Chapter 16
Nadya
IT ALWAYS STARTED WITH hands. Unseen, unstoppable, multiplying. No faces, just fingers in my hair, pressing into my collarbone, on my arms. I never screamed. Screaming was pointless, and in case of one of the men, it even made things worse. He liked it too much when I screamed.
Instead, I thrashed, legs kicking wildly, sheets twisting around me. Then, just as the panic curdled into rage, my elbow hit something solid.
“Nadya! Wake up, you’re safe. You need to wake up.”
Hands on my wrists—firm but not cruel, not squeezing so hard I thought my bones would snap. I woke up fighting anyway. My heel connected with shin, my body arched in full primal revolt, and then I realized I was not being held down by a monster or a ghost or even a memory, but by Nick.
He was straddling my thighs to keep me from kicking again, one big hand pinning my wrists above my head. He blinked down at me, face tense, mouth set in a line.
I gasped the cool, air-conditioned air. For a few seconds, I just lay there, letting reality catch up. The city outside was still dark, but the cheap blackout curtains couldn’t fully block out the glow of the streetlamps, which sliced the room into stripes of amber and blue.
“Sorry,” I croaked.
Nick let go of my wrists the instant he realized I was awake, backing up like he was afraid he’d break me if he didn’t. “You were—uh—having a bad dream,” he said, as if the blood pounding in my ears wasn’t evidence enough.
I rubbed my eyes, which made the pounding worse. “No shit,” I said, and pushed myself up to sitting. The sheets were wound tight around my waist, so I had to do a weird crab-scoot to the edge of the mattress.
Nick stayed at a respectful distance. “Do you remember what it was about?” he asked softly.
“Just the usual. Hands.”
I hadn’t had nightmares this bad in a while. Drinking myself into oblivion helped, but it seemed I should’ve gotten something stronger tonight. I hadn’t, because knocking myself out with drugs in front of an FBI agent seemed like a stupid idea.
Nick turned the digital alarm clock toward himself to check the time. Three in the morning. Perfect.
I pawed at the nightstand for the lamp, flicked it on, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The light stabbed through my skull, but it also illuminated Nick’s face.
The skin under his right eye was already red and swelling.
“Oh fuck,” I said, adrenaline spiking. “Did I—?”
He gently probed the forming bruise. “You caught me with your elbow. I’ve had worse.” He winced, but it looked more like embarrassment than pain.
I scrambled off the bed, feet tangling in the sheets. “Let me get some ice.”
“It’s really—”
I held up a finger, channeling Vera’s bossiest nurse mode, then grabbed the ice bucket. I found a thin, starched washcloth in the bathroom, and took the whole kit down the hallway to the ancient, growling ice machine.
Cold air bit my ankles as I watched the machine rattle and shudder, then dump a cascade of ice into the bucket. The noise was so loud I half-expected someone to poke their head out of a room and yell at me. It didn’t happen. Everyone else in this hotel had the good sense to be unconscious.
Back in the room, Nick was exactly where I’d left him: on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.
I wrapped some cubes in the washcloth and held it out. “Press this to your eye. I don’t want you looking like you picked a fight with a linebacker.”
He took it, almost sheepishly. “Thanks.”
I sat back down, cross-legged on the opposite end of the bed, giving him plenty of space in case my inner banshee decided to launch another attack. The ice bucket rested on my lap, condensation already dripping down the side and onto my pajamas.
“You okay?” Nick asked as if I was the one who took an elbow to the eye.
“Yeah,” I lied, then caught myself and tried again. “No. But I’ll deal.”
He studied me with one good eye. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I barked a laugh. “What, my little confession of why I should never share a bed with anyone?”
He didn’t smile. “You don’t have to joke about it.”
I flinched. “Sorry. That’s... kind of all I have.
My greatest hits: inappropriate jokes and bad coping mechanisms.” I pressed the cold bucket harder to my thighs, needing something to ground me.
“Look, this is exactly why I do one-night stands. Why I don’t stay the night.
Why I left as soon as you fell asleep two years ago. I’m a fucking mess.”
He set the washcloth down, blinking against the pain. “You didn’t hurt me, Nadya. Not really.”
I stared at the red swelling under his eye. “You say that now but wait until you get a good look in the mirror.”
He grinned. “I already know what that looks like.”
We lapsed into silence. Not the comfortable kind, but not the suffocating kind, either. Just two people marooned on a hotel bed at three in the morning, marinating in a shared history of bad decisions and worse aftermath.
Eventually, Nick spoke. “Since you’re awake, can I show you something?” He gestured toward his phone, which was plugged in on the far side of the bed.
“Is it your collection of blackmail selfies?” I tried to joke because if I didn’t, I might fall into a hole of depression so deep I’d never climb back out. “Because I bet you looked way less hot in college.”
He didn’t bite, just grabbed the phone and scrolled for a few seconds. “I kept digging after you crashed. On the house.” He showed me a screenshot: a property record, with the name Carl August Holton on the second line followed by a sale of the house a year ago.
“Carl sounds right.” I couldn’t remember all the names, but I thought there was a Carl. “That’s who owned the house?”
Nick nodded, then showed me a picture of a woman about my age, maybe a little older. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Melissa Ann Holton,” Nick explained. “Carl’s daughter. After her mother died, she moved in with her grandparents.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. That was how I knew her. “She was there.”
For a second, I was back in that blue-doored house. The rooms, the stains on the wallpaper, the way footsteps creaked on the second floor. I remembered a girl, thin and dark-haired, who never looked at anyone.
“They called it playdates,” I said, voice hollow. “She didn’t talk or fight, but she’d scream sometimes, and it sounded wrong, like her vocal cords were messed up.”
Nick watched my hands twist in the sheets. “I want to go see her tomorrow in case she knows anything.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said immediately.
I had thought about her a lot after we had gotten out because as far as I knew, she was still there, still going through all that. I had felt so helpless and guilty for not getting her out.
“You don’t have to,” Nick protested. “Yesterday was already rough on you.”
“And what if she doesn’t want to talk to you? You’re a man who looks like you can break me in half without breaking a sweat. Why would she even open a door to you? If she remembers me, she might feel safer talking to me.”
He smiled, but it was sad and tired and maybe a little proud. “Alright, sleepbrawler, we’ll ride together in the morning. It’s a couple of hours from here.”
I rolled my eyes, but there was no force behind it. “Sleepbrawler?”
“Some people sleepwalk and some people sleepbrawl.” He laughed at the look on my face, the sound low and warm, and for a second, I felt the urge to climb across the bed and curl up next to him, bruises and all.
Instead, I set the ice bucket on the nightstand and pulled my knees to my chest. “Okay. So, breakfast and riding the death trap in the morning.”
The clock glowed 3:52 now and outside, the world was still pitch black. I’d never feared the dark, though. Real monsters had no problem operating during the day.
Nick settled back, ice pack pressed gently to his face, and I stretched out on my side, facing him.
The room felt a little less haunted. Maybe if I fell asleep again, I wouldn’t get the nightmares again.
The booze in the mini fridge called to me with a promise of peaceful sleep, but it hadn’t worked earlier tonight, so what was the point?
“Hey,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Next time, just ask if you want to kick my ass. I’ll let you.”
I smirked, already half-asleep. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He reached over to brush the hair off my face. “Goodnight, Nadya.”
“Night, Tuna.”
When I drifted off again, there were no hands. Just the warm, steady presence next to me, like a constant reminder that the world didn’t have only monsters. Sometimes, it held heroes who were there to put the monsters away.