Chapter thirteen #2
"It's not real... it's not real...." I shake my head, not willing to believe it. Denial crashes into terror as I try to shake her a few more times.
When I finally find the courage, I place shaky fingers at her neck and feel... nothing.
"Baby, please, I'm so sorry..." I apologize, tears welling and falling fast down my cheeks, hitting her pale, gray-tinted skin. I wrap her further in my arms, burying my face in her neck, and I weep, grief ripping through me so violently I can barely breathe.
My wife, my Wendy, my baby, my entire fucking soul.
"Atlas!"
I freeze, pulling my face back as hope swells and then dies when I see her unmoving face. I heard her voice, muffled like I'm underwater, but I heard it.
"Please don't leave me..." I beg once more, because it's the only thing I'm capable of saying right now.
"Atlas!"
My eyes snap open, the room that was just bathed in early sunlight now completely dark. Everything blurs together, still half-in and half-out of the nightmare. My heart slams against my ribs like it's trying to escape.
I quickly become very aware of the position I'm in, my arm around Wendy, pressing her even tighter to me.
Her hands are on my face—her warm, soft hands are on my face, stroking my cheeks. I'm closer to her than I've been in too long, and all I need to do is lean forward a couple of inches, press my lips to hers, and kiss my wife like I'm dying to.
I don't, still locked in some hazy spell from the nightmare, adrenaline, and terror vibrating my bones.
Closing my eyes, I exist in this moment where there is no fear, where the last year didn't happen, and the entire world is just us in this house—me and my wife, our sons sleeping peacefully in their bedrooms.
No death, no worry, nothing can touch us.
This is the lie my brain needs to keep going.
Then she presses her lips to my forehead, kissing it sweetly, and I nearly come undone. I grasp onto the moment desperately, trying to hold onto this peace, but the harder I pull, the more it slips away.
"It's okay, honey. I'm here. I'm here."
You are, but one day you won't be.
"You were having a nightmare, honey. It's okay..."
Those sweet, soft, murmured words hit me like haymakers. I feel Wendy's touch, I hear her sweet voice, but all I can see is her cold, gray, and dead.
My mind replays the images with sick clarity.
In my nightmares, she dies multiple ways, gradually becoming even more violent and horrible—a car accident, getting sick, burnt up from a fire, drowning in a pool, dead by someone else's hand, a brain aneurysm like Carrie.
Carrie.
My sister. My brother's wife. I loved that woman.
I loved how she loved my brother, my nieces, my boys, and my Wendy. She was always there to give me woman advice when I was a dumb seventeen-year-old who didn’t want to go to my mom or dad with sex and relationship questions.
She gave Wendy such a long, warm hug after we found out she was pregnant with Liam, grounding her when everything felt terrifying. Molly had just turned one, so Carrie said she would help us with whatever we needed with the baby.
And she did, she and Silas driving over from where he was stationed at the time for Wendy's baby shower, and after Liam was born. She told Wendy she was doing fantastic as a new mother.
She helped me pick out Wendy's engagement ring with my mom, making sure it was the ring of my girl’s dreams.
She jokily called me the brother she never wanted, and she was my sister in all the ways that mattered.
My brother loved—loves—Carrie so goddamn much.
Now, she's gone, and it’s not fucking fair.
If it could happen to them, it can happen to us. It will happen to us.
That's what causes me to yank my face from my wife's loving hands. I pull away, hating myself the entire time, and flip over away from Wendy.
I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth, barely resisting the urge to scream.
"Atlas, are—" Wendy starts, sounding so goddamn sweet and concerned, the way she always sounds.
It just makes my irritation spike, at myself, not at her.
Never at her.
"I'm fine."
Please, baby, please let it go.
"Atlas, you sounded—"
Terrified? Yeah, I was just hugging your dead body.
"Wendy," I snap, keeping my voice hard while inwardly begging her to stop, inwardly begging me to stop. "Leave it."
Please, baby, please, please, please, just leave me alone, just let me be, please, please, please.
She doesn't, because my Wendy loves me too much and she could never let me sit in pain.
"Please, just talk to me—"
I ignite, and the words I snarl are not at her. They're at myself, at my fear, at my helplessness, but of course, Wendy is stuck in the path of my destruction.
Unwarranted. Unfair. And yet, I can't reroute my rage.
"For fuck's sake, I said I'm fine!"
I can feel her flinch, the air shifting, and I feel like the most useless sack of shit on this earth. I've never raised my voice at her like that. I always promised that I would saw off my nuts if I even snapped at her, and look at me now.
Pathetic asshole.
And I hear her sob, then try to muffle it, not wanting me to hear, not wanting the boys to hear. She shrinks herself for our comfort.
My own tears silently slip across the bridge of my nose, down my temple, to my pillow.
Turn over, you asshole, pull her into your arms, and apologize! That's your wife, and she's crying because of you! Turn around, pull her into her arms, and tell her that you're sorry, that you love her more than air, and hold her. Don't let her just cry! She's crying because of you!
Fuck you, Atlas, you're worthless.
But I can't, because that might just bring on more nightmares, might open the door I've been keeping locked.
So, I remain there with my eyes closed, inwardly collapsing like a dying fucking star, feeling so low and pathetic as I listen to my wife cry.
Because of me.