Sully
Idon’t know what time it is when it starts. I’m not really asleep, I haven’t been sleeping properly all week, so I’m already half-awake when I hear it. A sound through the wall, small at first, a whimper, I thought I imagined it.
Then it isn’t small.
She cries out, muffled, frightened, and I’m up and out of my bed, because I know that sound is wrong.
I know it in my gut, and I’m down the hall and shoving her door open.
The light from the hall spills across her bed.
She’s tangled in the sheets, still asleep, her head thrashing side to side, and she’s saying ‘no, no, no,’ over and over, her hands pushing at something that isn’t there.
Her face is screwed up in pure terror, and there are tears streaking down her temples into her hair.
“Em.” I go to the side of the bed, keeping my voice as low and steady as I can. “Em, wake up, it’s just a dream, you’re safe …”
She lets out a bone-chilling scream, thrashing harder. “No … no, get off …”
“Ember.” I reach for her shoulder, just to wake her, just to pull her out of it. “Em, it’s me, it’s Sully. You’re okay, wake up for me ...”
My hand touches her shoulder, and she comes up off that bed like she’s been electrocuted, swinging and screaming.
I see it in her eyes in the half-dark, she isn’t seeing me, she’s seeing him, the man from the club, the hand on her.
Every bit of terror she couldn’t fight that night comes out of her now, all at once.
Her nails catch me across the cheek and neck. Hard. I feel the skin split.
“No … get off me … get off me …”
“Em, it’s me!” I get back, hands up, giving her every inch of space I can. “It’s Sully, it’s just me, no one’s going to touch you. You’re safe, you’re home …”
But she can’t hear me. She’s scrambling backward off the bed, tangled in the sheet, her back hitting the headboard, arms up to protect herself, sobbing and shaking and staring at me like I’m the worst thing in the world.
I have never in my life felt so useless, standing there with my hands up watching her be terrified of me.
“Ember, please … it’s Connor, your friend.” Tears fall down my cheeks.
The overhead light snaps on and Cassidy’s in the doorway in her pajamas, hair everywhere, already moving toward Ember, pulling her into her arms and soothing her.
“It’s me, Em, it’s Cass. I’ve got you, you’re home, you’re safe. It was a dream, it was just a dream … it’s not real. It was only Connor, my brother, you know him. He would never hurt you.”
Ember’s eyes finally clear. I watch it happen as the dream clears and the reality of where she is seeps in. She sees me standing across the room, her brows pull together, and then she sees my face. The scratches and blood I know are there.
“Oh my god.” She gasps, her whole body going rigid in Cassidy’s arms. “Oh my god, Sully, your face. I … did I … oh my god, I hurt you.” Fresh tears fall down her cheeks.
“Em, it’s nothing. You were dreaming, it’s not your fault, none of this is your fault …” I keep my voice level, gentle.
“There’s blood.” She’s staring at my cheek and shaking her head, tears streaming, horror all over her. ‘” did that. I scratched you. I thought … I thought you were …” She can’t finish it. Her hands come up over her mouth. “Oh God.”
“Hey, look at me.” I take a slow step, then stop when she flinches. “I’m completely fine. I promise you. I’ve had a lot worse on the ice. It’s nothing.”
But she won’t look at me. She can’t, I can see the devastation, hurt, and embarrassment on her face.
She turns her face into Cassidy’s shoulder and curls in on herself, small and shaking.
Every part of me wants to cross that room and hold her, but I know it’s the one thing I can’t do. Not tonight, maybe not for a long time.
Cassidy looks at me over Ember’s head, and she gives me a look that says … Go.
So, I go. I stand out in the hall with the door half open and blood drying on my face, listening to Cassidy murmur to her, soft and steady, and I listen to Ember cry, and there is not one single thing I can do about any of it.
After a while, Cassidy comes to the door. “She’s going to sleep in my room tonight,” she says quietly. She reaches up, touches near the scratch on my cheek, and winces. “You should clean that.”
“I know.”
“Sully, I wish you hadn’t seen that,” she tells me.
“I just wanted to help,” I tell her.
“I know …” she says sadly, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine, Cass.” She nods and disappears down the corridor.
I head back to bed where sleep never finds me again.
I’m already awake, I never really slept, and I lie there listening to the soft sounds of the girls moving around.
I make myself get up because if I don’t face her now, I’ll spend all day dreading it.
She’s in the kitchen making coffee, and when she sees me, she goes still.
Her eyes go straight to my face, to the four red lines down my cheek, and her whole body seems to fold in on itself.
“Morning,” I say, keeping it easy.
“Morning.” Cassidy smiles but it quickly fades when she sees my face.
“Sully.” Ember’s voice is small and raw. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I don’t … I don’t even remember doing it, I just …”
“Hey, it’s okay.” I move toward her without thinking, reaching out, like I would with anyone I love who’s hurting, and she flinches.
Not much, just a small step back, a flicker, her body deciding before her brain can catch up.
But I see it, and she sees me see it, and the shame that floods her face is worse than any scratch.
I stop and put my hands back down, keeping them where she can see them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to … I know it’s you. I know you’d never. I just …”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.” It takes everything I have to keep my voice level. “Not a single thing, okay?”
She nods, arms wrapped around herself and she won’t meet my eyes.
“I’m gonna head to the gym,” I say because I can’t stand in this kitchen one more second watching her be afraid of me. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Sully …” she calls out.
“It’s fine, Em. I’ll see you later.”
I leave before either of us can make it worse.
Emmett and Fish are already at the gym when I get there. Emmett clocks my face across the room before I’ve even put my bag down. He comes over, and Emmett’s jaw tightens when he sees the scratches up close.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“Ember had a nightmare,” I say. “I went in to wake her and she … she didn’t know it was me. Thought I was the guy from the club.”
Emmett’s face flickers with anger and concern all at once. He knows exactly what this is costing me, and I can see he wants to say a hundred things he can’t say with Fish standing right there.
“Is she okay?” Is all he says.
“No,” I say honestly. “Not really.”
Fish winces at my cheek. “She got you good.”
“It’s nothing,” I tell them.
“That’s not nothing.” Emmett’s watching me too closely. “Sully …”
“I’m fine, Cap.” I cut him off before he can go anywhere with it. “Let’s just train.” He holds my eye for a second, and then he lets it go.
We train, and I hit the bag until my arms give out. It doesn’t help at all.
It happens again the next night.
And the one after that.
Every night that week I lie awake waiting for it, and every night it comes, the whimper through the wall that turns into a scream, and every night I go, because I can’t not go, I physically cannot lie in my bed and listen to her be terrified and do nothing.
And every night it ends the same way. Her not knowing me.
Her fighting me. Cassidy running in. Ember waking to find she’s hurt me again and falling apart about it.
I stop reaching for her. I learn to stand in the doorway with the light on and my hands where she can see them and just talk, low and steady, until Cassidy gets to her.
I take the scratches when I don’t move back fast enough.
I tell her every single morning that it’s okay, that it’s not her fault, that I’m fine.
I’m not fine, but that’s not the point.
We’ve got home games this week, at least, so I’m thankful I am here this week to help Cass out. By the end of the week, I look like I’ve been in a fight with a cat and lost.
But I will do anything I can to help her.
I come home early from the gym one afternoon, not expecting the girls to be home. I’m in the foyer when I hear Cassidy and Ember talking on the couch. Ember’s crying, and I stop dead because I don’t want to trigger her.
“… can’t keep doing this to him,” Ember’s saying, her voice thick. “Did you see his face, Cass? I did that. Again. He keeps coming to help me, and I keep hurting him.”
“He doesn’t care about the scratches, Em, he cares about you.”
“I know, and that makes it worse.” A shaky breath.
“It’s not … God, this is going to sound insane.
It’s not that I think Sully would ever hurt me, I know he wouldn’t.
Sully is the safest person I know, he saved my life.
” A pause. “But when I’m asleep, when I’m in it, my body doesn’t know that.
It just knows there’s a man in the room and I can’t …
I can’t breathe, Cass. And I hate it, I hate that I can’t make it stop.
I hate that he’s down the hall and every time he tries to help me, I attack him. ”
I stand frozen in the dark hallway with my keys in my hand.
“Oh, Em.” Cassidy’s voice is soft. “That’s the trauma talking. That’s not you.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. It’s happening.” Ember’s crying harder now. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You need to talk to someone,” Cassidy says gently. “A professional. Someone who deals with this. This is too big for us, Em. It’s too big for you to white-knuckle on your own. Please, let me help you find someone.”
There’s a long silence.
“Okay,” Ember says finally, so quiet I almost miss it. “Okay. I’ll talk to someone.”
“Thank you,” Cassidy breathes.
I back away down the hall as quietly as I came in. I stand in the corridor outside my own front door with my heart in pieces.