic of her panties. For the first time, Erika showed some resistance, her hands gripping his wrists to stop him.

"They're wet too," he murmured, his lips close to her ear. "I have some clean boxers for you to put on."

He expected her to insist on returning to her place for clothes, so he was surprised when, instead, she slowly released his wrists, allowing him to continue.

Pulling the panties down, he encouraged her to kick them off before he knelt once more, helping her into the boxer briefs. He tried to be a gentleman, tried not to look at her, but he failed.

That was when he admitted he hadn't really tried at all.

His teammates' comment that she was his girlfriend kept pinging around in his brain, and with each passing minute, the truth of that statement became more and more obvious.

Now that he'd opened his eyes to it, it was glaringly obvious.

Unfortunately, Erika was either as oblivious as he'd been, or she didn't view him in that way. After all, she'd been on a date tonight with Doug…the tool. He realized just how immature and jealous his feelings toward the other man were. Especially considering he'd only met the asshole once and he had seemed nice.

Not that it mattered.

Doug was trying to steal Blake's…girlfriend.

Fuck it. He wasn't going to pretend she wasn't that anymore, wasn't going to keep using the wrong signifiers. She wasn't his neighbor or his best friend. Or at least, she wasn't just those things.

No. First and foremost, she was his girlfriend. But given the hellish night she'd had, he knew tonight wasn't the night to drop that bomb on her.

Once she was changed, Blake led her into his bedroom. Pulling back the duvet, he pointed at the mattress. "Lie down."

Erika's brows furrowed, but he refused to give her a chance to argue.

"Your skin is still cool and clammy. You need to get warm or you'll get sick. Besides," he added, "I'm not letting you go home until we talk about what happened tonight."

Erika sighed. "I don't suppose we could just chalk it up to a bad night and forget about it."

He crossed his arms. "What do you think?"

The fact that she gave in, lying down on the bed without making a fuss, told him just how beaten down Erika was.

Returning to his dresser, Blake pulled out a pair of lounge pants for himself. He stepped into the bathroom to change, not willing to press his luck with her. She was in his bed, where she belonged, and he intended to see that she stayed there.

He didn't bother with a shirt. He probably should have grabbed one, but it wasn't like Erika hadn't seen him shirtless countless times before. The idea of building on the intimacy between them appealed to him. And even though he had no intention of doing anything more than talking to her tonight, he wanted her to become comfortable with him in his bed.

"Stay there." He headed toward the door that led to the hallway. "I want to lock up and check on Corky."

Once again, he worked fast, locking the door to his apartment, then checking Corky's bowls. She had plenty of food and water. She'd sacked out on the couch, lifting her head when he entered the living room. When he started back toward the bedroom, he grinned when he heard her little feet tapping on the floor behind him. On nights when she was with him, she always slept in his bed. She was a very affectionate dog, which meant, she didn't sleep on her half of the bed but on his side, with him. If he rolled away in the middle of the night, Corky would shift so that some part of her body was snuggled next to him. It was adorable.

Blake turned off the hall light when he entered the bedroom. Because of the cloudy skies, there was very little light provided from outside, so he crossed to the bathroom, turning that light on before closing the door, leaving it open just a few inches. He wanted to be able to see Erika's face as they talked, wanted to read her emotions and comfort her if she started to cry again.

He crossed to his side of the bed, crawling beneath the covers. If Erika was surprised by that, she didn't reveal it. Blake lay down next to her, facing her. The two of them chuckled softly when Corky hopped on the bed, prancing right between them, settling down in the middle.

Within seconds, the sweet puppy had closed her eyes and fallen sound asleep. Blake figured it wouldn't be long before she started snoring softly.

Erika lay on her back, hugging the edge of her side of the bed. Despite the fact she was obviously tired, her eyes were wide open, starting at the ceiling.

"Roll over, Erik. Look at me."

She did as he said, her sad eyes focused on him.

Reaching out, he brushed a strand of hair away from her face, then cupped her cheek. "Are you okay?"

She started to nod, then changed her response to a one-shoulder shrug.

"What happened?"

Erika blew out a slow breath, her response seemingly coming from left field. "Did I ever tell you why I became a doctor?"

He frowned, confused, then shook his head. "No. You didn't."

Erika bit her lip. "When I was younger, I was a bit of a wild child."

He grinned. "You're going to have to define wild child, because I'm having trouble picturing you in my version of that term."

"I sort of broke bad when I started high school. I'm an only child, and my parents were pretty overprotective."

Blake had spent a fair amount of time with Mr. and Mrs. Nelson, the older couple always very welcoming and kind. He attributed Erika's easygoing nature to them because they struck him as the type of people to go with the flow. "Guess them being overprotective makes sense. My mom had to spread her protectiveness a bit thinner, considering she was raising me, my needy-ass half-brother, and my two crazy stepbrothers."

Erika smiled, perfectly aware that Blake adored all three of his younger siblings. His mom had married Alan, his stepdad, when Blake was eight. Alan, who had full custody of his boys from his previous marriage, brought Marco and Todd—six and seven, respectively—into Blake's family. A couple of years after Alan and Mom married, they had Julian. The baby of the family, Julian had probably been the most doted-on kid in the world because in addition to Mom and Alan, he'd managed to wrap his three big brothers around his finger as well.

"Your brothers are awesome."

He pretended to disagree. "Glad you think so. I'm willing to sell them to you. Super cheap."

She reached out, shoving at his shoulder lightly. "Be careful because I might take you up on that offer. I've always wanted siblings."

Blake realized they'd strayed off topic. "You were about to tell me about your wild-child days."

Erika grimaced. "When I started high school, I hooked in with a not-great group of friends. One of the girls, Melanie, came from a home where there wasn't a lot of supervision, so we hung out in her basement a lot, sneaking her dad's beer, her mom's cigarettes, and taking hits from her older brother's bong."

Blake's eyebrows rose. "No way." While Erika liked her wine, he never would have imagined she'd been a smoker—of cigarettes or pot.

"I'm not proud of the way I behaved back then. I'd always been an honor roll student in elementary and middle school, but that did not hold true for the first semester of ninth grade. My report card was a potpourri of C's, D's, and even an F in English. I hate creative writing."

That part didn't surprise him at all. While he enjoyed reading fiction—he was a big fan of mysteries—Erika's chosen "pleasure" reading was the nonfiction variety, shit that would bore Blake to tears.

"Melanie's neighbor, Troy, started coming over a lot while we were hanging. He was seventeen and a junior—he'd been held back one year. He had his own car and a tattoo of a snake on his arm, and I thought he was the epitome of cool," Erika continued. "We started dating, and his best friend, Jacob, started going out with Melanie, so our basement hijinks evolved into massive make-out sessions. Until my report card arrived."

"Grounded?" Blake asked.

She nodded. "Big-time. On the heels of that, my mom found out about Troy and put her foot down on us dating, claiming no good would come from a seventeen-year-old boy going out with a fourteen-year-old girl. I cried and yelled and told them they were ruining my life…typical teenage girl stuff. But they didn't relent. Being kept away from my true love was the worst form of torture," she said sarcastically, "so when Troy texted one night, telling me to sneak out, I agreed. I thought I was in love…and I'd decided he should be my first."

While Blake knew the story was ancient history, he was having a hard time not wanting to track down Troy and beat the shit out of him. "So you snuck out?"

"Yeah. Crawled out my bedroom window and met Troy at the end of my block, where he was parked. He knew about some out-of-the-way country road right outside the city where we could park…and other things."

Erika slowly stroked her hand along Corky's back as she told the story. Her eyes had a faraway look, and he could imagine her replaying that night in her mind.

"We'd just hit the city limits when the storm started. It was a really nasty one. The weather forecasters had been warning about flash flooding. Troy's country road was narrow with lots of sharp turns. He was driving too fast, and I told him so, but he just laughed and teased me about being scared."

Blake had a feeling where this story was headed.

"On one bad turn, he ran off the road. There was a sharp incline, and given the speed he was driving, we had enough momentum that the car flipped over into a ditch. It probably would have flipped over a few times, but we were stopped by a tree on the driver's side. Troy's side."

"Jesus."

There was enough light in the room for him to see that Erika had gone pale, the memory bad enough to still provoke fear. He reached across Corky, placing his hand on her waist. He gave it a gentle squeeze. "You don't have to talk about it if?—"

"No," she interjected. "I've actually never talked about that night, never told anyone… I've always been too ashamed of my actions. But I want to tell you."

Blake wasn't sure what to make of that, but he was more than capable of shouldering as much of this weight as he could if she was willing to share the load with him.

"The roof of the car sank into the ditch, which was deep with water from the thunderstorm. It was still raining, a total deluge—just like tonight. It was pitch black except for the occasional strikes of lightning. When one flashed, I was able to see that Troy was unconscious and bleeding a lot. I tried to unfasten my seat belt, but it was stuck. And even if I'd managed, the roof of the car had crushed in enough that there was no way I could get the car door open or crawl out of the window."

Blake shifted, wanting to get closer to Erika. His movement woke Corky, who took exception to being smushed between them. She stood, stretching dramatically before moving to the foot of the bed to sleep there. Blake quickly filled the space she'd just vacated, turning to lay on his back while wrapping his arm around Erika's shoulders, pulling her close enough that she could use his bare chest as a pillow.

"I know you're here and you're obviously okay, but, Erik, I need you to get to the end of this story quicker because I'm stressing the fuck out right now."

She gave him a breathy laugh that was less humor, more an attempt to mask a sob.

He tightened his grip.

"I kept calling out Troy's name, but he never answered. I started to worry that maybe he was dead, and panic set in, hard. We were upside down in a ditch, with the rain pounding outside. I kept imagining the water was rising and I was terrified I'd drown. A couple of cars passed, but I guess they couldn't see us."

"I can't even imagine how scared you must have been."

"It was bad," she admitted. "So I did what most people in life or death situations do. I started making deals with fate, God, Buddha, whoever I thought might be listening, promising to change my ways. I swore I'd be a good daughter, that I'd get good grades, and that I'd dedicate my life to saving others if only I could live."

"Erik," Blake said softly, tilting her face so that she was looking at him. He was moved by her story and her commitment. She'd made a deal with some unseen force, and she kept her promise. It was all just so…her. "You stuck by your vow."

"I had to. Because after an hour or so, someone drove by, and they did see us. They called 9-1-1, and soon we were surrounded by first responders. Even with help there, we were still trapped and the water was rising. The firefighters had to use the jaws of life to cut us out of the car." She stopped, taking several labored breaths.

Blake placed a kiss on the side of her head. "I understand now why you're so afraid of thunderstorms."

"And tight spaces," she added. "My claustrophobia is no joke."

"What happened after they got you out of the car?"

"We were transported to the hospital."

"Troy was alive?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes, but he spent a couple of nights in ICU. Broke his arm in three places and his femur."

Blake winced.

"He also hit his head hard and there was swelling of the brain."

"What about you?" Blake asked.

"I was very lucky. I had a minor concussion and hellacious bruising, especially on my chest and shoulder from the seat belt, but I was treated and released that night."

"Your parents must have been out of their minds," he observed.

Erika went quiet for a moment, nodding slowly. "I heard my mom talking to one of the cops in the ER. She said they didn't even realize I wasn't in my room."

Blake recalled the night Erika told him about Sara dying, about her mother saying the same thing. He was beginning to understand why Sara's passing had hit her so hard.

Blake stroked her hair. "Were they angry?"

"Honestly? No. My mom did her usual protective momma bear thing, getting a list of dos and don'ts from the nurses and doctors in terms of how to take care of me…while my dad didn't say a word. He just stepped next to the hospital bed and pulled me into his arms, hugging me for the longest time, while I cried and apologized and promised I would never disobey them again."

"Given the fact you're a doctor, I'd say you turned over a new leaf."

She lifted her head. "I walked away from the bad-influence friends, broke up with Troy, got straight A's every semester after that, and started taking the path that would lead me to medical school."

"You're amazing."

Erika narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "No. I'm not. I made a bad decision, and I almost paid for it with my life. I thought I'd turned things around, and I was okay with what had happened that night, but then…" She swallowed heavily. "Sara." Her voice broke on the other girl's name.

Blake understood. "She didn't get the chance to turn things around."

Quiet tears slid down Erika's cheeks. "She fell for the wrong boy and made one stupid split-second decision—just like I did when I got into Troy's car. I can't understand why she died when I lived."

"Life doesn't play fair, Erik. It's a roll of the dice."

She obviously didn't like that answer.

"I kept picturing my parents' faces, getting the same news about me that I had to deliver about Sara. I…" She sighed. "I don't know. I think I've spent the last couple of weeks dealing with survivor's guilt."

Blake could understand that. "That makes sense in a way."

"It's been on my mind a lot, so when that storm hit tonight and Corky broke the leash and ran… Too much bad shit came up, and I lost it. I'm sorry about that, by the way."

He cupped her face, forcing her to look at him again. "I already told you I didn't want to hear you apologize. You have nothing to be sorry about." He kissed her forehead, then her cheek, then gave her a soft kiss on the lips.

Erika didn't hesitate to kiss him back, which felt like progress.

When they pulled apart, she smiled, one that was devoid of the same lingering sadness he'd seen in her expression all night.

"Thank you for telling me that story."

"Thank you for listening. I don't know why I never told you before. I guess…even after all these years, I'm still ashamed of my behavior."

Blake grinned. "You were fourteen years old. That's when we all do stupid shit designed to make our parents crazy."

He felt some of the tension leave her body. "Bet you gave your mom a run for her money."

"You know I did," he said, his tone pure bragging. He spent the next ten minutes filling her in on his teenage exploits, his stories cracking her up as she finally turned the corner on her fears and anguish for good.

"You know," Erika said. "You've never told me why you decided to pursue hockey."

"Oh, that's an easy one. Because of my stepdad."

She looked at him, clearly waiting for him to expound.

"That's it? Not much of a storyteller, are you?" she teased.

Blake grinned. "You know my dad split when I was three." He and Erika had discussed childhoods near the beginning of their friendship, so she knew his dad had an affair with a coworker and decided to dump family number one to start family number two. Maybe Blake would have been bitter about that if he hadn't had the world's greatest mom and stepdad. Mom had never let him feel the absence of his dad, taking on both roles with ease. When he told her he wanted to play hockey—because his best friend in second grade did—she signed him up, bought the equipment, and started watching the sport in an attempt to understand it.

"I know about your dad leaving," Erika confirmed.

"When I started playing hockey, Alan was my first coach. That's how he and my mom met. He knew she was a single mom with very little knowledge of the sport, so he spent extra time helping me, teaching me the basics along with Todd, who was also on the team. I was hooked on the sport from day one, and Alan was my biggest cheerleader. He said he knew right from the start that I had the talent to play professionally. He encouraged me without pushing, always patiently guiding without putting any pressure on me, if that makes sense. I still go to him if I find myself struggling with some part of my game. I've had countless hockey coaches in my life, but he's been the best."

"I've always liked Alan," Erika confessed, "but now, I think I love him. I'm so glad you had him in your life."

"Me too. Because I'm sure that without him, I wouldn't be where I am today. He set me on the path to the best life ever."

Erika smiled. "So cool."

Then Blake said something he'd never admitted aloud. "I hope I can be as good a father to my kids as he was to me and my brothers."

"Kids?" Erika tilted her head. "I'm not sure I've ever heard you say you want kids."

He gave her a serious look. "Of course I do." What he didn't add was that he wanted them with her, wanted to see her belly grow round as she carried his son or daughter. God willing, they'd have one of each.

She raised one eyebrow. "Well, you might want to reconsider your timeframe for acquiring a ball and chain, otherwise people are going to think you're the grandfather when you go to all the school functions."

Blake ruffled her hair playfully. "I'll take that under advisement."

Erika covered her mouth with her hand, trying to hide a yawn. "I should probably go home."

He shook his head. "Nope. We're having a sleepover."

"Aren't we a little old for slumber parties?"

Blake chuckled. "Never too old." He leaned closer and gave her another kiss on the head. He wanted to expand on it, wanted to kiss her and hold her and take her the way he'd spent too many nights fantasizing about…ever since that masturbation lesson.

Erika didn't put up a fight—mercifully. Instead, she nestled into his arms, resting her cheek on his chest and closing her eyes.

Five minutes hadn't passed before he recognized the deep, even breathing that told him she'd fallen asleep. Not that he was surprised after the night she'd had.

Sleep took longer for Blake. Not because he was stressed out or anxious but because he wanted to savor the feeling of Erika in his arms.

Having her here in his bed, Corky asleep at their feet…

He sighed, aware that his world had just clicked into place.

Everything in this moment was exactly how it was supposed to be.

Now he just had to find a way to keep it.