Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
WILLA
I woke to the distant sound of surf. For long moments I lay where I was, listening to the rhythmic ebb and flow. My limbs felt heavy, as if I were waking from a long sickness. It took way too much effort to pry open my eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the bedroom window, and the curtains billowed in the breeze. Something shifted around my legs—Roy, lifting his head. At least some of that sense of heaviness was him, curled up in the crook of my knees. With his heavy bulk lifted, the blood began to flow back into my legs.
When he realized I was awake, he scrambled over and began to lick my face.
With the rasp of a laugh, I half-heartedly fended him off. “Hey, bud. Hey, pal. Good morning.” My voice sounded like sandpaper.
Something creaked behind me, and I rolled over, expecting to see Sawyer. But it was Gabi rising from a chair by the bed. What was she doing here?
She poured water from a pitcher on the nightstand and extended a glass. “Here. Sip slowly.”
I shoved myself up enough to take it, grateful when the cool liquid slid down my parched throat. Roy glued himself to my side, his tail thumping so hard it shook the bed.
As I drank, Gabi searched my face. “Are you back with us?”
My thoughts seemed to struggle through a layer of cotton. “What happened?”
She dragged the chair closer and sat back down. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
I tried to think. “I… was playing with the dogs.”
Gabi’s dark eyes sharpened. “Is that really it?”
I sensed an urgency here that I couldn’t explain, so I tried harder to push through the fog. A low-level unease slithered through me. “I… had a panic attack.” A bad one, judging from the way my friend stared at me.
“That wasn’t a panic attack. I’m pretty sure it was a full-on PTSD flashback. You were effectively non-responsive to everyone except for Sawyer.”
He’d been there. Holding onto me. Keeping me from being swept away completely. He’d stayed. I remembered him wrapped around me after. Where was he now?
Gabi reached out to take my hand. “What the hell is going on, Willa? I’m worried about you.”
Before I could even begin to pull together an explanation, the door opened.
“You’re awake.” The relief in Sawyer’s voice was a balm. He crossed to sit beside me on the bed, taking my face between his hands and pressing a kiss to my temple. “How’re you feeling?”
“Fuzzy.” It was the only thing I knew for certain.
“Are you hungry?”
At the question, my stomach rumbled. “Starving.”
“I’ll make you some lunch.”
“Lunch? What time is it?”
“Nearly noon. You’ve been asleep for fifteen hours. I expect you’ll want a shower and a change of clothes.”
I realized I still wore what I’d had on yesterday. My skin felt tight and itchy, as if the saltwater had dried on it. Maybe it had. I couldn’t quite remember how I’d gotten back to the house.
“Do you need a hand?”
“I can help her,” Gabi put in.
“No, I’m not an invalid. I can shower on my own. I’m just… tired.” Which was absurd, really, given how long I’d slept. But whatever had happened last night had clearly taken a lot out of me.
“Okay.” Sawyer kissed me again, a gentle brush of his lips to my cheek. “We’ll all be downstairs.”
“We? Who all is here?”
“Jace is still here. Bree, Gabi, and Daniel stayed the night. They were worried about you.”
Of course they were, because apparently I’d totally lost it in front of all our friends. They’d be wanting explanations, and I didn’t know how I could get out of it. Not without leaning into the idea that I was fragile and couldn’t handle anything else. I’d worked too hard to prove I was stronger. I wouldn’t undermine that simply because I was ashamed of my trauma.
I took my time in the shower, letting the spray wash away the lingering mental fog, along with all traces of sand and salt. Then I dragged on yoga pants and a comfortable T-shirt and made my way down to the kitchen.
“Hey. You’re up.” Bree crossed over and wrapped me in a tight hug. “You doing okay?”
“Better.”
As soon as she stepped back, Jace pulled me in. “Good to see you up and around.”
“Shouldn’t you have left already?” His original plan had involved heading out early this morning.
“I didn’t want to go until I knew you were okay.”
“But won’t you get into trouble if you’re late?”
“I’ve got a buddy, owes me a favor,” Daniel explained. “We’re gonna take him by helo to the airport. That’ll save him the ferry ride and the drive.”
“As long as I’m gone in the next hour, I’m fine.”
“C’mon. Sit. Eat.” Sawyer extracted me from my brother’s hug and nudged me toward the table, passing a huge mug of coffee.
I inhaled deeply, feeling more of my synapses come online with the rich scent of roasted beans. A moment later, he slid a plate with two grilled cheeses in front of me. The sight made me remember that night in the kitchen, and I smiled.
Roy and Keeley stretched out under the table. Everyone chatted easily about nothing much while I worked my way through the first sandwich. Feeling a bit steadier with food, I began pinching off pieces of the second. “I guess I owe y’all an explanation.”
“Yeah.” Gabi dropped into a chair beside me. “You don’t get to scare us all to death and pretend it didn’t happen.”
Daniel lifted his palms. “Hey now, you don’t know me from Adam’s house cat. You don’t owe me nothin’ at all. I can take myself on outside, find somethin’ to get into, and come back ’round for Jace and Gabi later if that suits you better.”
I glanced at my friend. If she trusted him, I supposed I could, too. “No, that’s okay.” I swallowed down the bite of grilled cheese, feeling it stick in my throat. I chased it down with more water and took a deep breath. “For the two years I was off-island, I was institutionalized.”
I kept the explanation as brief as I could, focusing on the sandwich instead of looking at any of their faces. It wasn’t as much as I’d told Sawyer. I didn’t think I could bare my soul to that degree. But it was as much a reason as I could manage for my seemingly irrational behavior.
“It didn’t seem to matter what treatment they tried, I’ve never gotten any more clarity on what happened that night. And any time I’ve come anywhere close to it, I… well, you saw. Usually I can head it off before it gets too bad, but it came on too fast last night.”
“Lot of similarities.” Sawyer’s fingers stroked along the tension in my nape. “Beach bonfire. Some of the same people. Playing with a dog, just like you did back then. Maybe it started to trigger a memory.”
“I…” I tried to reach for last night, but my brain seemed to bounce off it as if I’d hit a rubber wall. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Jace’s jaw was set like granite. “Exactly what kind of treatments were you put through?”
“A lot of medications. Hypnosis. Electroshock therapy. Some other stuff. None of it worked. I still can’t remember.”
Gabi knit her hands together. “I’ll admit this isn’t my area, but none of this sounds right. I did a rotation in psychiatric, and I never saw anything like this. And there was absolutely zero reason they should’ve kept you for that long.”
“I want to do some digging into that hospital and that doctor,” my brother growled.
“To what end?” I didn’t want to drag all of this back up again. I’d made my explanation, and now I wanted it all to go away again.
“Because what I saw last night wasn’t just a normal panic attack. It wasn’t just a PTSD flashback from whatever trauma you experienced. Every time you get anywhere close to whatever happened that night, you have a panic attack or fall into a migraine or get physically ill. Your reactions don’t look like normal trauma.”
“You’re not a psychological professional. Why would you have any idea what ‘normal’ trauma even looks like?”
“I… there are things I’ve seen in my work that I can’t talk about. But I’m saying that whatever you went through in that hospital was not normal.”
I’d known that. Deep down, I’d always known that. I’d known it as it was happening. But in the aftermath, my only motivation had been to get as far away as possible. And I had. I wasn’t eager to drag any of this back up again. “Maybe you’re right. But this is me. This is my life, for better or worse. What would a potential malpractice suit get me? I’ll still be damaged.”
Jace’s eyes flashed. “You’re not damaged.”
“I’m not weak. There’s a difference.”
“If this doctor did this shit to you, God knows what he might have been doing to others since then. Maybe someone should dig into it,” Bree suggested.
The idea that others would be trapped and effectively tortured the way I was made me physically ill.
“If that’s the case, then absolutely, he needs to be stopped. But I don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“Nobody’s gonna make you, Wren.” Sawyer pivoted toward me, caging me into the shelter of his arms. “But you can’t just spend the rest of your life running from this. Because you are. You came back here—fought tooth and nail to build something for yourself—but you haven’t fully taken back the island. In a sense, you’re still trapped by your own fears. I’m not saying those fears aren’t a hundred percent justified. But something happened to you. Something’s been happening to you since we found that body. And we’re all wondering if it could be connected.”
“What are you talking about?”
He took a breath. “We found those remains about a mile north of Osprey Beach. Not far from where I pulled you out all those years ago. Is it possible that you left the party that night with Gwen? That something could’ve happened to both of you? That being in that area started to trigger something?”
I let my mind drift in that direction and hit the blank wall again. “I don’t… know. I can’t see.”
Gabi laid a hand on my shoulder. “I think you should talk to someone.”
I jerked away. “Absolutely not.” Even the idea of it had the grilled cheese sandwiches threatening to come back up.
“Honey, I get you went through a horrific experience, but not all psychological professionals are like that. And if it can get you some relief?—”
“No. I don’t want to do anything else to stir up the hornet’s nest. I just want to get back to my life. This—all of this—it’s too much.” I hated admitting it. It felt so much like the weakness I wanted to overcome.
Wary, I glanced up. No one was looking at me like I was crazy. That was something. But I hated the expressions of pity and frustration scattered around the table.
Jace lifted his hands. “Okay. We’ll let you be. I’ll do my digging and keep you out of it.”
“Thank you.”
He pushed to his feet. “I’ve got to get going or I’ll miss my flight, and my commanding officer will have my ass.”
“Guess we’re headed out, too.” Daniel rose, and so did Gabi.
Because I didn’t know when I’d see him again, I stood to give my brother one last hug.
He squeezed me tight. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when I should’ve been. It won’t happen again.”
That felt like an impossible promise. And either way, I wasn’t his responsibility. But sensing he needed this, I squeezed him back. “Stay safe, hear me?”
“Promise. I hope to make it home for Christmas if I can. It’ll be good to have it back on-island.”
I instantly flashed back to the best Christmases of our childhood, held right here at Sutter House. “Well, that’s absolutely something to look forward to.”
Gabi hesitated. “We’ll see you at girls’ night?”
“Absolutely. I need some normal, and that sounds fabulous.”
With a flurry of more hugs and goodbyes, they were gone.
Bree gathered up her pooch. “Come on by the Brewhouse when you’re ready. I miss seeing your face all the time.”
“Thanks, girl. Let’s schedule a play date for Keeley and Roy.”
“It’s a promise.”
Then she, too, was gone, and I was alone with my husband for the first time in days. He pulled me into his arms, and I settled against his chest, content to just stay there.
“I know that was hard for you, telling everybody about what happened. How’re you doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s relieved not to be hiding anymore. But if something did happen back then, if I did see something… I just can’t remember. And I’m afraid of what might happen if I push too hard.”
“Okay. Then we won’t push.”
I looked up at him. “That’s it?”
He stroked my cheek. “Wren, I only ever want to help. If you’re not ready now—hell, even if you’re never ready—that’s your decision. You’ve been living with this longer than the rest of us. You know what you can handle. So, yeah. That’s it.”
“Thank you.” I snuggled against him. “I’m sorry I scared you last night.”
He drew in a slow breath. “I’ll admit, you might’ve taken a few years off my life.”
I stilled, listening to his heart thump beneath my ear. “Do you regret tying yourself to me?”
Sawyer tipped my chin up, so I had to look at him. “No. I love you, Willa. I signed on for better or worse and everything in between.” The corner of his mouth curved. “And if you’re really feeling better, we can pick back up on some of those plans your brother’s arrival interrupted.”
The worry that had lodged beneath my breastbone released. “I do seem to recall discussion of time in that big ass tub.”
He scooped me up, one arm beneath my knees. “I didn’t carry you over the threshold our first night here. Why don’t I rectify that situation?”
“Why don’t you?”