Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
I can’t breathe.
The weight on my chest quickly grows heavier, crushing my lungs. Each tiny gasp of air I manage only makes my panic skyrocket because it’s not enough. Not even close.
My hands clutch my throat. Breath ragged, heart on fire. They’re dead, all of them and I’m next. Because I can’t fucking breathe and…god, maybe that’s for the best.
Just as I’m about to fade completely, I surge forward, and the heavy grip on my lungs moves, crawling to my shoulders. Someone’s grabbing them, shaking me. Black spots blot my vision until I choke in enough air for them to fade slightly. The room is awash in the blue filter of the moon.
“Emma.” My name comes through like we’re underwater but I try to turn toward the hands gripping my face.
“Emma,” Noah says, voice raised and anxious eyes swimming into my line of sight as I blink, sucking in air. Quaking hands move to brush the sweat-dampened bangs from my eyes.
“S-sorry,” I say, teeth chattering. “I’m sorry.”
He hushes me, pulling my hair back, and tugging me into his chest. The clock reads three in the morning, and Molly purrs from the foot of the bed, totally undisturbed. She’s so used to my night terrors by now that she phases them out completely.
Noah’s hand splays over my heart for proof I’m calming down.
It’s so hard, but I try. The new nightmare is petrifying. Every time I watch, frozen, out the window as my boys are chased down right outside. I watch as their bleeding bodies line the porch, all while I’m unable to move or scream. Noah, dead. Jesse, dead. My Bo, dead.
Hot tears sluice down my face to the pillow. Molly finally stirs and patters her way up to my chest to curl up. The soothing, deep rumbles of her purring pick back up immediately.
“I guess the cat bed was a waste of money, huh?” he says, reaching over me to pet her.
I quietly laugh, wiping the tears that are now like glue for the cat hair sticking to my face. “Sorry, we’re trauma bonded. She’s stuck to me for life.”
He kisses the top of my head, resting his chin there and curling me in tighter to him. These days, it feels like he can’t get me close enough, and I love it. “Was it the same nightmare?”
I nod, huddling backward into him. This is my favorite place to be. I’ve never felt so safe before. “Yeah. This time it wasn’t just you though. Bo and Jesse, too.”
“So, Jesse has officially wormed his way into your heart then?”
“Less like a worm and more like a bullet. He’s kind of hard not to love, I think. Once you get past being scared of him.”
He laughs softly against the back of my ear. “True.”
There’s a moment of silence while both of our thoughts trail in different directions. “I wish I could keep the bad dreams away.”
“Do you mind just talking to me for a few minutes? We can go back to sleep after and I should be okay.”
“What kind of things, hmm?”
“You know, just whatever. Tell me something I don’t know. Somehow I feel like I know you better than anyone else, and also nothing at all.”
He ponders this, turning to lie on his back, so that we’re both staring up at the ceiling, but his hands remains in mine, thumb rubbing absentmindedly along the the sensitive ridge of my fingertips. Moonlight filters through the window in squares across the crumpled blanket.
Noah folds a bicep back to prop his hands under his head and I stare like a lovesick teenager at his messy black hair as he turns to look at me.
“I used to have this dog, Shiloh. She was a black lab. When I was five, I think, my parents bought her as a gift for me because I had trouble making friends and they thought she might bring me out of my shell. So we kind of grew up together.”
A ghost of a smile spreads on his face, one I don’t think I’ve seen on him before.
He looks younger, lighter. “I’m pretty sure she thought I was her pup, sleeping at the foot of my bed every night, following me around outside when I would go play in the woods.
It never helped with making friends though, I was still hopeless at trying to be normal at school and mom eventually pulled me to learn from home.
” He quirks a brow at me. “I had convinced myself I was a psychopath and that’s why I couldn’t talk to people. ”
Confused, I trace the outline of his hand with my fingertip. “Why? Just because you didn’t have many friends?”
“No, because I didn’t love anyone the way I loved my dog. Looking back, obviously I know I loved my family. But I was so…frozen all the time that I couldn’t function correctly. Shiloh was the only one that didn’t look at me with concern.”
“I wonder why you felt that way.”
“Pretty sure I was just scared all the time that Dad wouldn’t come home from a mission,” he says.
“He never did keep the organization a secret from us. He thought it would make it easier for me to accept my place in it if I knew what was going on from childhood. But really, I just obsessed over never getting to see him again. Or worrying that a bad guy would kill all of us.” He shrugs.
“Eventually, I just stopped talking as much. Shiloh was the exception, but when she died, that ended too.”
I bite my lip, sorrow heavy on my tongue from his story. “I’m glad you had her.”
“Me too.” He nudges me with his elbow. “Let’s hear it. You can’t con me out something like that and not do the same”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.
“Give me something sad so we match.”
I scoff. “I was incredibly sheltered. Privileged. I didn’t have much of anything happen to me, ever.”
“It’s not just big events that can be sad, though?”
I consider this, and I guess that’s true.
“This is going to sound really weird, but just stick with me.
I used to have a giant room when I was a little girl, and it's exactly how you would picture a spoiled little girls room. There was expensive furniture, and the thing around the bed that was like film hanging down to make a canopy. Dolls everywhere, bows, ribbons, you name it. And in the corner by the window, there was this giant, intricate dollhouse that was as tall as I was. It had a little gold hinge on the side, so the two sides would open and you could play with the dolls in the different rooms.” I laugh quietly.
“We do match kind of, I think that was my fifth birthday present, too.
But I spent a lot of time in my room because my parents were always entertaining people. I couldn't be around for that.”
I frown. “Actually, a lot. They were there constantly, like everyday. Dinners and meetings. I would get dressed up and come down to say hi and then mom would send me right back upstairs. I spent a lot of time with that dollhouse. I would get in trouble with my mom for leaving it open and leaving the dolls on the floor, and she would always shut it and lock it. Every morning, it would smack shut and the lock would click. And then, when she would leave the room, I would go back and unlatch it, crack it open. So my dolls wouldn’t be afraid of the dark like I was. ”
His hand reaches down and takes mine. I realize I’m staring at the ceiling, lost in my memories.
A frown tugs at the corner of my mouth and I chew on my lip.
“My nightmares actually started when I moved out, and into my home with Eric. I never told anyone this because it sounded insane, but at night I started having the same dream that I was a doll, too. And that I was wandering the dollhouse all day by myself, looking for someone that wasn’t there.
And then, it would start to go black because they’d shut the house on me. ”
I swallow heavily, the claustrophobic feeling like a muscle memory. Noah rolls me to my side so that I’m facing him.
His eyes trail my face, taking me in, his hand running up my thigh in soothing strokes. “I think it’s fair to say they looked at you like a doll, baby, so that fear makes sense.”
I shrug. “Yeah, everyone always just left me to go see the real world. My parents, him. I just waited for someone to come pick me up and play with me.” I laugh. “How pitiful. Is that sad enough for you?”
Face still lined with sleep, he moves his lips to trail my shoulder. The hot suction of his mouth on my skin making me tighten. “His loss,” he says. “Now his little doll belongs to me.”
I smile despite myself. “Do you have a new dollhouse to put me in? I don’t think I ever want to go back to that one.”
He shakes his head, and my heart plunges for a moment until his lips find mine for another dark, sultry kiss. “When this is over, you’ll never be locked up again, Emma. It’s your world as much as it's mine. I don’t keep my pretty things on a shelf like that.”
I shiver at his words, taking his face in my hands and kissing him, hoping it conveys that ache that’s taken over my heart.
“Try to get back to sleep, baby. And if you dream of locked houses, I’ll be right here to open them back up.”