Chapter 11
Beatrix
I’m settledin my bed when Cooper comes into the room to check on me. He’s got a glass of wine and cookies for some reason, like we’re about to have a midnight snack. He’s wearing nothing but his sweats, and they’re hanging lower than usual on his hips. My eyes are drawn down, and while I desperately try to tell myself to stop ogling my new landlord, my dream turns into a nightmare.
Cooper disappears, and the room goes dark. The wine and cookies vanish as quickly as he did. There’s a flash of light at the window, and I see a figure standing in it, silhouetted by a flash of heat lightning in the background. Then there’s a flash of something else—car lights, maybe? But it doesn’t make sense since Cooper’s house is off the main road.
The dread inside my chest grows when the person outside steps closer to the glass. I can feel them watching me, staring at me in the bed. I try to move. Try to get up and run for the door, but nothing in my body cooperates. Not a single muscle or limb does what I ask it to. I’m stuck in the bed, and the panic wells in my throat.
I try to scream. I try to yell for Cooper or anyone who might hear me. I hope that Lizzy can’t. I don’t want her to come running. Don’t want the man outside the room to see her. But I remember that she’s with her mom tonight. I’m alone with Cooper, and if I can just yell loud enough, he might be able to come help me.
Except when I scream, it comes out like a whisper. A barely audible “help,” and it turns my stomach. I can’t move. I can’t scream. I’m trapped, and the man outside could get in and kill me before anyone would even know it was happening. I try again in vain to scream. Attempt one more shot at getting out of bed. But none of it works.
Then I realize what’s happening—I’m still asleep. The stress of everything lately has given me another round of sleep paralysis. I just need to wait it out, give my body time to wake up, and realize that the projection around me is just that. There’s no man at the window. I’ve not been hurt or drugged. I’m safe in bed, and I just have to wake up.
It only takes a moment or two more before I can move freely again, but it feels like an eternity. I blink and shake my head, sitting up the moment I can and looking around the room. Just like I suspected, there’s no man at the window and no storm outside. There’s just the gentle hum of the air conditioning and the sound of my heavy breathing from being startled awake.
It doesn’t change the fact that my cortisol levels are sky-high, and my body still feels like it needs to flee the intruder I thought was outside the window. My mind is still wholly convinced I was just about to die, and my heart is pounding in my chest to the rhythm of panic.
The only thing that works in these instances is getting up. It might mean losing some sleep tonight, but there’s no way I’ll drift off now. Even if I did, I’d likely just start the same dream over again. The risk of another round of sleep paralysis has me getting out of bed to grab my laptop.
I glance back at the window. I know there was no man standing at the window watching me. But the hairs on the back of my neck still stand up, and I have this strong feeling in my gut, an instinct, telling me to get away.
I’m too embarrassed to go out into the living room and watch TV. Explaining to Cooper that I’m a grown woman who still gets whole-ass, full-body nightmares like this is more than I have in me right now, even though I know he wouldn’t judge me for it.
Unfortunately,my hiding out doesn’t last long because there’s a soft knock at the door, and I call to tell him he can come in. He opens it gently, and his eyes drift to the floor, where I’m sitting with a pillow at my back, playing on my phone, and absently watching some documentary I found on a streaming channel.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just couldn’t sleep.”
“Any particular reason you’re down there instead of on the bed?” His brow quirks up at my position on the floor, and he leans against the door frame. He looks much like he did in my dream, only he’s unfortunately wearing a shirt this time.
“I…” I let out a sigh. Trying to come up with an excuse on the spot is more difficult than I thought, so honesty it is. “I get sleep paralysis. Have you had it before?”
He frowns and shakes his head no.
“It’s like a waking nightmare. My eyes are open, and I can see the room around me, but my mind is still dreaming and projecting things into my environment. It feels real. Sometimes I wake myself screaming for help, and it takes a while to come down from it.”
“Fuck. That sounds horrible. I hate it when I have a regular nightmare. I couldn’t handle that.”
“They’re not fun. I have to sit up for a bit after. Watch TV and distract myself. Bring the adrenaline down and try to get into a place where I can fall back asleep. You know?”
“I can understand that.” He nods. “But why the floor?”
“I swore I saw someone out the window. A male figure staring at me and trying to get in the house. Obviously it was my dream. Just feels better to be away from it right now.”
“Jesus. Okay. Well, you know you can come out into the living room?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Trix. You’re not a bother. I was already out there watching some TV. I was about to head to bed to finish watching the show when I saw your light on. Why don’t you come watch with me?”
“Oh, I…” I’m short of excuses again, and he grins, stepping forward and holding out his hand for me.
“Come on. We’ll grab some snacks and set up in my room. Watch a movie and then if you fall asleep and have another nightmare, I’ll be right there to wake you up.”
A short while later,I’m sitting in Cooper’s bed, propped up against a pile of pillows while he flips through streaming services, looking for a movie we can watch. We have snacks set up between us.
“What are you in the mood for? Action? Fantasy? Rom-com?” Cooper’s brow furrows as he moves through the suggested list.
“Documentary?”
“Documentary?” He gives me a curious look.
“I mean, if the goal is to fall asleep…” I trail off.
“Okay, documentary it is.” He starts scrolling through the list of documentaries, but most of them are unsolved crimes, airplane crashes, or shows about cults. “You sure these are going to help you sleep? Because…” He gives me a worried look.
“Okay. Maybe not a documentary.” I laugh.
“Don’t they make any like… cute nature ones anymore?” His teeth run over his lower lip in a distracting way as he scrolls through a list of about twenty more crime documentaries. “Lizzy used to love watching them all the time when she was younger. It was all we could put on TV. You know how most kids like cartoons or those educational kids’ shows?”
I nod and take a bite of the puppy chow mix we put together in the kitchen while Cooper had me explain more about my sleep paralysis.
“Well, not her. It was nature documentaries. All the time. All day. All night. And like… some of those shows are pretty graphic.”
“Oh yeah… I’ve had to turn them off sometimes. Too gory,” I agree, remembering one where a raptor was tearing a poor animal to pieces.
“Yeah, well, that and all the…” Cooper waves his hand around. “Mating stuff.”
“The mating stuff?” I giggle when I imagine Cooper having to watch horrified as animals got it on on the screen in front of his poor, innocent daughter.
“Listen, kids ask questions, okay? And then I have to give answers to tests I didn’t study for. I don’t know how to explain all that.” His brow furrows, and he looks stressed just remembering it.
“Well, at least you didn’t tell her Jaws was a documentary. Xander did that to me. Made me watch it and then told me it all really happened. I was scared to get in my bathtub for a week and refused to take a ferry or get anywhere near the Sound or Lake Washington for months. My parents wanted to kill him.”
“Oh, fuck…” Cooper laughs. “I can see Xander doing that too.”
“Yeah. He was always giving me a hard time. I was happy when football gave him someone else to terrorize.”
“Sibling rivalries are tough.” Cooper shakes his head, his laughter fading slightly.
“Yes. Lucky for Lizzy, she doesn’t have to deal with that.”
“Just her dad trying to explain to her what mating is without actually explaining it.” He laughs again.
“Dangers of being a single dad, I guess.”
“Unfortunately, there’s the occasional downside.”
“You’re really good with her, you know. I know you like to keep things private. I respect that so much. But sometimes I’m a little sad that people don’t get to see you the way some of us do.”
“Yeah, well, most of the world doesn’t deserve her. I dread it every time that Billy kid comes over. Constantly telling her to keep the door open. I’m going to have to keep an eye on him, make sure he’s not turning Jaws on or anything just to get her closer.”
“It is a very romantic movie,” I muse sarcastically.
“Okay. We’ve talked about it enough, now I feel like we have to watch it.” He returns to clicking through the menu and eventually finds it.
The opening music starts to play, and the couple takes off running across the beach a few minutes later. Cooper cringes when the naked woman stops laughing and starts screaming.
“You need me to hold your hand?” I tease, running my fingers over the back of his as he grips the remote.
“I might.” He tosses it to the side, grabbing the bowl in between us and putting it in his lap before he takes my hand and pulls me closer. “You gotta keep me safe from the sharks.” I hesitate at first, my heart rate kicking up in my chest at the thought of cuddling up to him, but when his arm wraps around my waist and he squeezes me, I realize it’s his way of comforting me after everything that’s happened the last few nights. So I lean in, resting my head against his shoulder.
“If anything, I might need to let her watch this to show her the dangers of dating fuckboys who fall asleep when you need them most,” Cooper mutters as we watch the woman scream for help while her companion falls asleep with the tide lapping at his feet.
“I kinda feel for him.” I yawn, realizing I’m finally starting to feel sleepy myself.
“Sleep if you need to, Trix. Lizzy always tells me I’m a good pillow.” He grins at me, and his fingers run up and down my side in reassurance.
I smile back at him before my eyes feel too heavy to keep open anymore. Because, to his credit, he is a good pillow, but he also makes me feel safe enough that I’m not even worried about more sleep paralysis tonight.