Chapter 228 | Sorry, I Shouldn’t Have
Dexter reached his bungalow in two minutes.
He opened the gate, walked up the path, and pushed open the front door.
"I’m home."
The living room greeted him with its usual quiet and the Pure-Air Fragrance Artifact hummed softly on its shelf.
He looked to the left and saw Mira in her wheelchair by the window with her eyes closed. Cultivating. Her crimson hair caught the sunlight and burned like copper wire as her Spectral Arms were folded behind her back, motionless.
The moment he came in, one of her eyes snapped open as she stared at him but the moment she saw him looking at her, she immediately closed it and pretended she hadn’t noticed him.
Dexter laughted quietly. ’Mira...’
He looked toward the living room couch.
Lyra was cross-legged with her eyes closed. The Primordial Beast Egg rested in her lap as she cultivated.
Since she couldn’t hear and her eyes were closed, she had no way of knowing that Dexter had entered the house.
Dexter wanted to extend his thoughts but he chose not to disturb her as she looked really peaceful.
He also noticed, with a pang of guilt, that he hadn’t brought anything for her. Now that he thought about it, he would have accepted the pastries Tessa wanted to give him.
’Next time. I’ll bring pastries next time.’
He shook his head and walked toward the hallway.
The person he kinda wanted to see most at this moment was Selene.
He checked the girls’ room first. Opened the door. Looked inside but there was no one there.
Dexter was a strangely a bit relieved about this.
He closed the door and walked across the hall to his own room.
He opened the door and to bi surprise, Selene was there.
She lay in his bed exactly where he’d left her that morning, sleeping. The duvet he’d draped over her was still there, and her silver-white hair, spread across his pillow in a chaotic tangled cascade, was wrapped around the fabric like a child’s favourite toy.
"Rustle."
She suddenly shifted in her sleep and pulled the duvet higher, covering her shoulders and tucked beneath her chin as she curled into it and slept much like a baby.
Dexter’s lips curled upwards.
He walked to the edge of the bed and looked down at her and she looked like a sleeping angel.
Suddenly, an instinct surged into his mind to reach out and strike her hair.
Without warning, his right arm lifted upward and his fingers spread as he was about to strike her hair!
His fingers were three inches from her head when she turned, he face rotated on the pillow and her eyes fluttered open.
Pale eyes disorientedly opened to the world as her Echolocation talent activated reflexively. A pulse went out. It bounced off the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, and the object hovering three inches from her head.
She saw the arm, Suspended in the air above her hair, in the precise, unmistakable posture of a person who had been about to stroke someone’s head and had been caught in the act.
Selene blinked.
She was still drowsy and her brain was still booting up. But the image, rendered through her Echolocation was clear enough.
She glanced at the arm then Dexter and back at the arm.
Dexter causally retracted his hand like he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
He looked down at her. His expression was neutral as he spoke.
"You’re awake,"
Selene blinked again. Her pale eyes, still foggy with sleep, processed the information. His voice. His presence. The arm that had been reaching for her and was now, very casually, resting at his side.
She nodded.
"Mm-hmm."
Dexter smiled. The warm, gentle smile he reserved for her.
"Good morning. You must be hungry. Should I bring your food here, or do you want to eat at the dining table?"
Selene blinked.
"Yeah?" she said. The word came out as a question. Not because she was asking what he had said. Because she was asking what she wanted. The particular, uncertain "yeah" of a person who had just been woken from the best sleep of their life and whose brain was still negotiating the transition between dreams and decisions.
Dexter shrugged. "I don’t mind. You can eat here if you want."
He gestured at the bed. At the warm, comfortable, Dexter-scented bed that she had been sleeping in. The bed that, according to the pillow she had been clutching all night, smelled like him.
Selene was about to respond. About to say something. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Maybe something in between.
Then her brows furrowed.
Her Echolocation pulsed again. Stronger this time. More focused. The pulse swept the room, bouncing off every surface, returning with a three-dimensional map of her surroundings.
The bed was not her bed. The room was not her room. The pillow was not her pillow. The walls were the wrong distance apart. The window was in the wrong position. The door was on the wrong side.
This was Dexter’s room.
The realization hit her with the force of a small, private explosion.
She scrambled out of the bed.
The motion was sudden and quick.
The duvet flew, the pillow slid, her feet hit the floor as she stood beside the bed, her white sleeping gown rumpled and her silver hair in complete disarray, her face flushed a shade of pink that spread from her cheeks to her ears to the visible skin above her collar.
"Sorry," she said.
The word came out fast. Breathy. The apology of a woman who had woken up in her husband’s bed, realized where she was, and was now experiencing the particular, full-body embarrassment that came from knowing she had been sleeping there all night without permission.
"Sorry. I should have... I didn’t mean to..."
Dexter scratched the back of his head.
"It’s all right," he said. "I told you it’s all right. You can stay whenever and for as long as you wish."