28. Charli
28
CHARLI
I can feel his hands on me. His grip on my arms, shaking me—his spit flying in my face as he screams at me. I can’t make out a word he’s saying, but that part doesn’t matter. What matters is that he hates me, he has his hands on me, and this time, nobody’s going to come to rescue me…
All at once, I sit bolt upright in bed, my brow sheened with sweat, my heart slamming against my chest. I’m breathing hard, the corners of my vision blurry with panic, and nausea stirring in my stomach.
It takes me a moment to remember where I am. I look around to see Callum sprawled on the bed next to me, the covers down around his waist, his hands tucked beneath his head. Fast asleep. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingertips, trying to remind myself that I have nothing to worry about.
But truth be told, these nightmares always hit hard. I hate them, more than anything, these puncture wounds in the surface of this new life I’m making for myself. I know that James has been arrested, along with his father, and that he’s facing corruption charges that will likely see him going away for the better part of the rest of his life—but that’s not enough to unravel the psychological harm he has done to me, and I don’t know what will be.
I swing my legs out of bed and put my head in my hands for a moment. I’m sure these dreams are going to hit me less and less hard as time goes on, but that doesn’t undo the weight of them right now, and I’m not sure what will. I feel as though my heart is going to beat right out of my chest—it’s like he’s right there in front of me again, and I don’t know what, if anything, will be enough to stop him.
Finally, dragging myself to my feet, I head through to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I know it’ll be a while before I can get back to sleep again, and I don’t want to wake Callum with my tossing and turning.
The few times I have woken him up with my nightmares, he’s soothed me as best he can, doing everything in his power to bring me back down to earth and assure me that there’s nothing wrong, but I have a hard time believing it. I just—I just hate the thought of bringing him down with me, bringing them all down with me, when this should be in the past. It almost feels ungrateful, given everything they did for me, to still be so hung up on James and all the hell he put me through.
In the kitchen, I pour myself a glass of water, the bluish moonlight filtering through the window before me. Staring up at the clear night sky, I try to calm myself, reminding myself how lucky I am to be here, how glad I am that I’ve found my place here among the?—
“Hey.”
I nearly jump out of my skin when I hear a voice behind me. Spinning around, I find Dax standing there, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching me. I plant a hand to my chest and inhale a deep, shaky breath.
“Jesus, Dax, you scared me.”
“Sorry. Heard someone moving around, and thought it might be you again.”
“Again?”
“Callum told me you were having bad dreams,” he murmurs, taking a careful step toward me, as though I might bolt off in panic if he moves too quickly.
I sigh, staring down at the floor, and take a sip of my water.
“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I didn’t want to wake you, I just?—”
“It’s fine. You okay?”
He speaks quietly, as though he knows that too much noise might spook me. I nod—and then shake my head.
“No,” I confess. “Not really.”
All at once, I feel tears rising to my eyes—I know it was just a dream, but that doesn’t mean I can brush it off, just like that.
“Hey, hey,” he murmurs, and he moves toward me and wraps his arms around me tight. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re safe here, you know that.”
“I know that,” I breathe against his shoulder, putting my arms around him and pressing my head into his neck. I inhale the scent of him, trying to remind myself that he’s telling the truth— that I’m safe here, no matter what my dreams might try to throw at me.
When he pulls back, he looks at me with concern.
“You want to come lie down with me?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, it’s not fair for me to keep you up?—”
“You’re not keeping me up,” he replies. Taking my hand, he tugs me toward his room. “Come on.”
I hesitate for a moment, but then I go after him. Honestly, I need the company right now, and I’m not going to pass up the chance to have someone to lie next to while I fall back to sleep.
He guides me to his room, and we get in bed together—him behind me, tucked in as the big spoon, his arms woven tight around me like he never intends to let me go.
“What did you mean, I’m not keeping you up?” I mumble, once I’ve managed to steady my breathing again.
“I don’t sleep well,” he replies, matter-of-fact. “I’m usually up and about during the night, for one reason or another.”
“Why?”
He pauses for a moment. It’s clear he didn’t entirely expect that question.
“Bad dreams, I guess.”
I can tell from the way he says it that it’s an understatement.
I sit up, turning to face him. “About…about what happened?”
His eyes glaze for a moment, but then he nods. “Yeah. About what happened.”
The two of us fall silent for a moment. We both know the weight of everything we carry, the heaviness of it—the pain of knowing that there’s so much you’ll never be able to escape from, no matter how hard you try.
“Same with me,” I confess. “I…I keep dreaming about him. About James. About what he did to me. And every time, it feels…”
“It feels as though you’re right back there,” he finishes up for me, lifting his gaze to meet mine. “Right? Feels as though you’re right back where you started. Like it’s the realest thing in the world, and you’re never going to be able to get out.”
I sigh, and then nod. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
He slides his hand over mine. “I hate that you have to deal with that shit. It’s not fair.”
“Jesus, you lost your whole unit,” I remind him. “And your father. I don’t think I have anything to complain about?—”
“You know that’s not how it works,” he shoots back, as though he’s almost annoyed that I would try to downplay it like that. “The shit you’ve been through is the shit you’ve been through. Doesn’t matter what it is, matters how fucked-up your brain is at dealing with it.”
I pause for a moment—but then nod.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I agree. “I just wish I was a little more…I don’t know. I wish I was strong enough to put it all behind me.”
“You are,” he replies. “You left him. You got out.”
“So did you.”
“Not because I wanted to. Because I had to.”
“Is there that much of a difference?” I wonder aloud.
“Yeah, you were smart enough to get out when you realized it wasn’t what you wanted,” he replies, shaking his head. “I wasn’t. I would have kept doing it. I would have?—”
He stops himself in his tracks. I can tell he’s getting agitated. I reach out for his hand and wind my fingers around it, holding on to him tight.
“Hey, you can’t blame yourself,” I murmur. “You did what you thought you had to do, right? What you thought was right. You can’t hold that against yourself. I won’t let you.”
He manages a small smile, though I can tell he’s not exactly feeling it. I brush my fingers along his arm, trying to bring him back into the moment.
“How did you…how did you stop it from taking over your life?” I ask him, finally. “This…these memories. The bad dreams. All of it.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t,” he replies simply. “I came out here. I ran from it, from everything that reminded me of that time. All the triggers that pushed my buttons.”
“And was it enough?”
He glances up at me. “No.”
That word hangs heavy in the air between us. I hate hearing him speak like this, clearly struggling so badly with the weight of everything he has endured. If I could just reach into his mind and lift it from his shoulders, I would, though I know that’s not how this works. Or else he would have done it for me.
“You ever think about doing therapy?” I ask him. “I know some people, when they leave the army, they?—”
“I tried it a couple times,” he replies bluntly. “But it never really did anything for me. Always felt like they wanted to dig around in my brain just for the sake of it. How was that ever going to help?”
His words are laced with bitterness. It’s clear that, whatever help he did receive, it wasn’t enough, not even close. He lifts his chin and looks at me, cocking an eyebrow.
“What about you? You do anything like that?”
“No,” I confess. “But I…I feel like maybe I should.”
He stares me down. I can tell he’s not certain about the idea. But he has shown himself to be willing to do anything he can to support me, even when he doesn’t entirely know why I would want to make a move like that.
I squeeze his hand again. “But I don’t want to go through it alone,” I continue. “I…I think I need someone there with me. Someone who understands what I’ve been through. Someone who gets what it’s like, you know?”
His chest puffs out slightly as I speak. “You want me to come with you?”
I smile. I know it’s not the most conventional method of convincing someone to take care of their mental health, but honestly, if he needs to feel as though he’s the one who came to this conclusion on his own terms, then I’m more than happy to let him.
“I would love that,” I reply. “We could work through our shit together. Get over all of this. Leave it behind, once and for all.”
His face softens slightly as I speak. I know it’s not always easy for Dax to be honest with himself about how much he’s hurting—of the three guys, he’s the one who carries the most pain from his past. But here he is, sitting before me, alive and ready to make a change—ready to stand with me as I start to move into a new phase of my life.
I lean forward and kiss him softly, and he tucks his hand protectively behind my head.
“I…” he begins, but then he stops himself, shaking his head.
I lean back, raising my eyebrows at him. “What is it?”
He shakes his head. “It’s fine. You don’t need to hear it.”
“No, tell me,” I press him. “If you’re going to be talking about this in therapy, you might as well get used to coming clean, right?”
He looks at me for a moment. I can tell he’s still not entirely into the idea, but he doesn’t shoot me down at once, as he usually does. Finally, taking a deep breath, he comes out with it.
“There was such a long time,” he confesses, speaking slowly, clearly not used to putting these things into words, “when I was sure I was going to end up like my father.”
“You mean…?”
“I mean killing myself, like he did.”
His words are laced with a pain I’m not even sure he entirely understands. I fall silent, letting him speak—I don’t want to scare him into closing his mouth now that he’s finally telling me what I want to hear.
“I was so sick, so fucking sick,” he continues, shaking his head. “And it felt like I couldn’t do anything without falling apart. Not going to the store, not seeing my family, not anything. And then, Dad died, and it was like I got a glimpse of my future. Like that was where I belonged too.”
My heart swells in my chest as he speaks. I hate knowing that he’s ever thought so little of himself—but at the same time, it’s not as though I can’t understand it. I’ve only just gotten out of the hell I was trapped in, and these memories are already driving me a little crazy. I can only imagine what he must have gone through for all those years, feeling so alone, feeling like he was losing his mind.
“And maybe I was even jealous of him,” he mutters. “Jealous that he could make it all end. Knowing that I would never do that to my brothers, fuck—I wished I could, sometimes. Wished I could just wake up and all of this would be over and I’d never have to think about it again.”
His words are laced with a real venom—and I know it’s not at me, but rather, himself. But still, I hate to hear it.
“That version of me, he was such a coward,” he spits. “Such a fucking coward for wanting to run like that?—”
“Dax,” I interrupt him. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t get it.”
“I know I don’t,” I reply, mirroring his blunt language. “And I’m not going to pretend like I do. But if you think I’m going to sit here and let you shit all over yourself like that, I’m not. Okay?”
He stares at me for a moment—and I can see how vulnerable he is. How hard this is for him to say out loud. No matter what kind of front he might want to put up, the pain is written all over his face, the memories more than he can take.
“Because you stayed here,” I continue. “And now you’re with me. You’re with us. And I don’t know what I would do without you.”
I kiss him again.
“You saved me, Dax,” I murmur. “Please, let me help you too. Let me help you leave it all behind.”
He rests his head against mine for a long moment, and I can tell there’s a part of him that wants to give me what I’m asking for. It’s not going to be that easy, of course—it’s not like he can just forget everything that happened and pretend like the horrors he saw at war are done.
But he’s here with me now, not trying to make excuses, not trying to turn his back on what he knows is good for him. And as long as he can stay here, in this moment, then I know I have him. I know that’s all that matters.
“I love you,” he murmurs to me, after a long silence. The words surprise me—not because I don’t feel it from him, but because he’s never been the first to come clean about his emotions, not when he can avoid it.
After another kiss, I look him in the eyes and smile.
“I love you too, Dax,” I reply. “Now, let’s get some sleep. I’m exhausted.”
He pulls me against him, spooning me once more, and I close my eyes—and within just a few minutes, I fall into a deep, peaceful sleep, my nightmares at bay for the time being, in the arms of one of the men I love with all my heart.