Only in Your Dreams (The Mountains are Calling #2)

28. Grey

Finley is in my bed. My head is pressed to the mattress, and her hair is spread out across my pillow, the one she stole in the middle of the night. Just like every night. I tried switching to a stiff, flat pillow one time years ago, hoping she wouldn’t snatch it in her sleep if it wasn’t fluffy and down, but it didn’t stop her, so I switched back. I figured a couple of hours on a comfortable pillow was at least something.

Beside me, she stirs, body stretching, a sleepy moan slipping from her lips. I smile at the familiarity of it. And then she’s blinking awake, grinning at me in that way she always does. Soft, tender, sleepy. All mine. The one that makes my heart stop, even after so many years of waking up to it.

“Good morning,” she murmurs, moving to press a kiss to my lips, warm skin sliding against mine. The kiss is slow, lingering, the kind that always leads to more. A tongue tracing my lips, teeth tugging my mouth open.

My blood turns liquid, and my palms slide against bare skin, all the swells and divots I’ve memorized, the ones that feel made for my hands. Goose bumps prickle beneath their path. I take my time, stopping at all my favorite places, all the ones that make her shiver and writhe.

My pulse hammers, blood rushing in my ears, when she climbs onto my lap, thighs nestling against my ribs. Her lips leave mine, only to trail across my jaw to my ear. “This isn’t a dream.”

She reminds me every morning, like she has since I confessed to her that I would wake up from dreams of her, desperate and wanting and empty. That it would feel like my heart was cracking in two to know she wasn’t there, that I loved her in a way I was sure she could never or would never reciprocate.

But even my dreams couldn’t live up to the real thing. Nothing compares to the way she rolls her hips against mine, sinking down onto me, fingers tightening on my shoulders. Her breath hitches in her throat, and a smile curves the edges of her lips, making all my thoughts narrow to just that noise, just that sight, just the feeling of her.

I lean up, catching her collarbone between my teeth. “Even my dreams couldn’t come up with this, sweetheart,” I say into her skin.

Her smile widens, her eyes bracketed by lines I love to trace with my fingers.

Then I’m losing myself, whispering words that are muffled by her neck, the delicate slope of her collarbones, the curve of her chest. I’m tracing the faint stretch marks on her hips and stomach with the pads of my thumbs, trying to hold myself together, trying to make this good for her.

I’m so gone I barely register the knock on the door, but Finley stops moving, her body going rigid, her eyes flying to the door. We’re both quiet for a long moment, waiting to see if it was a phantom noise or if the person on the other side will decide they don’t need us right this second.

“Mommy?” the voice, diffused by the wooden door, asks, and Finley hangs her head, blond hair falling over her shoulders. But her eyes catch mine, and she smiles in that long-suffering way she does every time this happens.

“Yes, Poppy?” Finley pitches her voice loud enough to be heard through the door, absentmindedly touching the poppy tattoo over my ribs. I don’t think she even realizes she’s doing it.

“I’m hungry.” Her little voice makes my lips twitch, and my heart tugs painfully against my breastbone.

“We’ll be out in a second,” Finley says, moving in a way that has me holding a groan. Her hand lands on my lips, stifling the sound. “ Shh .”

“You can’t expect me to stay quiet,” I pant. “When you’re doing—”

“I’m coming in,” Poppy says.

We both yell no when the doorknob starts to turn, our eyes flying toward the entrance to our room.

It immediately halts, and I can practically envision our daughter, pert nose scrunched in a pout, brows pinched over pale blue eyes. “Why not?”

Finley bites her kiss-swollen lip, staring down at me. Although we both know this is going to have to wait, she doesn’t look too upset about it. In fact, she looks radiant. Happy in a way that’s hard to express. Her heavy blond hair hangs down over her shoulders, illuminated by the sun arcing through the windows behind her, making her look like an angel sent from heaven to answer all my prayers, make all my dreams come true.

I lift her left hand to my lips, press a kiss right on the wedding band, the exact one I saw in all my dreams, and her smile stretches.

“Because I need you to go see if your brother is awake yet,” Finley responds, eyes never veering from mine.

“Oh,” I hear Poppy say, followed by the stomp of her tiny feet running down the hall.

I’m tempted to keep going, but we both know we have approximately sixty seconds before both of our children are rushing into the room, throwing themselves at us until we all end up in a heap on the bed, tangled in sheets.

I surge up, snatching Finley’s lips in a quick, breathtaking kiss, and then lift her off me as we both scramble to find our clothes, discarded sometime in the middle of the night when she woke me up with kisses trailing down my chest and stomach.

I groan at the thought, and she flashes me a grin that promises later , tugging on a pair of sweatpants. Backward. We’ve just launched ourselves back into the bed when the door springs open and two adorably chubby toddlers burst through it.

Poppy appears over the edge of the bed first as Finley reaches down to help Charlie up. It only takes a second for Poppy to climb into my lap, grabbing my face with both hands and pressing a kiss right to my lips. She giggles as she does and holds her hands out. “Tickles,” she tells me, like she does every time she touches the scruff on my cheeks.

And like every time, I nuzzle into her neck, making her cackle in a way that fills me up like champagne bubbling over the rim of a bottle.

“I want tickles!” Charlie yells, his stubby arms reaching out for me, nose scrunched just like Finley’s when he smiles.

I gather him into my lap too and scratch my beard all over his neck. His high-pitched laughter fills our room and my heart until I’m full to bursting.

My eyes catch on Finley. She’s looking at me in that way, like I can’t believe we made these two perfect humans . They both have her blond hair and my blue eyes. Though Poppy’s hair is starting to darken, Charlie’s seems to get lighter every day. Sometimes I still look at them, at Finley, and have to convince myself they’re real, that this isn’t some elaborate dream a very lonely past me made up. That they’re not the product of the imagination of a boy in a quiet beige house, wishing for laughter and love and home. They’re real, and they’re mine.

Finley’s gaze softens, like she’s reading my mind, and she leans forward. Her lips brush against the shell of my ear as she says, “You’re not dreaming, Grey. We’re real.”

I don’t need to dream anymore. These days, my sleep is dreamless, Finley’s heart beating against mine in the dark. And every time I wake up, she’s right there, whispering those same words into my ear. You’re not dreaming .

My mouth finds her temple, pressing a kiss there. “All my dreams came true, Finley.”