Chapter Fifteen
Xavier shifted in the chair. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t like the feel of it.
It was comfortable, almost too comfortable, like it would have been all too easy to just sink in to the soft fabric and never get out.
He had already pulled off all the pillows and piled them on the floor in front of him when Sarah had told him to arrange the room however he felt most at ease, and he was sure she already thought he was crazy for that.
She offered him a smile from the large, heavy chair she sat in opposite him.
He never imagined that he would find himself here, of all places.
He never thought he would be in therapy talking about his feelings and sharing his innermost thoughts.
When they hired Sarah, it had been for her to take care of the guests at the lodge, not one of the owners.
But he knew, clearer than ever, how much he needed this help, even if he was having a hard time figuring out how to start the conversation.
Seeing the look on Hannah’s face when he woke up from that flashback had been enough to make him certain he needed to be here.
He couldn’t keep putting her through having to help him out of his nightmares or possibly even put her in danger from them.
It wasn’t fair to her or their newfound relationship.
He felt bad enough that she’d witnessed the one she did.
She’d handled the situation well and had done a good job of bringing him back to the present, but he didn’t want to be a burden on her or their relationship in that way.
He wanted to be her partner, not have her see him as someone broken and reliant on her for help every time he had a nightmare.
If they were going to be together, he needed to embrace these head-on and get the help he’d needed for a while now.
And Sarah was offering him a chance to do that.
Beside her, on the desk, a small diffuser puffed out scented steam.
It smelled like the vapor rub his mother used to put on his chest when he had a cold—menthol and medicinal.
Sarah had a notepad sitting just next to her and a pen ready to jot down any observations she might make on what he had to say.
For some reason, this made him uncomfortable—talking about it was one thing, but having it written down and made permanent? That was something else entirely. It made him feel more vulnerable. Exposed in a way he didn’t like at all.
“So,” Sarah began as the silence hung heavy in the room between them, “I’m really glad you came to speak to me today, Xavier.”
He grunted his acknowledgment and shifted in his chair.
He was uncomfortable with the thought of spilling his guts to this woman.
He’d never told anyone the specifics of the nightmares he’d been dealing with.
Not even his best friend and business partner, Lawson, knew the full extent—just what little he’d shared after Max’s death since Lawson had been there at that time to offer his support.
And Hannah only knew what little she’d witnessed.
He never liked burdening people with what he was going through, but right now, he didn’t have a choice. He knew he just had to push himself to get started, but he couldn’t find the right words to say what he wanted to.
“You mentioned to me before that you’d received a diagnosis of PTSD from a previous physician, is that right?” Sarah asked.
“I had to see someone before I started working for the CIA,” he explained.
“That’s what he told me it was. Never put much stock in it, until…
” He trailed off, tripping over his words again.
He wasn’t used to talking about any of this, and his instincts were screaming for him to stop.
He’d dealt with his nightmares on his own for so long, it seemed unnatural to share his troubles with someone else.
“Until?” she prompted him.
He shook his head.
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “You don’t have to talk about anything you’re not ready to. I just want to get a general idea of how you’re doing and where you’re at with your mental health. Do you mind if I ask a few questions?”
He gestured for her to keep talking, wishing he could pull himself together.
It felt like he was stepping in the silt of his memories, all those parts of himself that he had tried to leave behind pressing up against him once more.
How could he just talk about it? Say it out loud, when he still felt so much guilt and shame for what he had done?
Or, more accurate, what he had failed to do?
“We didn’t talk much about your diagnosis before,” she continued, jotting something down on her notepad. “But I’ve heard from Lawson that you’ve been struggling with nightmares recently.”
Lawson. Of course he had talked to her about it. Xavier shook his head slightly. “He’s been talking to you about it?”
“Nothing specific, but yes, he has,” she replied. “Your friends are concerned about you, Xavier. They want the best for you.”
He sighed. “I’m concerned, too,” he admitted finally, picking at a loose thread on the chair beneath him.
“I… I thought these nightmares were over, you know? I had them a lot right after I got back from overseas, but they started to fade after a while. I would still have these memories, but when I would wake up, I knew it was a dream, and I could bring myself back to reality pretty easily.”
“And you’ve been having more trouble with that recently?” Sarah asked.
He nodded again. “Yeah, it feels like I’m right back there, all over again,” he continued, his voice lowering. He was going to need to get used to talking to her like this; hopefully, it would get easier over time. “Like I’m watching my brother die all over again,” he added.
He hated saying those words out loud. Acknowledging that Max was gone hurt in a way nothing else did—a permanent wound that would never heal, a reminder of how much he had failed his little brother.
He had promised his mother he would do everything he could to keep him safe, but when it came down to it, he had failed.
He knew he was never going to be able to forgive himself for that.
Sarah frowned, nodding kindly.
He averted his eyes to stare at the floor.
What must she think of him, a man who failed to keep his own brother safe?
He didn’t even want to know. Logically, of course he understood that she had heard far worse things in her time here at Warrior Peak.
He still felt like she would never look at him the same way again.
“It’s really common to face a setback in your recovery after a traumatic event,” she explained.
Xavier shook his head. “I haven’t had a traumatic event.” Not by his standards, anyway. Yeah, the fire wasn’t exactly pleasant, but he had seen far worse in his time. He felt like he would have sounded crazy to compare that to what he’d endured in the service.
“The fire?” Sarah prompted him. “Isn’t that when these dreams really started to cause you problems again?”
He nodded.
“I understand that you may not have felt traumatized by the fire, but chances are that it triggered your fight-or-flight response,” she explained.
“It’s a method the nervous system uses to handle particularly threatening or dangerous situations, whether they’re actually bad news or just perceived by your brain as such. Does that make sense?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t feel like he had any right to make the attack on the sanctuary about him. Everyone had felt the danger and struggled that night.
“And it seems like your brain has interpreted that as being back in the midst of the event that caused you the most trauma,” she continued. “That’s why the dreams have been coming up again. Your brain is trying to warn and protect you, even though there’s nothing like that going on right now.”
Like that. She was careful to phrase it that way. She knew there was something going on around here, just like Xavier did. Could he really put this work into recovery, when he was sure there were people after him right now? He shifted in his seat again, not speaking.
“And what I want to do with these sessions is teach your brain that those memories are in the past, they’re not happening now, and that you’re safe,” she continued.
“I understand how hard that must seem to you, but it is possible. Lots of people suffer trauma as a result of being involved in combat, and it’s really common to deal with PTSD and nightmares in the aftermath.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way, okay?
You don’t have to deal with this alone.”
He could feel a well of emotion rising up in him, and he tried to push it down.
“Your friends here really care about you,” Sarah went on. “I do, too. I’ve seen all the great work you’ve done here, all the ways you’ve created a safe space for the people who’ve been through what you have, and you deserve to give that kindness to yourself, too. Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Faced with the choice, there was a part of him that wanted to push back and deny himself what he knew he needed.
But then, he closed his eyes, and he thought of Hannah.
He thought of her lying beside him in bed, her eyes wide as she tried to pull him from the horrors in his head.
And he knew he had to try. He couldn’t keep pretending this wasn’t happening.
He had tried that already, and he was pretty damn clear on the fact that it hadn’t worked.
His eyes were fixed on the diffuser beside her, and he tried to time his breath to the sound of its low hum.
Anything to ground himself, to pull him into this moment instead of dealing with the usual fight that boiled in his system when he was faced with telling the truth about how he felt and what he had been through.
“Yes, I do,” he corrected himself finally. “I… I want to try. I don’t know how, but I want to try.”
A warm, genuine smile lit up Sarah’s entire face. “I’m so glad to hear that,” she gushed, and she reached over to pull her notepad into her lap. “And you don’t need to know how—that’s what I’m here for.”
He nodded. He had to let her take the lead. It was fine for him not to know what he was doing here. That was why he had come in the first place.
“So, let’s start by going through the content of these dreams,” she prompted him. “Do you think you can manage that?”
He gritted his teeth, fighting the usual urge to just close off as soon as anyone asked him about that time in his life. But finally, he spoke. “They all start the same way. My brother and I are under fire…”