Chapter Thirty-One
Nico
The nightmares come and go. Darkness pulling at me. Memories roaring to life in my head. For hours, I’m tugged in and out of sleep, fear waking me and exhaustion drowning me again, sending me back into my mind, where nothing is safe or soft or quiet.
I want to go to him. I want to wake him up, beg him to hold me. But then the fear comes back, and I know I need to keep that space between us, minimal as it is.
I fucking hurt, too. My chest is sore right in the middle, where that asshole shoved me, and my back aches where I hit the wall. When I move my shoulder wrong, or actually, when I move it at all, jolts of deep pain shoot down into my fingers and up into my neck.
And I really don’t want Alex to know about any of that.
So I try to deal with my shit alone, lying as still as I can, huddled up at the edge of the bed. Holding in the cries that want to rip from my throat every time I yank myself out of a dream where Patrick has me pinned against the wall, about to hit me again.
At one point, I hear noises downstairs—quiet voices, a door shutting, then footsteps up the stairs and heading off down the hallway. Alex’s mom is home. Then Alex’s phone vibrates with a series of what are probably text messages.
He doesn’t wake up next to me, and shortly after that, I’m pulled back in, deeper this time. A dark room. Glass shatters next to me. Mom’s there, hanging off of Patrick, and they’re sharing a cigarette. Then she’s in my face, blowing hot, rotten smoke at me.
“It’s twelve hundred. Where’s my money?” she hisses, her eyes turning red with fury.
Laughing turns into cackling behind her, and her form morphs into his. Then he’s got me by the throat, and his other hand grabs my arm, yanking me up, twisting my shoulder. Everything explodes in a burst of pain, and I inhale a sharp breath as I wake up. Again.
I’m sweating this time, panting, and staring up at the ceiling, my right arm pushed up against the wall.
Every breath reminds me of the ache in my back and chest, and I screw my eyes shut and groan as I turn gingerly onto my side, facing away from Alex.
I lie there for a few minutes until I feel myself slipping back into that awful dream.
Then I force my eyes open partway, hoping that might keep me awake.
If I tilt my head just right, I can see out through the slats covering the window above me. The blackness of night has started to give way to morning, weak light filtering in from the rising sun.
I’ve never watched a sunrise.
Not that I’m going to drag myself out of bed right now to do it. But maybe . . . someday.
I let my eyes close, imagining it. The sunrise.
I’m sitting at the river, at our spot. Alex sits behind me, his arms wrapped around me and his chin resting on my shoulder as I lean back into him.
Out across the water to the east, over the tops of the trees, the sky turns lighter—first a deep orange that grows more vibrant as the sun inches over the horizon, then pinks and yellows that slowly melt away into bright blue.
I wish I could dream about this when I sleep.
“Alex?” My voice sounds hoarse, and it’s too quiet; there’s no way he heard me. I clear my throat and scoot away from the wall a few inches. “Alex?” I say again, a little louder.
There’s a gentle shift behind me, and I hold my breath, trying to keep my heart from jumping.
“Hmm? Yeah? Yeah, what is it?”
“Hold me?” I swallow hard. “Please.”
It’s just a couple of seconds, just long enough probably for him to process what I said, and then the bed moves again.
A cold shiver courses through me, but I fight against the unwelcome warning, reminding myself where I am and who’s here with me.
Even still, when his fingertips graze lightly along my upper arm under the comforter, I can’t stop myself from flinching.
He pulls his hand back.
“Please,” I beg again. If I could move, I’d scoot back into him. I’d turn and grab his hand and pull it back around me. But I can’t do that.
“You’re sure?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
He tries again, and I react in the same way, my body jerking away involuntarily at his touch. He doesn’t pull back this time, though, and he slowly inches up behind me, his hand caressing down my forearm now with the most gentle touch.
I muffle a sob into my pillow, and as my body starts shaking, Alex’s warmth surrounds me, his chest pressing up against my back and his arm wrapping around my midsection, holding me to him carefully but tightly.
It’s exactly what I need.
“I’m here,” he whispers. “I’m here.”
His lips press into my bare shoulder, and I sob again. It doesn’t hurt—his kiss on my shoulder. I just feel so fucking lost. And exhausted. And I’m still terrified, even though I know I’m safe now.
Patrick’s angry, cold words from yesterday echo in my head, and my heart slams to a stop as I see him coming toward me, threatening and intentional and vengeful.
Fuck.
I move my hand to cover Alex’s on my stomach. That hurts—the movement sending another of those sharp pains outward from my shoulder. But I need to touch him, because I need that to remind me. To ground me. To anchor me in the here and now.
“Please,” I choke out.
I don’t even know what I’m asking for.
He probably doesn’t either, but his lips stay touching my shoulder, and his hand drifts lightly back and forth across my stomach, soothing me.
“I’m here. Breathe,” he says softly, and I shudder and do as he says, taking a long, slow, deep breath. “Good. Again.”
Minutes pass. He holds me and talks to me and touches me, everything careful, gentle, and tender.
Maybe that’s what I needed.
It feels good. Or at least it does after my heart stops hammering in my chest.
Eventually, the shaking and crying also stop. Yet he still doesn’t let me go. His kisses flutter along my shoulder and neck, and, when he settles down onto the pillow more after a few minutes, he buries his face in my hair as his arms tightens around me just enough.
I hold my breath, waiting for the questions I know are coming. But they don’t come. He doesn’t ask them.
He doesn’t ask me where my car is, or why I’m breaking down in his arms, or why I flinched away from him. He doesn’t ask why I didn’t return any of his messages yesterday, or even if I’m okay.
And I know it’s not because he doesn’t care or doesn’t want to know.
It’s because he knows I’m not ready to talk about it.
I take another of those long, deep breaths, letting myself relax back into him, and when he whispers “good, that’s it” into my hair this time, I feel warmth in my chest and a flicker of something not so awful.
The sun slowly grows brighter outside, and after a while, quiet noises from the rest of the house remind me that we’re no longer alone; his mom is home.
Alex doesn’t seem to react, but after a few more minutes, he props himself up slightly, kisses my shoulder, and then pulls away to grab his cell phone from the nightstand.
The air from the ceiling fan overhead feels cool against my back as the comforter is pushed down, and I try not to wince as I lift my hand to tug it back up to my chin.
“Ah, Mom texted last night when she got home. She wants to take us—” Alex’s voice cuts off abruptly as the bed shifts, and then he sucks in a breath. “God, Nico . . .”
Before I can register what his tone probably means, I hear the phone set back down on the nightstand with a haphazard clunk, and then he’s lying behind me again, a cold space between us.
I can feel his hand hovering just next to me, but he doesn’t touch me, and instead, the blanket pushes back off my shoulder a few inches. His breath hitches.
Then his fingers graze along the middle of my back, barely a whisper of contact.
“Nico, what . . . what the hell happened? Jesus.”
There’s alarm in his voice, and I screw my eyes shut, trying desperately to keep myself from panicking. I’m not even sure what he saw, but I shake my head.
“Nothing,” I say, and I twist onto my back as I pull the blanket back up over me. I can’t look up at him, but I hear him let out a sharp breath. His hand falls away from me, and the bed shifts.
“No, that’s not nothing . . . Nico, your back . . . the bruises . . .”
I shake my head again, as much in response to him as in a poor attempt to keep myself from remembering.
It doesn’t work. I feel everything, just as I did when it happened last night.
The rough shove as Patrick pushed me, all the air crushed from my lungs as I hit the corner wall, the jolt of pain in my spine.
My heart racing, my chest tight. The panic and fear and there he was, coming toward me again—
“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” I insist. Because I am. Hell, I had no idea I even hit the wall hard enough to bruise. Yeah, it hurts, and yeah, it’s sore, but the pain’s not anywhere near as bad as the pain in my shoulder. I force a breath and then ask, “Can you grab me a shirt?”
He hesitates but then mumbles, “Yeah.”
I risk opening my eyes as he stands and moves across the room to hunt through my laundry. When he returns a moment later and hands me a plain blue T-shirt, I still can’t look at him.
“Thanks,” I say. Then I clench my teeth as I sit up and pull the shirt on, barely holding back a hiss of pain when I slip my left arm through the sleeve.
Alex is sitting very still at the edge of the bed, like he’s not sure what to do. I don’t know what to tell him, either, and I don’t really want to talk. So I just lie back down, facing the wall with my back to him, and I close my eyes.
It’s probably several minutes later when he finally speaks.
“I’ll be right back,” he says quietly. Then I hear him stand up, followed by the door opening and closing.
I can just make out him greeting his mom downstairs, and they talk for a moment, though I can’t quite hear what they’re saying. Which is probably good. I don’t really want to know what he’s telling her.
Just as my breathing starts to settle, the stairs creak, and then the door opens and closes.
“I’m back. Sorry to take so long. Um, I mean . . .” Alex exhales a breath that sounds frustrated. Behind me, the bed compresses. “Here, take this.”
I force myself to turn over onto my back again, which isn’t super comfortable after all.
Although maybe that’s just because I’m aware of the bruises now.
Alex is sitting with one leg hitched up on the bed, his face tight with worry.
He’s holding a glass of water in one hand and a couple of white pills in the other, and then he’s got an ice pack wrapped in a paper towel tucked under his arm.
Dammit. “I don’t need anything. I said I’m fine.”
His eyebrows pinch together, and he shakes his head. “O-okay, um . . .” Moving carefully, he sets the glass and pills on the nightstand next to his phone and then pulls the ice pack out from under his arm and offers it to me, frowning. “At least ice it? That should help.”
I clench my jaw and turn back over onto my side. “I said I’m fine,” I repeat.
“Nico—”
“I don’t need to ice it, and I don’t need any medicine. I just need to sleep. And be alone.”
Fuck, I hate myself. He doesn’t deserve that.
And I don’t mean it anyway. I don’t actually want to be alone.
I want him to come back to bed, to keep holding me and helping me breathe, to chase the nightmares away.
And the words are right there, trying to come out.
But something’s keeping my mouth glued shut, and there’s that awful irritation and anger simmering under my skin.
I hate it. I’m sorry, Alex.
Fuck.
“Okay,” he says after a long pause. The bed shifts, and I know he’s gotten up. “I’ll leave the water and Tylenol here, um, in case you want them. And the ice pack, too. And I’ll just be downstairs, I guess. My mom probably needs help with something.”
Please don’t leave. I’m sorry. Goddammit.
“Alex . . .” He doesn’t hear me, because by the time I finally force out the word, he’s already gone.