Chapter 55
PAIGE
I wake up to a scream.
It sends my heart racing, and I fly up in bed to look around. It takes me a second to realize who it is. That it’s Rafe, beside me, on top of the covers. There’s a discarded book beside him and the bedside light is still on. Like he fell asleep reading.
He turns toward me, one of his arms extending. He finds my torso and curls up. And then he screams again.
Outside, the rain continues to pour.
“Rafe, wake up.” His arm tightens painfully at my waist, and he turns again, half dragging me with him. He’s hot to the touch. Almost as clammy as me. “Rafe!” I pat his cheek a few quick times. “Wake up. Come on…”
His eyes rove beneath his closed eyelids. I push him again, and his body suddenly goes still. Still and tense.
“Hey, it’s a dream,” I tell him. “It’s just a dream. You can wake up.”
For a long few seconds, I’m not sure where he is. If he’s here with me or lost in a torment of his own. He doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes. His chest rises quickly beneath me.
“It’s okay,” I say, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I’ve never seen anyone have nightmares like him. The way they consume him so completely.
He opens his eyes and looks at me. I run my hand over his warm skin, from his temple to his cheek. He releases a shaky breath and closes his eyes.
For a few seconds, we’re both quiet and still.
But then he rolls away from me and explodes out of bed. He walks toward the window of the chalet and pushes it open. Cool air rushes in, scented with rain. He braces his hands against it and looks out into the darkness. Just like he did back in Como, like he needs fresh air to soothe the hurt.
His arms are bunched tight against the windowsill.
“Rafe?”
He shakes his head a little. Like he’s warning me to stay away.
But every time I’ve needed him, every time I’ve felt on the brink of breaking apart, he’s been there. Even when it felt like I’d die from embarrassment, having him watch panic claw at me.
So I slip out of the bed and walk toward him.
“You’re awake,” I tell him. “You’re safe.”
Whatever response I expected, it wasn’t a laugh. The sound is haunted. “Yes,” he says. “I’m safe. At the end of the dream, I’m always fucking safe.”
My lips part. This has to be about the accident and losing his brother. His dreams must be of that night.
I put my hands on his back. He’s warm to the touch, even warmer than me, and I slowly wrap my arms around his waist. He feels like a skittish animal. Like he might break or bolt.
“Do you need me to tell you to breathe?” I ask. “It helps when you do it to me.”
He bows his head. “I can’t handle kindness right now, Wilde.”
“Why not?” My hands flatten against his bare chest. “Talk to me.”
“No. This is the one thing I can never talk about.”
I rest my cheek against his back. “Maybe you can’t talk to your friends about it. Or your family. But I’m not any of them. My opinion doesn’t matter.”
He scoffs. I feel it, through my hands, and with my face against his chest. As if what I said was ridiculous.
But there’s truth to it. He and I exist outside of normal relationships.
It’s a partnership and a business venture, a necessary evil and a growing attraction that I have no idea what to do with.
We’re everything and we’re nothing.
He breathes hard and deep.
“You don’t have to tell me everything. But maybe something?” I ask. “It can make it easier. Sometimes.”
Outside the window, the wind changes. Droplets of rain hit my hands.
“It’s close to here,” he says. “Where it happened. The dreams always get stronger when I’m back here.”
“At the chalet?”
He nods. He’s still looking outside, at the darkness, like the mountains out there are calling to him. The most descriptive thing I’d found about it was a single footnote in an old article. Francois Montclair’s two sons caught in avalanche accident in the Swiss Alps, claiming the life of one.
That’s it. A footnote, and a tragedy.
My hand brushes down, over the edge of the ragged scar along the side of his torso. The one I noticed during his massage, all those weeks ago, when his eyes told me not to ask.
“You were hurt,” I say.
“I survived.” His muscles shift beneath my cheek. “That’s more than I deserved.”
“Don’t say that.”
He shakes his head again. I don’t think I’ve ever related to him more than I do in this moment. Of that feeling of being strung tight but having nowhere to release it. More than I deserved. Why would he think that?
“Do you dream of that night?” I ask. “Anyone would. I can’t imagine… Were you trapped?”
He makes a small noise of assent. His breathing is slowing beneath my hands. I have no idea if this hug is helping him, but he’s helped me through panic attacks before, and I’m not about to let go.
“For how long?”
“Thirty-five minutes,” he mutters, so low I barely make it out.
My hand brushes over his scar again. I know the feeling of being trapped in my own skin. The idea of being caught beneath a blanket of snow, of being injured and only a child…
“I’m glad you survived,” I say. It’s hard to imagine the fear involved in that experience. Thank God he made it out.
Rafe slowly turns in my arms, damp from the raindrops he’s let in. “Don’t be kind to me. Not right now. I can’t fucking bear it.”
“Then don’t say that you didn’t deserve to survive.”
“It’s the truth,” he mutters, and pulls me against his bare chest. “This chalet used to have such good memories. It’s had some since then, too. But when it’s too quiet here, all I can think of are the days… after.”
“After the avalanche?” I ask.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said the word out loud.
But he doesn’t seem to mind, his arms tightening around me.
“Yes. Coming back here from the hospital and seeing his room, his stuff. His copy of The Lord of the Rings was lying by his bed. He’d made it to chapter thirty-four.
His bookmark was this dumb note I’d passed him in the car a few weeks earlier. ”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
He shakes his head above me. “Don’t. I was on that mountain too. I should’ve… I could’ve… Just don’t.”
A faint cough racks through me. He immediately takes a step to the side with me in his arms, away from the window. “Shit. You shouldn’t be here, getting cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re sick.”
“I’m fine.”
He shakes his head. “Get back to bed.”
“Only if you’re coming, too.” I step out of his arms and close the window behind him, shutting out the dark-clad mountains and rain.
Last time he had a nightmare, it wasn’t as bad as this.
But it seemed like talking helped. So I keep my voice calm.
“Do you want to tell me more about him? What was he like?”
“Perfect,” Rafe says, and there’s dryness in his tone. He’s standing a few feet away. Between the window and the bed, in nothing but a pair of sweats and mussed hair.
“Perfect?”
“Yeah. My parents were preparing him to take over Maison Valmont.” He looks at me, and it seems to shake him from whatever stillness has struck him. He lifts up the covers to the bed. “Come on.”
“Was he funny?”
“Yes. More responsible than me. Now get in,” he says.
I dutifully climb back under the sheets. The headache is still there, but my throat feels much better. I pat the bed next to me.
He hesitates. But then he gets in beside me, under the sheets this time, and looks up at the ceiling. I turn onto my side to watch the faint outline of his profile in the darkness.
“It’s hard to imagine someone more responsible than you,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “people change.”
I want to ask more questions. But there’s a tenseness in him that’s only started to settle, and I don’t dare to. “Will you be able to sleep again?” I ask.
“I think I’ll wait to sleep,” he says, and reaches for the book, “until we’re back in Como.”