CHAPTER FIVE
"Did you know you talk in your sleep?"
At Jeremy's question, I jerk my gaze away from the early morning views outside my window and turn to face him.
He's wearing a fresh white t-shirt, though he's still in the same blue jeans he was wearing the night before.
"Do I?" I ask, trying to sound as if I'm not terrified by the thought of what I might have said.
In the same casual voice, he taps his fingers on the wheel and shoots me a glance. "You seemed to be having a nightmare."
Oh shit.
I'm surprised he didn't mention it when we woke early that morning.
I remember waking to find Jeremy studying me with an inscrutable look on his face, and I had the sense he'd been awake for a while.
He must have been thinking about telling me then.
Only, he didn't. He asked if I wanted to use the bathroom first, and since I had no intention of climbing over him again, I told him he could.
But he didn't move. Not at first. He just studied me some more. When his eyes dipped to my bare breasts and I yanked the sheet up to cover myself, he shook his head with a faint smile on his lips and went to use the bathroom.
"Really?" I ask as I try to hide my tension.
There's another pointed glance. "A bad one."
I give him my most convincing smile, the one that fools everyone but my former pack. "I guess most girls in my position would have a nightmare or two."
"I take it you're placing the blame at my door?"
Since I have no memory of my nightmare or of anything I might've said, I shrug. But inside I'm shaking because this is what I was afraid of, the nightmares.
It was the main reason I went to New York and then Chicago. To escape them.
"It wasn't as bad in Chicago."
Although Jeremy's tone is casual, I'm horrified. "In Chicago? You didn't say I had a nightmare then."
"It was one night. When you didn't mention it the next morning, I guessed you didn't want to talk about it, or you didn't remember it."
Ah. So that was what he was waiting for this morning. For me to tell him about my nightmare.
I decide to go on the attack since I have no intention of opening up to Jeremy. About anything. Ever. "You still didn't hear me mentioning it, but that hasn't stopped you from bringing it up now."
He takes the next exit off the highway, and as we're still hours away from Dawley, I'm guessing we're stopping for breakfast. "This is twice now. Which suggests a pattern."
"No, it doesn't."
"Yes. It does."
I don't say anymore as he parks up in front of a Denny's in a mostly empty parking lot, but he doesn't get out. Just turns the engine off and turns to face me.
For several seconds, we do nothing but stare at each other in silence.
"Are you waiting for me to get out?" I ask since there's no way we're going to be talking about the other thing.
"No. I'm waiting for you to tell me about this nightmare of yours and whether it was what you were running from."
"I wasn't running from anything." I turn to shove the passenger door open, only Jeremy's hand closes tight around my wrist, like a manacle. Unbreakable.
Growling in exasperation, I spin around, ready to snap at him. But the intensity of his gaze has me forgetting what I was about to say. It's like he's trying to peer into my soul, that's how hard he stares deep into my eyes.
"You'll forgive me if I don't believe you, Savannah. I saw the look in your eyes when you wandered into that bar in a part of town you had no right to be. I know desperation when I see it."
As I'm still trying to process his words, and how… absolutely right his guess is, Jeremy releases me to grab his keys before climbing out of the truck.
"Come on. Since you can't feed yourself, looks like it's up to me to make sure you get fed."
He slams his door shut, and I take a second to work on my deep breathing exercises since keeping a tight rein on my anger around Jeremy Stone isn't easy. And then I force myself to get out.
Going by the lingering glances our server, a teenage girl with long brown hair and hazel eyes, keeps giving me, it doesn't take me long to guess she recognizes me.
When she repeated Jeremy's order back to him wrong twice, he didn't snarl as I'd expected him to, just quietly corrected her before turning to me with a raised eyebrow.
A scan of the plastic-covered menu reveals nothing on it that I'm interested in. Although I know I should eat, thinking about my returning nightmares and wondering what Jeremy might've heard me say is all I can think about.
"I don't mean to sound weird, but are you Savannah Shaw?" the server asks in a timid voice.
I lift my head from my sticky plastic menu and smile at her. "There's nothing weird about it, and yeah, I am." I grab a handful of my unwashed and no doubt greasy hair that I didn't want to wash because my long blonde hair takes forever to dry. "Please don't tell anyone."
She sighs. "You look amazing. I wish I looked like that in the morning. God, if you had any idea what it was like for the rest of us."
I frown at her, ignoring the weight of Jeremy's gaze I can feel on me. "I am the rest of you." I scan her name badge. "Lyra?"
She shrugs.
"Northern Lights is an old favorite. You're so lucky, I'd have killed for my name to be Lyra."
Lyra's eyes widen. "You've read Philip Pullman? That's who my parents named me after."
"Again, super lucky. And I love Philip Pullman. I think I'll always prefer the books though, no matter how many movies they keep making. What about you, book or film?"
Lyra doesn't even pause. "Book. Definitely book." Then she chews her lower lip. "I, uh, I have a magazine in the back. You're actually in it, but I didn't know you were in it until after I bought it, and then I saw you. God, that sounds kind of stalkery… Uh, do you mind signing it for me?"
I smile brightly at her. "Not stalkery at all. Go grab your magazine. I still need a couple of minutes to decide what I want."
She takes off at a near run, and I give Jeremy a quick peek.
He's sat back in his seat with his arms folded across his chest, observing me.
"What?"
"Shaw?" he asks.
"It was to stop stalkers and weirdos from tracking me down," I say, giving him a pointed stare so he knows I'm talking about him.
He shakes his head with a wry smile, but before he can comment, Lyra returns clutching a copy of Cosmopolitan and a sharpie.
I put my menu to one side and take the pen and the magazine she's holding open to a spread I did in Paris a few months ago.
In the picture, I'm leaning off a balcony with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, wearing an elaborately beaded dress, six-inch heels, and my long blonde hair is a frizzy cascade going down my back.
"Oh, I remember this one," I say, as I scrawl Lyra's name at the top. "I was so terrified I'd fall off the balcony that they had to keep re-shooting it and re-doing my make-up because I was sweating it all off."
Lyra sucks in a sharp breath. "They actually made you do it? I thought it was all effects."
I shake my head. "No. They made me do it. I don't think the supermodels do though, but the rest of us…"
"And have you met them? What are they like?"
I consider her question as I scrawl my message. Once I've finished, I close the magazine and return it. "Not perfect. Because that doesn't exist… for anyone. We're all like everyone else, no matter what this tells you." I gently press the magazine into her hands. "So, it's good genes. That and filters. Lots and lots of filters."
Lyra laughs and takes the magazine before her gaze returns to my menu. "Are you ready to order?"
"I can't decide what I want. How about you choose something for me, Lyra?"
Before I've finished speaking, she's shaking her head. "Oh, I can't… not-"
"Please, whatever you choose will be great. Regardless of what you've heard, we models do eat. Usually at night, under the sheets, with a flashlight. But we do it."
My joke draws another laugh out of her, and she nods. "Okay. If you're sure."
I nod back. "I'm sure."
After Lyra heads to the back to place our orders, Jeremy clears his throat and I turn to find out what he wants.
"Back in Chicago, when you told me you were a model, you didn't say that you were famous," he says, with no hint of expression on his face.
I shrug. "I do okay."
"Well enough to be in magazines even I've heard of, and for strangers to recognize you and want your autograph."
"One teenage girl recognized me," I correct him.
Jeremy nods toward the kitchen without taking his eyes off me. "Want to try saying that again?"
When I turn to see what he's talking about, I find three men staring back at me from the kitchen, mouths hanging open.
I guess Lyra told them who I was.
I raise my hand and finger wave. They return my wave, and the three faces disappear from the hatch.
"It doesn't happen often." I turn back to him with a frown. "Anyway, I thought you knew that. Isn't that how you tracked me down?"
Before he can answer, Lyra returns with our coffee and leaves again after telling us our food will be ready in about twenty minutes. "It looks like it happens a lot," Jeremy says after she's left, ignoring my question.
I shrug since there isn't much I can say to that.
Yeah, I sometimes get recognized, but not as often as Jeremy seems to think it does. Maybe if I lived somewhere less isolated than Hardin, it would've happened more, but I doubt it.
I take a sip of my coffee. While it's not the best I've ever had, it's nowhere near the worst either, so I sip a little more.
"You were good with her. Maternal," Jeremy says suddenly, sounding thoughtful.
My cup slips out of my hand and crashing to the table, sending coffee spraying everywhere.
I jerk to my feet and grab for some napkins, my eyes on the table and deliberately not on Jeremy.
Between Lyra returning to clean the table and my rushing to the bathroom to mop up the worst of the spillage on my top, our previous conversation is forgotten.
Jeremy's words well and truly destroy the last of my appetite. Still, I force myself to eat every last mouthful of the breakfast Lyra picked out for me, keeping my head down, and saying not another word to Jeremy as he silently focuses on his meal.