2. Phantom Limb #2
But I couldn't move. My muscles had locked into place, conditioned by years of training that no amount of healing had erased. I was frozen there, kneeling on Nathan's kitchen floor, my body performing a ritual my mind didn't remember learning.
You call for Daddy in your sleep.
Gabriel's voice from the nightmare echoed in my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut. This wasn't real. This was just a flashback. A trauma response. Nathan had said—
Nathan.
I forced my eyes open. Forced my hands to unclasp from behind my back. The movement felt like tearing through spiderwebs, each thread of conditioning snapping one by one until I could finally push myself to my feet.
The kitchen was still clean. The apartment was still quiet. Nothing had changed except me.
I pressed my palms against the counter and focused on breathing. In through the nose, hold for four, out through the mouth. The technique Nathan had taught me. The technique that was supposed to ground me in the present when the past tried to pull me under.
It worked, barely. The panic receded from a scream to a whisper. My hands stopped shaking enough that I could pour myself a glass of water.
I should tell Nathan about this, I thought. He'd want to know. He'd have some explanation—a trauma trigger, a buried memory surfacing, a normal part of the healing process.
But I didn't want to tell him. Didn't want to see the concern in his eyes, the careful way he'd frame his questions, the clinical distance that sometimes crept into his voice when he talked about my "progress." I didn't want to be a patient anymore. I wanted to be his partner.
So I finished my water, and I finished cleaning the kitchen, and I didn't kneel again.
The afternoon dragged. Nathan was still at his meeting, and the apartment felt too quiet without him.
I tried reading—one of the psychology books he'd recommended, something about trauma recovery and neural plasticity—but the words blurred together on the page.
I tried watching television, but the cheerful voices of the cooking show host grated against my nerves.
Finally, I did what I always did when the silence became unbearable: I went to the bar.
The Lost Hours was quiet on weekday afternoons, just a few regulars nursing beers and the jukebox playing something sad and country. Matt was behind the counter, polishing glasses with the same methodical patience he brought to everything.
"Didn't expect to see you today," he said. "Everything okay?"
"Fine." I slid onto my usual stool. "Just needed to get out of the apartment."
He studied me for a moment, then poured a club soda with lime and set it in front of me. He'd never served me alcohol during the day—an unspoken rule I appreciated. "You've got that look again."
"What look?"
"The one that says you're thinking too hard about something you don't want to talk about."
I traced the rim of my glass with one finger. "Do you ever do things you can't explain? Like your body is moving without your permission?"
"All the time. Called getting old."
"I'm serious."
He set down the glass he'd been polishing and leaned against the bar. "You talking about the training? The stuff Gabriel did?"
"Maybe." I didn't want to say more, but Matt had earned the right to my honesty. He'd seen me at my worst—blood-spattered and manic, hunting predators through the city's underbelly—and he'd never flinched. "I did something this morning. Something I didn't mean to do. And I don't know why."
"What kind of something?"
"I knelt." The words felt like a confession. "On the kitchen floor. In this specific position that he used to make me hold. And I didn't even realize I was doing it until it was already done."
Matt was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "You ever wonder if maybe you're not as healed as you think you are?"
"I know I'm not healed. Healing's not linear. Nathan says—"
"I know what Nathan says." He held up a hand.
"I'm not trying to badmouth him. I'm just saying.
.. you went through something most people can't imagine.
Three months of therapy and a good relationship aren't going to erase that.
Maybe you need to talk to someone who specializes in this stuff. A professional."
"Nathan's helping me."
"Nathan's not objective." He met my eyes steadily. "He loves you. And people who love you don't always see things clearly."
I wanted to argue, but the strange pill in my medicine cabinet flashed through my mind. The nightmare. The phantom collar. The kneeling. Four things in two days that I couldn't explain, and every time I tried to talk to Nathan about them, his answers felt a little too neat. A little too rehearsed.
"What if I told you I found something strange?" I said quietly. "Something that doesn't fit with what I've been told about my recovery?"
Matt's expression didn't change. "I'd say you should trust your instincts. They've kept you alive this long."
I thought about that for the rest of the afternoon. Thought about it through my shift, through the evening crowd, through the walk home in the dark. By the time I reached the apartment, I'd made a decision.
I wouldn't throw away the pill. Not yet. I'd keep it, and I'd figure out what it was, and if it turned out to be nothing—if my paranoia was just another symptom of trauma, another ghost Gabriel had left behind—then I'd let it go.
But if it was something else... if there was a reason my body kept doing things my mind didn't understand...
I'd find out.
Nathan was home when I got back, already cooking dinner. He'd made pasta—my favorite, the one with the lemon cream sauce that he'd learned to perfect. The apartment smelled like garlic and safety, and when he kissed me hello, I let myself forget about pills and nightmares and phantom collars.
"Good shift?" he asked.
"Uneventful." I wrapped my arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek against his back. "I missed you."
"I missed you too." He covered my hands with his own. "Everything okay? You seem... quiet."
"I'm fine. Just tired."
He turned in my arms, studying my face with those green eyes that saw too much. "You'd tell me if something was wrong, right? If the nightmares were getting worse, or if you were having... episodes?"
Episodes. The word he used for the flashbacks, the dissociative moments, the times when my conditioning surfaced despite everything we'd done to bury it.
"Of course," I said, and the lie came easier than it should have. "You're my partner. I tell you everything."
Something flickered in his expression—relief, maybe, or something sharper. "Good. That's good. I just want you to be okay."
"I am." I kissed him, soft and sweet. "I'm better than okay. I'm happy."
And I was. That was the terrible thing. Even with the doubts, even with the cracks forming in the foundation of my new life, I was happier than I'd ever been.
Nathan had given me that. Nathan had saved me.
Nathan was the only person in the world who'd ever looked at my broken pieces and called them beautiful.
I wasn't going to let Gabriel's ghost take that away.