Chapter 17
Seventeen
Rhett
Iwake to a horribly familiar sound.
It’s a rough, ragged, wheezing that sends a shiver down my spine.
My eyes fly open and I sit up. Peering over Santi, I find Blair lying between him and Wes. At some point in the night, the two guys have shifted away from her, leaving Blair alone. Her body is tense and trembling, her jaw is locked but her lips part to make that small wretched gasp.
I must be so attuned to it by now that my body listens for it, because neither of the other two stir.
Without hesitation, I climb over Santi to lay beside Blair and pull her into my chest.
“Hey, hey,” I mutter into her ear as I hold her close. “I’m here, Blair. I’m here, wake up.”
The gasping stops.
Not because she’s awake though.
Her eyeballs are rolling behind her eyelids, her body going ram-rod straight and the tendons in her neck pop out dramatically.
She’s stopped breathing.
“Blair!” I hiss, trying to keep my voice low so I don’t wake the others but just loud enough that she’ll hear me. I shake her hard now. “Wake up!”
“What’s going on?” Wes asks, his voice hoarse as he rolls over to face us.
I ignore him as I begin to panic. “Blair!”
I sit up and bring Blair with me. Gently, I pat her face to see if it will jar her awake. She’s never had a nightmare this intense before. If she doesn’t start breathing…
“Rhett,” Wes barks, waking fully now as he sits up with us. He looks at Blair and balks in horror. “What’s—”
Blair suddenly gasps loudly. Her eyes fly open just as her hands come up to fight me off.
“It’s okay, Blair. It’s me and Wes,” I assure her as I pin down her arms. “You’re safe.”
“Rhett…” She breathes as her eyes come into focus. For a second, they well up with tears and I think she’s about to cry. Quickly, she blinks away the evidence of her distress, though, and leans against me.
“Can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?” Wes demands.
He scoots closer to us and puts a hand on Blair’s shoulder. I can’t tell if it’s to steady her, or himself. Either way, it seems to relax Blair.
“Blair’s been having nightmares,” I tell him as she catches her breath. “Sometimes she needs help waking from them.”
“This has happened before? Often?”
At my nod, Wes sighs and wipes his free hand down his face.
“I guess I’m not surprised.”
“What?” Blair asks, frowning.
He gives her a small, sad smile. “I’m guessing you started having nightmares pretty recently?”
“They started right after Rhett and I left.”
Wes hums as if this confirms something for him. “No doubt caused by stress. You were already under a lot of it before you guys were ambushed. On the run for your life, injured, and knowing that the person you trusted the most had betrayed you? Yeah, that’ll do it.”
Blair sucks in a shaky breath and lets it out slowly.
“Any idea how to get them to stop?” I ask him.
Wes shoots me an anxious look. “Yeah, deal with at least one of the triggers of your stress and they should lessen.”
“I’m going to get some water,” Blair says suddenly, pulling away from me to get to her feet. “Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”
I reach for her hand to prevent her from leaving but Blair slips away before I can catch her. Wes starts to rise but I’m already getting to my feet.
“I got her,” I tell him.
“You sure?”
I don’t bother to answer him. Wes might be the caretaker of the family, but I can be there for Blair when she needs someone too.
Slipping out of the living room, I head for the kitchen.
It’s dark but my eyes adjust. I find Blair across the room.
Her hands are braced on the edge of the sink but the water isn’t running.
There’s not even a glass out.
As I approach, I can hear Blair suck in deep, shaking breaths to steady herself.
“Blair?”
I come up behind her, cautious and slow. As I wrap my arms around her waist, Blair stiffens. Rather than retreat, I step forward so that my chest presses against her back and I hold on to her tighter. Bending down, I nuzzle my face into the side of her neck.
There’s a thick moment of silence, then Blair lets out a soft sigh and melts into me.
My heart shudders under the enormity of the submission.
Blair doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need Wes, or Santi, and she sure as shit doesn’t need Ledger right now.
The fact that she’s allowing me to comfort her is humbling in the gravest sense of the word.
Unable to help myself, my lips press against the side of her neck where her pulse thumps slowly.
“Is it weird that while I’m happy to be back, I miss this?” I whisper just beneath her ear.
“This?”
“You know… Just the two of us.”
She shivers before whispering, “I miss us, too.”
“You okay? Want to… I don’t know, talk about the nightmare or something?”
Blair lets out the softest of scoffs. “If you didn’t like the drowning story, you wouldn’t like this one.”
Mentally, my hackles rise.
Her dad is a piece of fucking shit. Resentment burns like acid in the back of my throat.
I’ll never accept the fact that Blair needed to be treated so cruelly growing up.
She might not see it as abuse but her whole life was one deliberate trauma after another.
While Anchor might not touch little children, I’d make the exception about throwing him into the woods to hunt down and chop up.
“Talk to me, Blair,” I plea. “You know we have a plan, right? Maybe the nightmares will stop after we talk to Ledger?”
All signs of relaxation evaporate at the sound of Ledger’s name. Blair’s body goes rigid in my arms.
“I don’t think anything Ledger says will change jack shit,” she says, her voice suddenly cold.
“You don’t know that. It could change everything. Once we get answers—”
“Look, Rhett,” Blair snaps, cutting me off. “I know you guys love him and I’m coming to terms with the fact that you all will protect him no matter what—that you’ve chosen your side—but I just don’t think—”
“What?”
My arms drop away from her body only so that I can grab her shoulders and twist her around to face me. Blair meets my gaze in the dark and I see it—so much raw pain that I can practically feel it myself, right down to my soul.
“This isn’t about sides. No one is picking Ledger over you, Blair.” My words come out sharper than I intend but anger rises up and I can’t control myself. “That would never happen in a million years.”
The disbelief in her eyes cuts me to the quick.
“And yet, you all want to protect him,” she says, her voice flat.
“From me. Wes says to deal with the stress in my life, yet no one will actually let me do that. I’ve agreed to ‘talking’ to Ledger because I don’t want any of you to hurt but god this feels…
” She shakes her head. “Pointless. How will listening to lies help me?”
“Blair, Ledger is—” My throat squeezes and for a second I can’t breathe.
So many excuses well up, all so loud and just wanting to be heard. I pick the most honest, loudest answer.
Softly I admit, “I’m fucking scared of losing someone else important to me, Blair. I have to at least hear him out before we do something permanent.”
The pain in Blair’s eyes deepens, as if my explanation only hurts her more. I hate seeing it more than I hate how out of control this whole situation has become. Reaching up, my fingers wrap gently around the front of Blair’s neck. I step closer so there’s hardly any space between us.
“If it comes down to it, it’s you, Blair. I’d pick you—no questions asked, no bars held.” I whisper the truth, not to hide it from anyone else but so that she’s forced to hear me. “I’ll always pick you.”
Her eyes widen—clearly not expecting my answer.
The surprise on her face cuts deeper than the fact that she thought we would turn our backs on her for the man locked in a cage downstairs. Why is she so taken back by my response?
Then it hits me.
I thought I knew what isolation and loneliness were.
Since coming to Gnarly Pines, I’ve had a family.
I pushed them away time and time again, but they’ve always been here, waiting for me to come around.
Never once did they give up on me. They’ve been standing behind me, holding me up this whole time.
Blair has never had this.
There’s never been anyone in her corner, fighting for her.
The father that she admires so much is a piece of shit—he doesn’t count.
He seems like the type of man that would shove his daughter into a ring to teach her how to fight for herself and watch as she got her ass beat by life.
And Ledger, the only other constant person in her life, sat back and watched the abuse until he realized he could commit his own atrocities against her.
Her lack of faith in me isn’t something I did—though with how shitty I’ve been toward Blair since her arrival I guess it could’ve played a small role—this is just how she’s wired.
Blair is used to facing shit alone.
To being alone.
Her ability to compromise—to let us interrogate Ledger rather than let her torture and kill him—it’s not for her benefit, it’s for ours. Blair’s willing to bend so that none of us would break. She’s ready to continue to feel alone in this as long as the rest of us are happy.
My heart shudders under the enormity of that sacrifice.
And protests against it.
My grip on her neck tightens.
“You don’t get it, do you, Blair? We love you. I love you. If Ledger poses a threat to your life, I’ll put Ledger down myself. I swear it. I just need closure—as stupid as that is.”
Blair’s lips part as she lets out a surprised gasp.
Then her eyes soften. “You love me?”
“God, yes, Blair. Yes.” Without missing a beat, I bend down and our lips collide.
It’s a hard, demanding kiss from me.
Blair matches it, kissing me back desperately. She reaches up to hold onto my shoulders as she leans into it. My other arm wraps around her waist to hold her to me.
I won’t let this incredible woman go.
I’ll never let her feel alone.
When I break the kiss, we’re both breathlessly clinging to one another.
“I love you, too,” she whispers back.
A hard tremor rushes through me at her confession. I don’t know what I did to deserve all this love under this roof, but I won’t take it for granted.
“This situation isn’t easy, Blair,” I groan against her lips.
“Please try to understand where we’re all coming from.
Ledger has had a huge impact on all our lives, just as much as he’s had on yours.
The difference is that you grew up in a black and white world, but this mess?
It’s a fucking technicolored bomb that’s blown up.
We’re just trying to figure things out.”
Blair nods. “Okay.”
I kiss her again, needing to taste her. Blair moans and I shiver at the sound. When the kiss is broken, it's Blair that pulls away first.
“I don’t know what I want to come from all of this,” she admits.
“Neither do I,” I confess. “But whatever happens, I’m right here, okay?”
I reach for her hand. Gently, I tug her away from the sink and back toward the living room.
“C’mon, I’ll hold you while you fall back to sleep.”