21. - Corey -
Chapter twenty-one
- Corey -
S creaming startled Corey from her sleep. She looked around the living room in the dim light, heart racing. The TV was off and only Jason was on the couch with her. She must have fallen asleep here before the movie ended. Kayden had clearly gone upstairs to bed, since he was nowhere to be found.
Jason let out another pained yell, eyes screwed shut, and he flung out his arm like he was trying to bat someone away.
“Jason?” Corey whispered. It wasn’t enough to rouse him from his sleep.
She crawled over to him on the couch, shaking him by the shoulders. “Hey, wake up.”
He thrashed in her grip, releasing a low growl.
“Jason, it’s just a dream.” She shook him harder. “Come on, wake up.”
He whimpered under her. Corey didn’t know how to wake him up other than to interlace her fingers with his and hold him through it.
It did the trick and Jason jolted awake suddenly, wide-eyed and disoriented. He grabbed onto her arm, holding it close to his shaking body and clinging to her. He looked terrified .
“Shhhh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she repeated soothingly, brushing his sweaty, matted hair away from his face. “It was just a nightmare.”
He looked around at his surroundings with eyes like saucers, trembling slightly and breathing heavily. She rubbed his back in soothing circles.
Finally, Jason seemed to realize who he was holding on to, because he dropped her arm and pushed himself away from her. His elbows landed on his knees, his forehead in his hands as he tried to stabilize his breathing.
Corey wanted to go back to him, to keep rubbing his back, to keep comforting him a little more, but she didn’t know if physical touch would set him off. She didn’t even know what she was trying to comfort him from. She could imagine with the lifestyle they had, the scar he bore, there must be some kind of effect on the psyche.
“I get nightmares sometimes, too.” Corey tried, giving up a truth in another attempt to bridge the gap between them.
“It wasn’t a nightmare.” Jason said through his teeth.
Corey rolled her eyes. She really didn’t want to have to babysit his ego. “Well, unless you were screaming over nothing, it sure sounded like one to me.”
“Nightmares are something your brain creates, some mutation of your imagination by your mind.”
“I’m well aware of what a nightmare is, Jason. I just said I have them too.”
Jason just looked at her, an indecipherable expression on his face. She noticed again how tired he looked. Deep purple bloomed under his wide green eyes.
“What are yours about?” he finally asked her.
More truths , she decided, and let out a big breath.
“Burning alive, my ex killing me or leaving me for dead somewhere, being physically assaulted, being raped—all kinds of warped shit from my past.” She listed off the usual suspects of her nightmares .
“Those are nightmares. They didn’t happen to you. Your brain is just playing what if .” Jason stood up, taking the half-empty glass of whiskey from the table and drinking it down in one slug. “Mine are memories.”
With that, he stalked off, like his memories were somehow more superior and disturbing than her foster father trying to rape her when she was fourteen years old, no one believing her when she told them that’s why she’d left him with a black eye and bloody claw marks down his face.
Like a carelessly flicked cigarette in the woods, the embers jumping for purchase on dried pine needles, Corey let the familiar anger burn through her, spreading slowly before spreading wildly, until her fingers trembled with the effort to suppress the images. She reached for the bottle of whiskey on the coffee table, hands shaking as she poured herself a stiff glass and drank it down. Then she poured another, drinking that too. The silky smoothness of the expensive liquor distracted her enough that she let out a long, fiery breath and put the glass back on the table.
She shivered, not from cold but from the narrowly escaped flashback, and wrapped herself up in the throw blanket, the weight giving her little comfort. Walking back to her bedroom, Corey concentrated on the hallway and her footsteps, focusing on where she was and not on where she’d been.
When Corey woke up for the second time, she knew it was going to be a bad day.
She hadn’t had a bad day in a long time, but a trip down memory lane while trying to comfort Jason in the middle of the night had left her rubbed raw. An oppressive weight hung over her, pressing into her and dampening her vitality.
The corners of her mouth felt heavy, a frown pulling at her lips .
Worse was the grey haze out the window that mimicked her dull mood. She couldn’t see a stitch of the beautiful sunlight that had been warming her for however long she’d been here.
Corey pulled the covers over her head and tried not to let the darkness consume her, tried not to let her mind conjure up images of her abusers. But it was useless. After she had expended all her mental fortitude last night, she couldn’t fight off the traumatic flashback—leathered hands grabbing her tiny wrists, holding her down, her pants around her ankles and the man, who had just that morning asked her to call him daddy , his pants were pulled down too—just barely, but just enough.
The last few days had been too good, pumped her too full of dopamine and serotonin. Now she was paying the price, like crashing from a high. Her happiness felt like self-destruction. Depleted of those feel-good hormones that had her floating on air, the dam on her trauma had ruptured.
She heard the younger version of herself screaming and screaming, her throat cracking, his gruff voice calling her a cunt, telling her to shut the fuck up, to stop moving or he’d knock her out. She felt the tears tracking down her face, her muscles straining against the pure weight of him as she thrashed, felt him finally release her wrists to hold down her hips, felt the wetness on her fingertips as she’d scratched his face over and over, the cracking of her knuckles when her fist collided with his face, the ache in her little hand.
Corey pulled the blanket off her face and kept her eyes trained on the ceiling, letting the memory rip through her and hollow her out.
When her mind finally released her from the flashback, she waited for the tremors to stop before dragging herself out of bed and getting herself to the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror was not kind—she looked haunted. Turning her back on herself, she stepped into the shower and turned it on, letting the icy water crash over her body, doing little to pull her back into it .
She stood under the frigid shower until her teeth started chattering and her lips turned blue. Then she towelled off and threw on one of the guys’ sweatshirts and her own sweatpants. She wasn’t even sure which sweatshirt belonged to which twin anymore. She left the hood on, hiding under her wet hair and the heavy material like she could disappear into it.
Her legs felt like lead as she dragged herself to the kitchen to get coffee.
To her chagrin, both of them were already in the kitchen, talking over their coffee.
Corey made her way to the espresso machine. Standing in front of it, she realized she had no idea how to use it. Since her first day here, one of the twins, probably Kayden, had always left out a coffee for her.
She stood there uselessly, staring at all the buttons long enough for one of them to sidle up to her, draping an arm around her shoulders and steering her towards the island. She barely felt the weight of the arm on her, only half in this body, mostly still in the body of that fourteen-year-old girl.
“Sit, I’ll make you coffee.” That warm, deep voice that had become so familiar was a life jacket thrown out to sea. The command was simple enough that she could listen. Corey sat, hands in her lap.
He must have noticed her despondency, because he pulled her chin up to look at him. She met his depthless evergreen eyes, a silent plea in her own to let this go.
He didn’t, his eyebrows pulled together in concern. “What’s wrong, Little Fox?”
Kayden .
She just blinked up at him. How could she tell him that every now and then, her trauma erupted up like a molten volcano, her flashbacks consuming her? That she didn’t work right. That she was ultimately very, very broken, and was holding herself together by sheer force of will and an intrinsic stubbornness that even her PTSD had to contend with .
“Bad day,” she mumbled.
His eyes shifted over her shoulder, probably seeking out his brother for assistance. He glanced back at her and stroked a thumb along her jaw.
“Come on, how can it be a bad day when the day just started?” He smiled at her, a fire in his eye like her mood was an exciting challenge instead of the burden she was used to it being received as. Something in her softened at that.
He kissed her forehead tenderly, his thumb still running along her jaw, and it pulled her back into her body a little more. She leaned into his touch, anchoring in it.
She hardly noticed Jason going to the espresso machine and pressing a combination of buttons to make a latte. He brought the cup to her, and she pulled away from Kayden to sip at the foamed milk. It was exactly the same as it had been every morning, the implication of that not quite landing as she let the heated liquid warm her. She would think about that piece of information later.
Kayden held her close to his body, interlacing his fingers over top of hers, somehow knowing that she needed the physical comfort to keep her there. His toughened calluses scratched roughly against her knuckles. She had been the one in his position only hours ago—trying to comfort Jason, who had woken in a similar haunted state.
Maybe that was how Kayden knew.
They let her drink her coffee in silence, Kayden holding her while Jason watched her from across the kitchen, lips pressed tight together, tension in his eyes, like he was waiting for her to fall apart.
She didn’t.
Her stomach grumbled loudly, but the thought of eating made her queasy.
Without saying anything, Jason fussed in the kitchen until he was sliding her a grilled cheese sandwich across the island.
She wanted to tell him she wasn’t hungry. She was trying to rally the energy to open her mouth and form the words when his cold voice cut in .
“Eat.”
Her tongue was too heavy to protest, so she did. She ate in small, manageable bites, and though she still felt slightly sick, the buttered toast and melted cheese went down with little effort. Somehow, he’d made her own comfort food better than she could. He really was an excellent cook.
He waited until she’d cleared her plate before taking it away and putting it in the dishwasher. With Jason's eyes so intent on her, she nearly forgot Kayden's presence, the warmth of his body pressed against hers in silent reassurance. She melted into him a little more, feeling less like the zombie she’d been when she’d walked out of her bedroom.
She gazed up at Kayden, a smile pulling at his lips as he looked down at her, his eyes filled with so much tenderness.
“Let’s try this again,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she whispered, with a ghost of a smile.
“Good girl. But I think we can do even better than that.” He looked over at his brother. “Up for a ride, Jase?”
Genuine pleasure shifted Jason’s features, and he was the picture of Kayden.
“Always.”
Corey thought it was a shame he didn’t smile more, but she wasn’t about to vocalize it. Not yet, anyway.
Kayden pulled her off the stool and into the front hall. He put Jason’s old leather jacket on her and passed her the hat and helmet.
Like always, he strapped on his double holster and armband with the knife before putting on his own riding jacket. Jason did the same. Then Kayden was pushing her onto the bench and putting her shoes on for her. She was willing to let him manhandle her, grateful for the control he’d taken so that she didn’t need to think, didn’t need to try and pick up her own pieces.
“You can add this to the ever-growing list of reasons I’d get on my knees for you,” he said from the floor, black hair falling over his hungry eyes .
And even in this crumbling state, she wanted him.
He must have seen the flash of desire in her eyes, because he ran his tongue over his perfectly white teeth before standing up, pulling her with him and into the elevator. Jason followed them in, a helmet in each hand and a longing look on his face that Corey simply couldn’t ignore.