Chapter 4
Four
Blair
The water is cold. So, so cold.
Yet my lungs are burning. I need air. My arms and legs thrash as the demand for oxygen grows more and more urgent. No matter how hard I struggle, I can’t surface. The hand on the back of my head and the one pressed between my shoulder blades won’t relent.
I’m dying.
My vision is going dark. My thrashing is growing weaker. Soon my lungs will inadvertently expand and drag in all this cold water. It’s going to hurt. Dad said so. He also said that the pain will be temporary. Death will be temporary. I have to trust him. I have in the past and I won’t stop now.
Still, I can’t stop fighting his grip on me. My body simply won’t give up and die. Just as it gets to be too much, when the burning becomes agonizing, I open my mouth to accept my fate and—
“BLAIR! Jesus Christ, breathe!”
The room comes into focus as my eyelids fly open. My lungs expand as I gobble down air. In my chest, my heart is beating so fast that I’m sure at any minute it’s going to explode. As I fight back the residual panic from my nightmare, my attention latches onto the face leaning down into mine.
Rhett’s dark brows are pinched together, his eyes wide as he stares at me.
“What the fuck was that, Blair?” he asks, breathlessly.
I’m unable to answer him right away.
It’s like I can’t get enough air. I try to get my breathing under control but I’m struggling.
Ghostly rivulets of cold water rush over my body.
That’s when I realize I’m shivering, hard.
I try to sit up but I can’t. It takes me a second to realize Rhett’s hands are on my shoulders, holding me down onto a mattress.
He realizes it the same time I do. Quickly, he pulls his hands away and sits back to give me space.
“Blair,” Rhett rasps. He looks so concerned. It’s such a stark contrast to his surly attitude that it’s almost comical.
“I’m s-sorry.” I suck in a shaky breath and slowly sit up. “I-I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“What the hell was that?” He asks. “You were making these weird noises, and you were stiff as a board but also tweaking. I thought you were having a seizure.”
“No, just a nightmare.” I squeeze my eyes shut and wrap my arms around myself.
It’s not until I feel the pull of my stitches that I remember to be careful.
With a sigh, I drop my arms down and look back up at Rhett. He’s still watching me. The anxiousness on his face has me feeling… uncomfortable. It’s too much attention. I’m not used to it.
“Rhett, I’m okay.”
“Bullshit,” he counters.
“Okay… Well, give me a minute and I really will be okay.”
Rhett sighs and leans back. Reaching up, he rakes his fingers through his dark hair and his shoulders sag. I start to look away but then I clock how tired he looks. When was the last time he’d gotten any sleep?
I still feel beat but I’m sure I feel better than he does.
“How long have I been out?” I ask.
“Two, maybe three hours.”
It feels like my eyes are bulging as I stare up at Rhett in horror.
“What? We can’t stay in one place for this long. We haven’t put enough distance between us and whoever is after me. We got to go.”
I start to get to my feet, but Rhett pushes me back down.
“No, wait, I want to know what the fuck that was, Blair. You weren’t breathing. Is that… is that normal? Should we take you to a hospital or…?”
“No! No hospitals,” I tell him quickly. “I promise, it was just a nightmare mixed with an old memory. And it…” I shudder. “It wasn’t a great memory.”’
Rhett scoffs. “Really? I couldn’t tell.”
I chuckle at his deadpan tone. That seems to help him relax because he lets out another heavy sigh.
“A memory,” he mutters. “What kind of memory keeps you from breathing?”
“One where I was being forced to die,” I reply bitterly without thinking.
All the tension that left Rhett’s body returns and he goes utterly still.
“What?”
I wince. “Never mind, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“But you did. Now elaborate.”
I don’t want to but given how shaken Rhett appears, maybe an explanation will help him understand and relax.
“My Dad was passionate about me being able to survive anything,” I start. “One of the lessons he taught me was how to not fear death. To do that, he wanted me to experience it. You know, expose yourself to your fears so you become desensitized to them, kind of thing.”
Rhett’s jaw clenches as he looks down at the floor but he’s still listening.
“I guess Dad thought the lake we were camping beside was as good of a spot as ever to show me that death shouldn’t be feared,” I continue. “He told me what he was going to do, promised that he’d never let me go completely—just enough to taste it, and then… he did it.”
Through clenched teeth, Rhett asks in a slow growl, “He did what?”
Flashes of my nightmare return. The panic, the fear of disappointing Dad, the agony of not being able to breathe… I shudder.
“He drowned me in the lake,” I whisper, looking down into my hands.
“He held me under until I passed out. That’s what I was dreaming about.
But that’s not… What you saw, all my nightmares look like that.
You’ll never hear me scream. Silence being the key to my survival was drilled into me the minute Dad took me under his wing.
It’s so ingrained that even unconscious, I know to remain quiet. ”
Rhett leaps to his feet.
The movement is so abrupt that I flinch, not sure what to expect from him. His expression twists with disgust.
“What in the actual fuck?!” he demands. “Your dad tried to kill you for educational purposes?”
When he puts it like that it sounds bad.
“Dad exposed me to all sorts of questionable things but it was so I was prepared for anything,” I explain, trying not to get defensive.
“So, he kills you. Sounds like great fucking parenting.”
“Actually, he didn’t get the chance to finish the lesson,” I reply quickly, trying to somehow make it all better. “Ledger was set to join us. He found our campsite and saw what Dad was doing. Ledger stopped him and dragged me out of the water himself.”
The corner of Rhett’s upper lip curls upward in disgust.
“Big whoop. Ledger comes in to save the day—he’s a hero.” He rolls his eyes. “But did Ledger really save you if he left you with your dad afterward?”
“Dad wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was just another lesson, Ledger knew that.”
Rhett stares at me like I’ve started speaking in another language. “Can’t you see you were abused and Ledger let that happen?”
“Trust me, I know what abuse is. Dad saved me from it,” I hiss, getting defensive. Rhett balks, his eyes widen further in alarm—maybe even fear. Quickly, I push on. “What Dad put me through wasn’t abuse. I was being taught how to—”
“There are different types of abuse, Blair. This was physical and psychological!” Rhett interrupts sharply.
“And no doubt Ledger knew that. Maybe Ledger was just getting off on your suffering? It would explain all of this—” Rhett throws a hand around the room.
“He gets to be up close and personal to it before watching you get put down like a dog.”
Rhett’s words strike hard.
All these years I thought Ledger cared but maybe… maybe Rhett’s right? Ledger wasn’t blind to Dad’s lessons. He’d been there for many of them. Ledger never stepped in, though. I thought it was because he agreed with it all.
Not that he was enjoying it.
I squeeze my eyes shut as pain washes over me.
It’s not physical, it’s internal as my heart shudders and cracks under the weight of Ledger’s betrayal.
I’m going to have to deal with this. If I don’t let out all these feelings, they’ll consume me.
But I can’t do it now. If I start, I don’t know when I’ll stop.
“Hey, look…” Rhett lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t mean to be a dick. I’m just saying—”
“I know, I get it,” I interrupt. My eyes squeeze tighter.
“The thing is, Ledger was my hero growing up. He would swoop in during harder missions to be there for me and Dad. Yeah, he could’ve done more but I wasn’t his kid, Rhett.
I was just happy he showed up. He made me laugh, he had my back, and he’d talk about the world—giving me an insight to a life I wasn’t privy to.
Ledger inspired awe. I’ve always looked up to him. I…”
My throat squeezes shut, cutting off the rest of what I need to say.
Just get it off your chest, I urge.
Reaching up, I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. Shame causes me to drop my head, but I force myself to admit, “I love Ledger, Rhett. Or I did. Now I feel like an idiot. Looking back on my life and his involvement in it, I think I might’ve had rose-colored glasses on.”
I don’t look up at Rhett. I’m not sure if I can handle the disgust or contempt I’m sure to see on his face.
While it’s silent, I begin to box away the shame and heartache. After a few minutes, I manage to regain some self-control. With a sigh, I drop my hands away from my face, open my eyes and force myself to get to my feet.
“We should go,” I tell Rhett, still unable to look at him. “If we can—”
“No,” he snaps. “Don’t fucking do that. Not with me, Blair.”
I look up to find him glaring at me. There’s pink in his cheeks as his whole body trembles. Is he angry at me?
“Do what?”
He waves his hand up and down my body. “This!”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You’ve turned yourself off, Blair!” he says with frustration. “It’s weird as fuck seeing you like this. It’s like you’re not human.”
I flinch. Not human? That’s what I used to tell Dad when we prepared for the next job. He stopped talking, stopped feeling. He became detached and calculating. Everything he did was purposeful—never wasting energy on frivolous things like emotions. He became a weapon in every sense of the word.
I left that life because I didn’t want to become like him or be like that.
Looks like I’ve failed.
Rhett sighs again, this time in frustration. “Look, that came out wrong. I’m just saying you don’t have to hide whatever you’re feeling. I’m the last person who’d say anything if you fell apart right now. Just don’t… don’t do this.”
Swallowing hard, I nod. “Right… I’ll, ah, work on it.”
I start to step around him, but Rhett grabs my wrist, halting me.
“Is it me?”
“Is what you?”
“This!” Rhett presses with exasperation. “You’re hiding your emotions. I want to know if it’s because you don’t think I can handle them. You saw me in a weak moment and now you think that I can’t… that I can’t handle shit.”
I’m taken aback by his response. It’s not something I even considered.
“What? No!” I shake my head and step closer to him. “Rhett, that’s not it at all.”
“But I—”
I step so close to him that our chests nearly touch, startling him into silence. Rhett’s jaw tenses and his nostrils flare as I reach my hand up to cup his face. I take that as a sign to not touch him so I drop my hands. But I don’t step back. I want him to hear me when I say this.
“Rhett, everyone needs help from time to time,” I tell him solemnly.
“You’ve been carrying such a heavy burden for so long that the weight simply caught up to you.
I’m just happy that I was there to help lighten the load.
I don’t see you as weak. I see you as brave.
You’re here, still facing the world despite the shit that’s been thrown at you. That’s incredible. You’re incredible.”
The tension bracketing his mouth fades and the sharp edges of his narrow face seem to soften as he relaxes. Rhett’s so handsome like this—unguarded and unburdened with whatever thoughts plague him.
Then he smiles.
It’s small, a tug of one side of his mouth inching up just a bit. His lip piercings glitter in the pale light of the room.
Rhett doesn’t smile for just anyone. This smile is solely for me.
Any residual terror from my dream melts. The emotions I boxed away rattle around, feeling the hold I have on them loosen. I watch the way Rhett’s throat convulses as he swallows hard. Vulnerability flares to life in his eyes as they search my face.
“Do you…” He clears his throat then pushes on. “Do you really think that?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Rhett,” I promise him.
A flame flickers to life in his dark brown eyes, and it burns away the vulnerability.
The heat that radiates from them now is smoldering.
To my surprise, it’s Rhett that reaches up to touch my face.
The move is hesitant. I’m not sure if it’s to gauge my reaction or he’s unsure if he wants to commit but when he finally brushes his knuckles across my cheek, an unexpected rabble of butterflies take flight in my stomach.
“I think you’re incredible too,” he admits, his voice gruffer than normal.
Heat blossoms in my cheeks at the compliment.
“Let me help lighten your load, Blair.” His brows pinch together with concern. “I can’t promise that I’ll say or do the right things—I’m no Wes—but I can listen. I can be here, be present. If you want to talk about anything, like Ledger or your dad, or whatever—I’m here.”
Oh… I didn’t realize Rhett had a sweet side.
Giving him a half smile, I nod. “Thanks Rhett. I’ll keep that in mind. If I talk about that pain now, I’ll be swallowed up by it—so let’s just cork this conversation for a later date.”
Rhett nods and his hand drops away from my face. I feel the loss of warmth from it instantly.
“Alright,” he concedes. “I’m here, Blair, when you’re ready. I can handle it.”
My heart swells in my chest at the sincerity in his eyes and the warmth in his voice. I want to throw my arms around him. The only reason I don’t is because I’m not sure he’d be okay with it and I don’t want to shatter this moment by making him uncomfortable.
That and because of the stitches in my arm.
Instead, I simply return his smile.
With a deep breath, I force myself to turn around and refocus on our current situation. “Before we leave, we’re going to take as many supplies as we can. Guns, food, water, first aid—we’re going to take it all.”
“Alright, let’s get packing.”